A newly swagged-out Mark Zuckerberg is dragging the rest of Meta into his makeover era

One of the more interesting stories in tech has been Mark Zuckerberg’s wardrobe overhaul that transformed the dorky Silicon Valley CEO into a gold chain-wearing symbol of streetwear and shearling jackets, so it’s fitting that Meta may soon take a stake in one of the best-known brands in streetwear: Supreme.

Last week, EssilorLuxottica announced that it was acquiring Supreme from VF Corporation, and one day later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta was in talks to acquire a 5% stake in EssilorLuxottica. While I love the hypothesis that Zuck has leaned so far into his new persona that the EssilorLuxottica investment is a personal branding move to give him a stake in Supreme, The Financial Times highlighted a business explanation for the move:

People close to the deal said the eyewear group aimed to launch a new version of Supreme smart sunglasses in partnership with Meta, to better target young consumers.

Meta and Apple have been engaged in an arms race for the wearable augmented reality device market, with Apple launching its Vision Pro headset in February 2024 to counter Meta’s Quest (formerly Oculus). However, Vision Pro sales have been lackluster, with Bloomberg reporting a 75% drop in domestic sales this quarter, and CNBC noted that Meta’s virtual reality device sales in 2023 were down 40% year over year through November.

However, Meta’s partnership with sunglasses brand Ray-Ban has outperformed expectations, with the second generation of smart glasses selling more units in a few months than the previous generation did in two years, and Zuck noted in Meta’s April earnings call that the company is doubling down on wearable glasses:

Mark Zuckerberg: For Reality Labs specifically, I'm still really optimistic about building these new computing platforms long term. I mentioned in my remarks up front, that one of the bigger areas that we're investing in Reality Labs is glasses. We think that that's going to be a really important platform for the future.

Our outlook for that, I think, has improved quite a bit because previously we thought that that would need to wait until we have these full holographic displays to be a large market. And now we're a lot more focused on the glasses that we're delivering in partnership with Ray-Ban, which I think are going really well. And -- so that, I think, has the ability to be a pretty meaningful and growing platform sooner than I would have expected.

From a consumer’s perspective, it makes sense that VR sunglasses have succeeded while headsets have struggled. Headsets are large, distracting, and don’t easily integrate into our daily lives. Yes, they’re more powerful than glasses, but they are still less effective than computers for computer tasks, leaving them in the product-market-fit No Man’s Land.

Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses are, functionally, sunglasses that happen to have a built-in camera, speakers, and an “ask Meta AI” feature, allowing you to take photos, answer phone calls, listen to music, and ask questions about your environment in real time.

While headsets impose a new device on consumers, glasses have simply layered technology on top of existing wardrobes; there’s less friction. For Meta, an investment in EssilorLuxottica, especially after its Supreme acquisition, makes sense as a tactic to build a stronger competitive advantage in the wearable-AR device market.