You think you love that dress, those boots, that eye shadow or maybe that pink tie, but you don’t have time to find a dressing room or a sales associate, and so you keep walking.

Soon you won’t have to. Virtual dressing rooms — once the stuff of science fiction — are becoming reality.

On Wednesday night, some of Toronto’s top advertising executives got a peek at a product called Swivel, which marries Microsoft Xbox Kinect technology to patented systems that let shoppers try on clothes without having to squeeze into ten different outfits in a confined space.

Instead, shoppers can stand in front of a computer screen that acts as a kind of mirror, in the same way that pressing the reverse-camera icon on a smart phone shows you what you look like.

The Kinect system picks up their movements, translating them into actions on the screen.

To try on clothes, customers first select categories of products from a menu at the top of the computer screen. Then they can scroll through individual products that pop up on either side of the screen by moving their hands in the air, to the right or left, as they would if they were using an Xbox Kinect.

To select a product, the shopper simply closes her hand. The product is instantly superimposed on her in real time. She can try on the same dress in five different colours, or with five different necklaces.

Shoppers can split the screen to compare two outfits. They can grab a screen shot and post it to social media to see what their friends think.

Swivel, which was demonstrated to ad executives at the AGO on Wednesday evening, does volumetric measuring, so if the customer is working with a sales associate, the sales associate will know the right size to pull for an actual fitting.

It can tell customers what size they are, but customers didn’t like that feature too much, said FaceCake Marketing Technologies sales director Peter Johnson.

FaceCake is the California company behind Swivel, although there are other companies hard at work in the same space.

“Right now we’ve left out the size – people don’t like being told what size they are.”

Swivel is not meant to replace the fitting room, it’s meant to make the experience more efficient, says Johnson.

Using virtual reality, a customer can try on dozens of different products in a few minutes before narrowing it down to something they want to actually try on.

And trying things on is a good way to get people to buy, Johnson points out. While only one in ten people who walk into a store will buy something, two out of three people who try on something in a dressing room will make a purchase.

Virtual shopping could also cut down on return rates, he argues. Some shoppers, pressed for time, have taken to buying items in different sizes to try on at home, later returning the products that don’t fit.

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Sometimes, by the time they bring it back, the product is no longer in stock or in season, making it a complete write-off for the retailer, says Johnson.

Swivel was introduced at Bloomingdale stores in the U.S. last year and the company is working with several large Canadian retailers, says Johnson. He wouldn’t name the retailers.

Toronto-based Kinetic Café is going at augmented reality in a different way.

They’ve developed a virtual mirror that reflects back an accurate image, but behind the mirror is an ultra-high-resolution screen that provides shoppers with context – what works best with these brogues? What length of skirt looks best with kitten heels?

“We’re designing an entire store of the future for Aldo. We’re launching it in New York at the Freedom Tower next year,” said David Dougherty, co-founder of Kinetic Café.

Their system is different from other change room solutions.

“We veered away from superimposing content on top of the user in the mirror. To date, those are very poor quality visual assets and there is not a sense of realism. It always ends up being a poor experience,” said Dougherty.

“There is a ceremonial bond you have with your reflection. You want to see you looking your best, not you with paper-doll clothing on you.”

He added that moving their arms around the air beside them feels unnatural to customers.

Retail analyst Alex Arifuzzaman, a partner in Interstratics Consultants Inc., believes virtual change rooms are a great idea.

“For older people, it’s going to be really different from what they are used to, but for younger people who are used to so much virtual interaction, it’s not as big of a leap for them.”