This is the first time Galeries Lafayette has proposed as immersive an experience as this to its international visitors. What’s so special about Overlap Reality is that it fits any site like a glove, providing seamless continuity between the virtual and physical environments: the dome, thanks to ingenious special effects, really does look like it’s opening. Visitors can thus choose to be amazed by the snow or have fun searching for bears, but they can also find out about the partnership between Galeries Lafayette and the NGO Wild-Touch, to understand why it’s so important to protect the habitat of polar bears.

The Noël Extra Polaire event transformed Galeries Lafayette into a virtual, fairy tale ice field by overlapping animated images onto the reality of the actual store-scape. This meant that visitors to Galeries Lafayette need only look at the screens of their smartphones or tablets to see a 360° polar landscape appear, even on the balconies and under the dome. So as to maximise the experience, Galeries Lafayette provided a dedicated space at the heart of the store, along with hostesses to guide visitors through the event. The patented Overlap Reality technology enables virtual images to sit alongside the physical environment with far greater super-positional precision than even augmented reality allows – but its particular advantage is that the images can then be shared via internet. The event not only happens in the physical space, but also anywhere outside of it via social networks.

This immersive and poetic experience garnered exceptional praise from visitors both young and old: the video was seen by over 250,000 people on Facebook in less than two days, which makes it the biggest viral video in the history of Galeries Lafayette. The app enabling the lived experience was used 49 117 times by intrigued visitors who came to see what the event was about. The experience truly fascinated customers of all generations, who stood for ages searching the sky of the dome for bears or snowflakes. The most important French and international media entities, such as BFM TV, The Good Life, Luxury Daily, Maddyness and LSA all covered this unique experience, underlining its creative, innovative and ground-breaking nature.