This is what shopping looks like on the Apple Vision Pro

“When you go fully immersive, and you see the sun, and you see the sea moving and hear the seagulls — it is a one-of-a-kind experience,” says Isabel May, chief customer experience officer at Mytheresa. As the first and only luxury fashion app on the Vision Pro, Mytheresa is playing into the palm of a customer with cash to spend. The device — which sold out of 200,000 units in a presale starting 19 January — costs $3,500, meaning that high-value potential customers are getting a first pass.

Virtual reality shopping has long lingered on the horizon of what’s to come, but no one’s yet cracked it. Both the technology and the user behaviour have to be right for it to work, and while it remains to be seen if the Vision Pro becomes as much a part of our everyday life as the smartphone and the smartwatch, Apple’s investment in the space is drawing in partners eager to see where this goes.

“This is the moment we have all been waiting for,” says Obsess founder and CEO Neha Singh, who worked with brands to create their Vision Pro experiences. “The quality and interaction you are able to get is unprecedented in terms of resolution and how you can see products realistically in larger-than-life scale and be completely immersed in a brand environment. It’s definitely the closest, or the next best thing, to seeing a product in person in a store.”

J.Crew, Alo, Elf as well as Mytheresa all worked with virtual shopping tech company Obsess to build their Vision Pro stores. All have created virtual stores with Obsess previously, but these were primarily accessed through computers and smartphones. Other brands to have created virtual stores include Ralph Lauren, L’Occitane, Dior and Tatcha. These immersive, three-dimensional spaces leverage gaming aesthetics and mechanics to create e-commerce shopping that offers more engaging experiences than traditional grids and scrolling. They also enable brands to increase engagement, gather data and educate visitors through games.

Elf leaned into gaming with three environments inspired by “holy grail” products, including Camo CC Cream, Power Grip Primer and Halo Glow, which are available to buy within the app. With a theme of “your best e.l.f.”, visitors can explore play and relaxation, including a “paint by numbers” game (which culminates in 3D animals as a reward) and stretching and meditation. It also created a corresponding online version of the experience.