that’s all.
After the announcement by Mark Zuckerberg last October His vision for a new meta (Previously Facebook) And the long-awaited amazing future in Web 3.0, and his willingness to do so through Avatar, who wears exactly what Zuckerberg wears in everyday life. Roundly teased for a decision — this is a world of endless possibilities! — Meta picked up the problem and threw some kind of gauntlet.
“Hey, Balenciaga”, company Tweet“What is the Metaverse dress code?”
This week, Balenciaga, along with Prada and Tom Brown, responded in favor of Meta’s new Avatar fashion store, which has begun expanding to users in the United States, Canada, Thailand and Mexico. Social media companies offered a variety of free (and popular) outfits for avatars used on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, but hired a designated designer to look for their virtual purchases. This is the first time for me.
And the answer is … a hoodie with the red Balenciaga logo.
There are also torn jeans and plaid shirts, motocross jump suits, black skirt suits, low-rise jeans combined with crop logo T-shirts and logo briefs (4 outfits in total). In other words, Quintessential Balenciaga will suit anyone who follows this brand. Similar to Tom Brown’s offer, the crimped gray three-piece suit, pleated gray skirt suit, and shorts outfit are Brown’s trademark uniforms. And at least one of Prada’s four looks (a white tank top with a logo triangle and a tiered skirt) seemed to come straight from the latest runway (although they also have a perennial logo). Sweatshirts are available).
But is that all?
Balenciaga’s Demna Gvasalia, Prada’s Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, and Brown are the four most creative and thought fashion designers working today. Level; Designers who have worked on climate change, gender, war, capitalism, values issues, and celebrity virality. And they (or perhaps their digital, merchandising, marketing team) can come up with the task of imagining dresses in a space that isn’t tied to gravity, and the physical limitations are that they Is it a cartoon copy of the most familiar clothes you already sell?
Mr Brown sent an email when asked how he chose his clothes. I thought the gray suit needed to be engaged in this world. “
The discussion only makes these clothes, which are usually sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars, available to a wider user group (price range from $ 2.99 to $ 8.99 in the Metastore) and is otherwise accessible. It means democratizing what cannot be done. This is true, and commercially speaking, meta looks like NewGen, the equivalent of lipstick. The ultimate diffusion line, almost all barriers to entry have been eliminated.
The tech world, which has avoided fashion since trying to make wearables chic, is nice to have a nearly flat face, but if you want to play in the dress world, invite an expert. I realize that is the best. , These particular products seem to be based on our own lowest general expectations in the virtual world.
The gist of the type of fashion Mssrs. Gvasalia et al. To create is that it is more than commercial. It shows who we are or what we want to be at a particular moment, in a way we didn’t even understand until we saw it.
If a creative mind could imagine what a paradigm shift would look like, they would think it.
Mr Brown has already done this from time to time at his IRL show. Recently, he designed a top that looked like a cross covered with a huge cable between a tennis ball and a turtle shell, turning a woman into a toy soldier. Gvasalia makes it extraordinary by taking everyday, such as terry-woven bathrobes and Ikea bags, and overturning all expectations. You’ll find the leap to the Metaverse easy for them.
However, the “clothes” that Troika designed for the Metastore show seem to be primarily an opportunity to show off the brand’s loyalty and leverage the archive in the easiest way. This means that users want to wear the same clothes in digital space as they do in physical space, or at least wear the same clothes, not entirely new.
and Instagram live conversation We introduced the new store with Eva Chen, the director of Instagram’s fashion partnership. Chen flashed a sketch of Zuckerberg’s avatar in various outfits and asked about his reaction. “It takes some confidence to wear Prada from shoulder to toe,” Zuckerberg said, suggesting that he could be in the Metaverse, but he wasn’t confident in the IRL. ..
But it’s a fundamental misconception of fashion, the whole picture of self-expression. After all, who is completely wearing a look from one designer in real life? Celebrities paid by the brand in public, fashion victims, magazine shoot models. The brand only rents clothes if it is not mixed with the work of other designers.
and Facebook post Zuckerberg said in stores that Meta wants to create an Avatar fashion offering because “digital goods are an important way to express yourself in the Metaverse and are a major driver of the creative economy.” However, self-expression does not mean swallowing the entire look of the designer. Self-expression is the use of designer-created tools to personalize something.
Wearing the look perfectly dictated by the designer does not require self-confidence and does not even think about it. Meta is currently promoting only the desire to be a means of brand advertising. Maybe that’s really where some users want to go (maybe it’s always a fantasy), but it’s not going to lead to the expansion of the world as we know it, but rather to more factions.
Especially because Avatar is not a cross-platform work. Therefore, if you want to wear Prada (or Balenciaga or Tom Brown) virtually, you can only do it on the Meta Platform. You need to use Roblox just as you would want to virtually wear Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Gucci.
Just as the ability to dress up avatars changes for fairness, this may change as technology changes. For now, when choosing any kind of clothing in the meta wardrobe, you should choose the entire pre-made look, rather than building one at a time. In the future, Balenciaga hoodies could be combined with Prada skirts and unnamed shoes.
At some point Meta will open stores in digital-only fashion brands and other new creatives, Zuckerberg said. The kind of designer / inventor who already sells merchandise on the digital marketplace DressX, most of the truly alternative interpretations are here. You can find “clothes”.
If so, changing your avatar in the morning may feel more like a signal of value and a unique form of experimentation than playing a paper doll. It may look additive, not just imitation. But not yet.
