By Gracelyn Skilling ’26
The theme is “galactic glam.” Only eleven seconds remain, and slender block-headed figures saunter wildly, grabbing at garment-lined shelves. You still haven’t got shoes, and bare feet won’t get you stars. As you frantically strut out of the salon in three layers of evening gown, glossy bootcut jeans, and opera-length fishnet gloves, you consider if you ought to divert left with your last eight seconds to equip silver fairy wings, or would it be safer to head for the nearby shoes and slip on platform heels?
This may sound like a personified feverish brainchild of Barbie’s closet turned 2000s dress-up game–but it’s more commonly referred to as “Dress to Impress,” perhaps pop culture’s most surprising obsession to date.
In case you’ve somehow eluded the phenomenon, Dress to Impress is a competitive dress-up game created by unnamed developers and released to Roblox in November 2023, since then blowing up into a gaming ubiquity. It quickly became one of the fastest Roblox experiences to reach one billion visits. Even celebrities have been paying attention–popular streamers and content creators such as James Charles, SSSniperWolf, and The Game Theorists have brought the DTI fever online, and even singer-songwriter Charli XCX has joined the trend. Her recent collaboration with Roblox decorated Dress to Impress gameplay with homage to her recent album, “Brat.” “[Dress to Impress] is such a phenomenon,” remarked one teenage Dress to Impress player, “that it’s hard to do anything on the internet without seeing it.”
Today, Dress to Impress routinely has over a quarter of a million active users.
The premise of the game is simple: players are given a theme and five minutes to create a relevant outfit. They may use makeup, hairstyling, accessories, and virtually every type of garment in any color or pattern. When five minutes is up, they show off their outfits on a catwalk, where players rate the designs from one to five stars. As you gain stars, you climb in rank toward the coveted title of Top Model.
But what’s unusual isn’t its popularity–Roblox is no stranger to that–but rather, who’s playing it.
For a lot of people, Roblox brings to mind 9 year olds who don’t go outside and iPad kids burning through their mum’s credit card for Robux. And although Roblox projects itself as for all ages, 58% of Roblox users are under 16 years old, and 42% of users are under 13 years old, with about a third of total players worldwide being aged 9-12. Just looking at Roblox’s other hit games will point to a much younger-skewed audience–Adopt Me!, a pet adoption simulator, and Brookhaven RP, a town roleplay game, are two of Roblox’s most popular experiences, both ruled by preteen player bases.
Dress to Impress, on the other hand, anomalously features a fanbase which trends much older. Of those quarter of a million active DTI users, over half of the players are over 18, according to a New York Times Article. It seems that this digital dress-up game is one of the first to break out of Roblox’s traditional demographic.
It’s hard to say what makes Dress to Impress different–is it just an internet trend, or is Roblox headed to new lands? It’s certain that DTI is different from the conventional Roblox game, featuring slender avatars, smoother animations, and exceptional customizability, all of which do better to appeal to older audiences than the more immature blockiness of classic Roblox. Moreover, the very concept of the game is more cohesive with the desires of older players. It may seem like a dress-up game is childish, but the lure of the beauty standard infamously besets the insecurities of young adults in particular, especially females, which is another likely source of the game’s dominant demographic. Dress to Impress allows players to curate their appearance in any way they desire–which is, of course, also simply fun. One DTI player, who attested to playing the game daily, described, “I play it for the potential for creativity … [After seeing it on the internet], I just thought I’d play it as a silly, funny joke. But then I found myself hooked.”
And older fanbases may be the future of Roblox. In 2019, the population of players 13 and under surpassed those over 13 by almost 50%. However, the age demographic has since been rising steadily, with players over 13 now outnumbering younger players by roughly 4:3. (Statista). According to CEO David Baszucki, Roblox seeks to move away from being an exclusively younger platform. “Our goal is one platform, where age-appropriate experiences for every life stage can be found. This could include experiences you may have seen on Roblox like concerts, digital fashion, immersive games, and education. But, in a distant future, Roblox could envision different types of experiences, like virtual dating for older age groups, indie movie screenings and new forms of content such as news and hot topics.”
So, is Dress to Impress a Roblox watershed or transient internet trend? Only time will tell how far Roblox is willing to stray from its reputation.
Dress to Impress gameplay. Credit: Clove McQuade
