Category
VR
Year
2024
Welcome to the Dior Ball of Dreams
This holiday season, Dior invites audiences to step into the Ball of Dreams, an elegant multisensory VR experience housed on the fifth floor of Harrods in London. Presented by xydrobe, this five-minute immersive journey transports viewers to the heart of the Château de Versailles, where the Dior dream comes to life. The experience showcases the House’s new fragrances and limited-edition beauty products in a luxurious setting. Our role was to extend Dior’s Christmas commercial into a 360-degree cinematic VR experience that merges innovation and artistry.
A new era of advertising
The experience takes guests through the palace’s front gate during a calm, moonlit winter night. Continuing through the Royal Courtyard, users fly into the clock at the top of the palace to arrive at the Royal Opera. Surrounded by beautiful architecture and crystal chandeliers, guests watch Dior’s Christmas commercial featuring actress Anya Taylor-Joy. Sections of the video are shown in slow motion to emphasise the beauty products. The journey concludes in the Gardens of Versailles, where fireworks light the night sky. Happy holidays!
Our approach
Our team was responsible for creating all the 3D visual content and combining all the scenes into a cinematic experience. To recreate the grandeur of the Château de Versailles gardens, we started with simple blockouts (cubes and simple shapes), progressively adding more details. Matching the colours and aesthetics of the VR scenes to the Dior commercial—within the headset’s constraints—required us to research lighting techniques and colour science.
Completing this project in just six weeks was quite an achievement, showcasing our team’s ability to face and overcome challenges. We used Unreal Engine 5.4 to create the 3D environment and to render the whole experience. Advanced Video AI enabled us to slow down portions of the original commercial by up to 16 times without losing any quality! We’ve added a spatial 3D shader to the commercial, giving it depth when watching it in VR. This way, the actors and products stand out from the video and appear closer to the viewer. All these tools allowed our team to create this visually stunning and immersive experience in just six weeks!
Immersive storytelling
From the opening scene, where guests enter through the gates of Versailles, to the climactic fireworks, every detail was crafted to immerse viewers in the Dior universe. Weekly progress updates ensured alignment with client expectations, and the final product reflects both Dior’s timeless elegance and our commitment to pushing the boundaries of immersive storytelling. This project highlights how VR can transform customer engagement, setting a new benchmark for branded experiences.
