SUPERFANS
Dress for (gaming) success
Covet Fashion: Dress Up Game
Makeover & Stylist Battle
By day, Sarah Fink manages a cardiology research lab at the Johns Hopkins med school in Baltimore. After hours, she’s a virtual stylist and one of the world’s most successful fashion gamers.
Playing the game Covet Fashion, which uses clothes from real-world designers like Calvin Klein and Rachel Zoe, she dresses animated characters for job interviews. For yacht parties. And for everything in between.
The game’s millions of community members vote on their favourites – and they support Fink in droves, granting her in-game rewards to buy more clothes to dress more characters for more interviews and yacht parties.
To date, Fink has amassed more than $27 million worth of digital clothing – one of the most valuable virtual collections in the game.
Fink started playing on her iPhone to pass the time on long bus rides to work. Drawn to the game’s mix of competition and collaboration, she’s connected with the Covet Fashion community pretty much every day since 2015.
“I never would’ve expected to form such strong bonds with people I hadn’t met before, but a lot of them have become family to me,” she says.
There’s Luiza, a Brazilian fashion-design student, whom Fink texts regularly but has yet to meet in real life. Or Kelly from Florida – Fink calls her “Covet mom” because she’s always offering maternal advice and support. For Fink, who lives with fibromyalgia and the autoimmune disease Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Covet Fashion offers a community of healing.
“You’ve got this network of women who know what you’re going through and are very supportive,” she says. “We share laughs and struggles and support each other outside the game. Even if Covet ceased to exist tomorrow, I know I would still have these people in my life.”