Luxury's New Facets

E-commerce entrepreneur Talenia Phua Gajardo mulls over the future of luxury retail and tells Hong Xinyi why she believes it will become vividly virtual.

- Hong Xinyi

TALENIA PHUA GAJARDO HAS been thinking about space. Not the kind filled with galaxies far, far away, but something else that is no less infinite, in its own way—virtual space, which tech-minded wunderkinds have conjured seemingly out of thin air, and are fast bending to the force field of their ingenuity.

Google recently created a 3D virtual reality (VR) painting application called Tilt Brush, she shares with palpable excitement when we ask the e-commerce entrepreneur to spotlight some recent trends that have piqued her interest. “It’s a completely immersive experience that enables artists to paint in 3D space, on a 3D canvas, inside a VR world. It’s completely mind-blowing.”

She is also excited about how Google’s Art Project is digitising the collections of 1,200 art institutions worldwide. “One can already browse their archives and take virtual 360-degree tours of these art spaces and cultural heritage sites. I’m very keen to see how quickly VR and the actual application of all these technologies will become mainstream and whether that will translate into sales for artists and galleries in the future.”