Interactive Mirror Mirror on the Wall

"Caitlyn has had full customer service, full attention, all about her, but on a very personal device," said Robyn Schwartz, an IBM retail solutions executive who helps design software that powers such services.

The technology is still many years from being widely used. It is driven largely in part by the advent of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that allow retailers to track merchandise remotely but have raised privacy concerns. The equipment and software can be costly and depend on large networks of savvy consumers to be successful. What's the point of an interactive mirror if there's no one to message you?

Still, glimpses of this future are popping up in stores. Circuit City allows shoppers to order products online and pick them up at the store. At some branches of Stop & Shop, a grocer based in Massachusetts, customers can use Web tablets to send a wireless message to the deli while they shop. They receive a notice when their order is ready.

Back at the showroom floor, the interactive mirrors, designed by IconNicholson, are slated to debut at a Nanette Lepore boutique within a month. Her clothes are sold at her namesake shops and at high-end department stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's.

The faux store at the convention includes samples from Lepore's fall 2007 line. Each piece has a traditional paper tag with her logo it and an RFID tag. Scan an item -- such as a gray skirt with lime-green embroidery -- at an RFID hot spot and it appears on a monitor above the clothing racks with outfit suggestions.

A silky top appears on the screen with the message, "Choose gray to highlight patterns." How about a darker look? "Make it black for moonlight viewing," reads a new message on the screen.

Greenfield poses in front of the mirror on the convention floor as part of this demonstration, checking out her outfit from every angle. Her friends watch her virtual fashion show by logging on to a social networking site where they can vote on her choices. The votes show up on the mirror's screen along with their instant messages. (Five give her a thumbs up; two say thumbs down.) They can even suggest alternative outfits, images of which also appear on the mirror's screen.

For Nanette Lepore, it's a high-stakes bet on the future of shopping. One of the high-tech mirrors can cost up to $25,000, and the entire dressing room runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Christopher Enright, chief technology officer of IconNicholson. But he has no doubt that the vision will become reality.

"This is live," he said as he cast his own vote (yea) for Greenfield's outfit. "It's a revolution in how this whole retailing experience is going to go."