Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Friday announced that his company is set to launch ‘Meta Avatars Store’, which will offer digital designer clothes to users for their metaverse avatars. He made the announcement during an Instagram Live with Eva Chen, the vice-president of fashion partnerships at Instagram. Zuckerberg believes people would want to express themselves via their avatars and won’t mind spending money to style them in designer outfits.
“Digital goods will be an important way to express yourself in the metaverse and a big driver of the creative economy,” Zuckerberg said in a short message posted on Facebook.
The new virtual store rolling out next week on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger — for users in the United States, Canada, Thailand and Mexico — will initially offer digital clothes from brands such as Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne.
“I'm excited to add more brands and bring this to VR soon too,” Zuckerberg added.
He also shared some of the new looks he and Chen tried out on their own avatars.
Meta Designer Outfits Could Cost You $2.99 to $8.99
According to a Vogue Business report, the items in the avatars store will cost $2.99 to $8.99 in the beginning. In a release, Balenciaga CEO Cédric Charbit called this an “unprecedented” opportunity for the company, its audience and products, “opening up new territories for luxury”.
Meanwhile, the free clothing options will also remain available for the Meta avatars.
During the Instagram live, Zuckerberg said the plan is to make the store an open marketplace where developers will be able to create and sell clothes.
“A lot of the dream is to make it accessible to anyone. If you want to design fashion today, you need the physical materials and equipment, but in the future, anyone with a computer and an imagination will be able to come up with ideas for this,” he said.
Meta has been working to enhance the avatars experience across its platforms. An update brought in earlier this year, introduced 3D avatars to Instagram and rolled out avatars with more expressions, faces, skin tones and accessibility devices for Facebook and Messenger.