During the summer of 2024, the internet saw an unlikely contender for “game of the summer”: “Dress to Impress.” Hosted on Roblox since October 2023, “Dress to Impress” has amassed a 91% rating with over 3 billion total plays and 2 million favorites. Essentially, the game is a competitive fashion show: The players are given a prompt and must create a look within the time limit. Once time is up, each look is presented on the runway and the players award each other points. The three players with the most points are celebrated on a podium, but everyone is given a reward for participating. With Robux, players can purchase advantages — a faster walking speed and custom makeup — or the VIP experience, which includes exclusive items and access to a private server. In addition, their development team has implemented secret features known as “code items,” which are clothes and accessories created by the developers or as a collaborative effort with YouTubers.

Since its release, “Dress to Impress” has maintained a steady amount of popularity; but its success wasn’t solely due to children. Many adult YouTubers that focus on Roblox, like KreekCraft, have played the game for their audience. There are even channels that exclusively make content about “Dress to Impress”, focusing on challenges and giving tips for new players. However, as these channels catered to an audience already aware of Roblox and “Dress to Impress”, they weren’t able to pull many newcomers into the game. 

Despite this pre-existing fanbase, the people who would bring the game into the mainstream would be variety streamers. One of these types of streamers is CaseOh, a popular male creator  on YouTube and Twitch. While he had streamed Roblox games before, he first played “Dress to Impress” this past  July. While some viewers criticized him for playing a “girl’s game,” others found his gameplay hilarious. It also seemed that CaseOh himself genuinely enjoyed the game, completely engrossed in the game’s competitive nature. Since CaseOh often played on public servers, fans were incentivized to download Roblox to play with him. This, as well as gameplays by other mainstream YouTubers, created an influx of players. CaseOh’s impact on the game’s success was so appreciated by the team that they added a code item that allowed players to hold a cat, which was based on his own pet.

What came as a surprise for many players was the game’s collaboration with Charli XCX. Charli’s newest album “Brat” sparked the summer 2024 cultural phenomenon known as  “Brat Girl Summer”: a chaotically fun period defined by the album’s “party girl” vibes. On August 17th, the game revealed the “Brat collab,” an official collaboration with Charli XCX’s team that included new items, poses, and runways based on the album. This attracted even more people to the game as it reached an audience far outside of the gaming-sphere of the Internet.

Despite being hosted on a gaming site targeted to children, it is impossible to ignore the Gen Z adult fanbase of “Dress to Impress,” and some prompts and collaborations imply that the development team is well aware of this. But why is this the case? As Gen Z adults grew up during the age of the early internet, where Adobe Flash was the preferred engine for softwares and online gaming was a popular form of entertainment. Websites such as GirlsGoGames hosted several browser games that were centered around “feminine” interests such as fashion, beauty, and dating. This meant that there were several dress-up games which often included characters popular among young girls. Alongside browser games, there were also desktop apps and websites that provided users with a multiplayer experience like “Wizard 101”, “Club Penguin”, “MovieStarPlanet”, and “Animal Jam”. Many of these games utilized dress-up as an aspect of character customization or in mini-games. To the adults playing “Dress to Impress,” it serves as a callback to an early era of the Internet. It evokes nostalgia, inviting users to remember the times they dressed up their characters for the runway, school, or coronation.

Where “Dress to Impress” acts as a piece of nostalgia for Gen Z players, it also acts as a creative outlet and introduction to fashion for Gen Alpha kids. The game included both masculine and feminine forms of fashion, makeup, and hair, which allowed kids to experiment in how they created their models. In a world where adults and kids are redefining what gender is and how it can be presented, “Dress to Impress” is a way for boys and girls to find fun in expressing femininity.

Written by Jordan Pierce, Photography: Kaleigh Mazy, Social Media: Spurthi Challa, Styling: Krystal Corral