What you need to know
- The Meta Avatars Store will offer digital clothing that can be purchased for Meta avatars starting next week in a few countries.
- Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne will be the first designer brands in the store when it launches.
- The avatar clothes can be used across Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram with VR coming soon.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will be launching a digital marketplace that sells clothing for its avatars starting next week. Zuckerberg and Instagram’s vice president of fashion partnerships Eva Chen showed off some of the new fashion options on Instagram Live today.
The Meta Avatars Store will offer brand-name clothes that users can pay real money for and dress their digital avatars across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. The first three designer brands launching with the store will be Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne. The current free clothing items will still available in the store.
"We're launching our Avatars Store on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger so you can buy digital clothes to style your avatar," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. "Digital goods will be an important way to express yourself in the metaverse and a big driver of the creative economy."
The store will be rolling out starting next week in the United States, Canada, Thailand, and Mexico. Meta is planning to expand with more brands and bring it to virtual reality through the company's Meta Quest headsets in the future.
Meta had updated its avatars from 2D to 3D models on Facebook and Messenger earlier this year, and also brought them to Instagram. The 3D avatars were first overhauled in VR last year, while the update added more expressions, skin tones, and assistive devices like hearing aids and wheelchairs. Users are able to sync one avatar across all platforms or have three different avatars to represent Facebook and Messenger, Instagram, and VR.
