Happy Nice Mall

That’s it.

Last October, after Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement vision for the new Meta (formerly Facebook) and the glorious future that awaits in Web 3.0, mocked by the decision to do so through an avatar that wears exactly what Mr. Zuckerberg wears in his daily life – it’s in a world of endless possibilities! – Meta figured out the problem and threw some kind of glove.

“Hey, Balenciaga,” company tweeted out“What is the dress code in the Metaverse?”

This week, Balenciaga, along with Prada and Thom Browne, responded courtesy of Meta’s new avatar fashion store, available to users in the United States, Canada, Thailand and Mexico. While the social media company has offered a variety of free (and public) apparel for avatars used on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, it has commissioned named designers for the first time to create purchase-for-purchase skins for virtual selves.

And the answer is… a red Balenciaga logo hoodie.

Also, ripped jeans and a plaid shirt were paired with motocross overalls, a black skirt suit and low-waisted jeans, an ekin logo tee and logo panties (a total of four outfits). In other words, Quintessential Balenciaga looks for everyone who follows the brand. A scaled-down gray three-piece suit, pleated gray skirt suit and shorts suit, as Thom Browne offers, is Mr. Browne’s trademark uniform. And at least one of Prada’s four looks—a white tank top with a logo triangle and layered skirt—seemed to come straight from the latest catwalk (they also offer permanent logo sweatshirts).

But still, is that all?

These are four of the most creative, notable fashion designers working today – Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons of Prada and Mr. Browne – designers whose clothing IRL grapples with the way social and political forces shape identity in the most fundamental way. levels; designers whose work tackles climate change, gender, war, capitalism, questions of value and viral fame. And when they’re tasked with imagining dressing in a space free of gravity and no physical limitations, all they (or perhaps their digital, merchandising and marketing teams) can find are cartoon copies of the most familiar clothes they’re currently selling?

When asked how he chose his outfits, Mr. Browne said, “It took me two seconds to realize what it was supposed to be, not a second. I thought the gray suit had to be out of this world.”

The argument is that by offering these clothes, which normally sell for hundreds and thousands of dollars, to a wider range of users (price range from $2.99 ​​to $8.99 on the Meta store), they democratize the otherwise inaccessible. This is true, commercially speaking, and essentially positions the Meta view as the NewGen equivalent of a lipstick: the endpoint in diffusion lines, virtually all barriers to entry are erased.

While it’s good that the tech world, which has drifted away from fashion since its attempt to make wearables stylish, is good to keep its faces so flat, he realizes that if he wants to play in the world of dress, it’s best to invite experts on the subject. , these special offers seem to be based on the lowest common expectations of our selves in the virtual world.

The whole point of the fashion genre Mssrs. Gvasalia et al. Creating is more than just commercial: it shows us who we are or who we want to be at a given moment in time in ways we didn’t realize until we saw it.

If any creative mind could imagine what a paradigm shift might look like, you would think it would be them.

Mr. Browne does this sometimes in his own book. IRL shows. Recently, he designed a top that looks like a giant cable-covered cross between a tennis ball and a tortoise shell, turning a woman into a toy soldier. Mr. Gvasalia takes everyday terry cloth bathrobes, Ikea bags and turns it extraordinary by shattering all expectations. You would think that the leap into metadata wouldn’t be easy for them.

Still, the “clothes” this troika has designed for the Meta store show largely seem like an opportunity to showcase brand loyalty and use their archives in the simplest of ways. This means that users want to wear the clothes they wear in a physical space, or at least the clothes they would like to wear in a digital space, rather than something completely new.

inside Instagram Live chat Introducing the new store with Eva Chen, Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships, Ms. Chen polished sketches of Mr. Zuckerberg’s avatar in different outfits and questioned their reactions. “It takes a certain amount of self-confidence to wear Prada from shoulder to toe,” Mr.

But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of fashion – and the whole idea of ​​self-expression. After all, who wears a look entirely from a single designer in real life? Celebrities, fashion victims, and models in magazine shoots that the brand pays for in public occasions, but only if not mixed with the work of other designers.

Inside Facebook post At the store, Mr. Zuckerberg also said Meta wanted to create an avatar fashion offering because “digital products will be an important way to express yourself in the metaverse and a huge driver of the creative economy.” But self-expression isn’t about swallowing the whole look of a designer. Self-expression is about using the tools that designers create to make something individual.

Wearing a look completely dictated by a designer doesn’t require self-confidence—not even thinking about it. It just requires the desire to be a brand advertising tool, which Meta currently facilitates. Maybe that’s where some users want to go (perhaps this has always been a fantasy), but this will lead to more schism rather than expansion of the world as we know it.

Especially since avatars are not cross-platform creations. So if you want the virtual one to wear Prada – or Balenciaga or Thom Browne – you can only do so on Meta platforms. Just like if you want to wear Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren or Gucci virtually, you should be on Roblox.

To be fair, perhaps this will change as technology changes, just as your ability to dress up your avatar may. Currently, whenever you choose any outfit in the Meta wardrobe, you have to choose a ready-made look instead of being able to build it one outfit at a time. In the future, perhaps a Balenciaga hoodie could be paired with a Prada skirt and a pair of no-name shoes.

Mr. Zuckerberg said that Meta will at some point open the shop exclusively to digital fashion brands and other new creators – such designers/inventors are already selling their products on DressX, the digital marketplace where most of the alternative renditions really are. “clothes” can be found.

If so, dressing up your morning avatar may sound more like a unique form of value signal and experimentation than playing paper dolls; It may seem like an additive rather than an imitation. But not yet.