American Apparel Finds the Right Fit in Second Life

So Much to Choose From Shop till your avatar drops

"My next move was to find out how to use this content," Weber says. "The culture is a good fit." And it certainly has been a good fit for Weber. In addition to the American Apparel shop, she has designed virtual residences for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life, an audio kiosk for Warner Music Group (WMG) recording artist Regina Spektor and a model for the proposed New Globe Theater on Govenor's Island in New York.

American Apparel's virtual hub can be found on the cleverly titled Lerappa ("apparel" spelled backwards) private island. The store boasts familiar items available for shoppers' online character, called an avatar. Most of the virtual clothing retails for less than $1, which translates to about 270 Linden, the currency of SL.

Weber's design for American Apparel dutifully combines both a virtual shopping experience for avatar clothing with the benefit of purchasing the same item for real-life use. Within the virtual outlet, browsers can purchase the real-world version of an item through the company's Web site and have it delivered.

In the early stages of the Internet's development, many people didn't understand the concept of purchasing goods online, Weber points out. She hopes that shoppers will embrace SL, continuing the movement that began with catalogs and moved to HTML-coded Web pages.

"With Second Life, you can see a model of an item in 3-D," Weber says. "You can see the front, back and sides of an item, which you can't do on a normal Web site. It becomes a more immersive experience."