When it comes to transforming how luxury spaces and products are pitched, marketed and sold, immersive technologies are raising the bar here too. Once a project reaches the stage of stakeholder presentation or commercial launch, the technologies used to communicate it become just as important as the design itself.

High-fidelity digital environments now serve as immersive sales platforms. Whether a flagship store, branded residence or mixed-use development, the experience can be explored spatially and in-depth. Potential buyers, investors or brand partners can look beyond mood boards by stepping into the concept itself. They can walk through the lobby, see the light change by time of day and experience the intended atmosphere at first hand.

‘From the sales perspective, what’s better than walking somebody through their apartment where they can also simulate different furniture packs and different interior design styles?’ says Danny Drohojowski, executive producer at Noë & Associates. Whether persuading investors or enabling consumers to co-design, immersive technologies are transforming what buy-in looks like.

It also strengthens the business case. Instead of needing to persuade stakeholders, they can make choices that shape the real-world output once they can see and feel what the project offers up close, virtually. Engaging with a project’s full potential in the earlier stages brings new levels of commercial confidence, which can in turn accelerate investment decisions, reduce development risk and improve pre-sales conversion.

In the development cycle, digital assets can be set aside once a space is built. But with immersive platforms, the digital twin has the potential to remain active, becoming a long-term operating layer that evolves with the environment.

A well-structured environmental digital twin can carry forward everything from brand narrative to spatial logic, from design intent to operational data. ‘It’s the central armature that everything hangs off,’ says Imerza’s Hoyt. Rather than reflecting what a space looked like at launch, the twin becomes a living system – able to simulate, update and respond to changes in behaviour and environment.

This has deep implications for luxury brands and creates an opportunity to gather important customer data beyond sheer transactions. A flagship store or cultural destination, for instance, can stop being static. It can become a dynamic, intelligent platform that can be simulated, updated and experienced across multiple channels. It can then be used to prototype new visual stories or retail layouts. Operations teams can test changes in flow, lighting or visitor movement. Marketing teams can use it to power immersive campaigns or virtual previews. Even more, it can seamlessly transition from design and planning to testing and simulation, and to physical construction and digital experience activation.

In a broader context, AI is becoming a creative co-pilot. Rather than replacing vision, it is being used to bring inspiration to the fore, streamline ideation and extend creative fluency. Although not immersive, the Dazed Archive, launched in 2025, uses AI to mine three decades of fashion and culture coverage, turning its archive into a dynamic reference engine. Similarly, designers like Norma Kamali, in partnership with Maison Meta, are using bespoke generative AI to unlock new design directions grounded in brand heritage. These early experiments show how AI is enhancing – not automating – the creative process.

These examples hint at a more macro-shift: from developing linear workflows to designing systems, and from reactive production to creative simulation. For now, immersive design environments remain niche, but their potential to support creative freedom – and reduce compromise – is becoming clearer.

As luxury storytelling matures, the question for brands and next-level marketing is changing from how to launch a campaign to how to build a world, one in which the story is no longer told only in a standardised, linear way like in movie productions, for example, but where it can be discovered and hyper-personalised – bringing to life brand experiences and entertainment.

Brands are now entering an era of multi-format storytelling built on longer narrative arcs – where systems of meaning persist and expand. The result is a series of interconnected story worlds, and immersive technology may provide the future infrastructure to support their evolution.

‘Luxury has always been about storytelling and aspiration,’ says Isabella Gallucci, chief brand officer at xydrobe, a new-wave company that works with luxury brands such as Dior and Shiseido to create multi-sensory virtual reality experiences. ‘Immersive technology deepens this by allowing consumers to step into the story rather than just watching it. Intertwining the digital with the physical, immersive experiences are the future of advertising for brands.’

Retail remains one of luxury’s most powerful consumer platforms – but its role is evolving as expectations shift from transaction to experience. Immersive technologies bring with them the possibility to design stores not only for appearance or function, but also for interaction and ongoing adaptability. Immersive technologies can also help overcome the physical constraints of retail; for example, by visually extending smaller stores to present richer experiences. 

Brands including Coach and Tommy Hilfiger have experimented with digital replicas of their stores, although with limited commercial success. The cost and complexity of producing immersive assets at scale – particularly at sku level – can be a barrier worth noting.

But the future is not about replicating the store experience. It is about re-imagining retail from a limitless perspective to reach well beyond what most traditional transactional online e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores offer today.

‘On average, we’ve seen a 70% increase in sales from our activations, using immersive tech not just to captivate, but also to educate and inform’

Isabella Gallucci, chief brand officer, xydrobe

Luxury has always been a cultural force. Today, it’s also an entertainment engine. As brands operate more like studios and cultural producers, technology is laying the groundwork for a critical shift in how we design luxury experiences that push creativity and culture to new heights – and at scale.

Immersive technologies have the capacity to shift storytelling from linear to layered. As Imerza’s Dorian Vee explains, once brands have central models, ‘how those assets are used is open-ended – it could be retail, marketing centre, pop-up, AR or personal device consumption’.

The rise of brand-driven entertainment, such as LVMH’s 22 Montaigne Entertainment – a dedicated platform to co-develop film, television and audio formats – marks a growing shift now in motion. With this venture, the group is doing more than placing product into culture. It’s investing in the infrastructure to make, own and amplify cultural movements.

Other activations are testing this ambition. Tied to the release of Piece by Piece, the Pharrell Williams Lego biopic, the Louis Vuitton menswear director collaborated with Lego on a live immersive installation in Los Angeles that hints at what’s possible when storytelling, entertainment and retail converge. While not overtly driven by tech, it demonstrates how brands can think about scaling these kinds of moments more fluidly across media and spaces.

Gallucci at xydrobe also shares her perspective on the integration of biometric feedback in creating personalised experiences at scale: ‘One of the most exciting developments in immersive storytelling for the luxury sector is the growing potential of biometric feedback through VR technologies,’ she explains. ‘The ability to dynamically adapt an experience in real time based on how the individual is feeling or reacting will revolutionise personalisation.’

As brands act more like studios and producers, immersive platforms will offer the operational backbone to scale creativity and cultural relevance. Those that embrace this shift will find new ways to move at the speed of culture without compromising on craft. Immersive technology allows them to test, stage and distribute moments that feel alive and layered across an entire eco-system.