Tom Ford Beauty needed an AR filter for the Ombré Leather fragrance campaign — one of the brand's signature masculine-yet-sensual scents known for its raw leather and tobacco notes. The filter would launch on Tom Ford Beauty's official Instagram account and serve double duty: powering an in-person photo booth at the Tom Ford event, and reaching audiences who couldn't attend through Instagram's filter platform.
The core challenge was meeting Tom Ford's beauty standard within the technical constraints of Spark AR. Luxury beauty AR demands that every frame feel editorial, not gimmicky. I needed to build a face-tracking mask that sat naturally on diverse skin tones and face shapes, create a glowing golden-hour light effect that felt premium rather than cheap, and handle person segmentation to separate the user from their background and place them against a designed theme environment — all while maintaining smooth performance on mobile devices. The gap between what a luxury brand expects visually and what real-time face tracking can deliver is where this project lived.
Before a single pixel was placed, I mapped every technical and brand constraint. Spark AR imposes strict asset size limits, requires smooth face tracking across iOS and Android, and handles person segmentation differently depending on device capability. Simultaneously, Tom Ford's brand guidelines required a specific palette — near-blacks, warm ambers, off-whites — and zero use of the logo in motion-tracked contexts. I created a constraint matrix pairing each brand requirement against its technical feasibility in Spark AR, flagging conflicts early before creative direction was locked.
Ombré Leather's identity is tactile — the campaign imagery is all shadow, texture, and smoke. My challenge was translating that sensory world into light-based AR. I developed three concept directions and presented them to Vincent and the client: Smoke Veil (atmospheric, obscuring), Leather Mask (structural face-mapping with leather texture), and Golden Hour (warm, glowing light effect). The client selected Leather Mask as the hero direction with Golden Hour's warm glow applied as the lighting treatment — creating a face-tracking mask with a golden-hour radiance that evoked the fragrance's amber warmth.
I built the filter entirely in Spark AR Studio. The core technical work involved three layers: face tracking to anchor the leather-texture mask precisely to the user's facial contours, a real-time golden-hour glow effect that wrapped light around the face naturally rather than looking like a flat overlay, and person segmentation to separate the user from their real background and place them against a designed theme backdrop that matched the Ombré Leather campaign aesthetic. I tested across diverse skin tones and face shapes to ensure the mask and glow effect felt flattering and natural on everyone — the beauty standard had to hold universally, not just on one face type.
The filter shipped to Tom Ford Beauty's Instagram account and simultaneously powered an in-person photo booth at the Tom Ford event. The dual deployment meant optimizing for two contexts: the controlled lighting of the event booth and the unpredictable lighting of Instagram users at home. I ran structured QA across multiple devices, caught and fixed edge cases in face tracking on wider face shapes, and submitted the final build to Tom Ford Beauty for approval. Received one round of color temperature feedback — slightly cooler highlights — and shipped.
Building entirely in Spark AR gave native Instagram integration — no WebAR link required, no friction for users. I combined face tracking for the mask effect with person segmentation to replace the background with a branded environment. This dual-layer approach meant the filter wasn't just a face overlay; it created a complete visual world that matched the campaign's editorial quality.
A static leather texture on a face looks like a novelty mask. By layering the golden-hour glow effect on top of the structural mask, the filter felt warm and luxurious rather than costume-like. The glow catches virtual light dynamically, making the effect look different in every lighting condition. This is what separated it from typical Instagram beauty filters.
Smoke Veil obscured the face too heavily for social sharing and event photos. Golden Hour alone was too generic for a signature scent. Leather Mask directly referenced the fragrance's core material identity and created a distinctive, shareable look that communicated the brand without logo placement. The client selected unanimously. The structural face mapping became the visual signature cited in all press coverage.
This project taught me that luxury brand AR is fundamentally a beauty-standard problem — not a tech showcase. The filter succeeded because I started from the fragrance's sensory identity (leather, smoke, amber warmth) and worked backward to the Spark AR implementation, not the reverse. Meeting the beauty standard meant the golden-hour glow had to feel like editorial lighting, the face mask had to be flattering across every skin tone, and the person segmentation had to place users in a world that felt aspirational rather than artificial.
The dual deployment — event photo booth and Instagram — validated that a well-crafted filter can bridge physical and digital experiences. In-person attendees shared their booth photos, extending the event's reach to remote audiences. The 100K+ impressions came from that hybrid momentum: a luxury experience that worked both on-site and through the screen.