Fashion truly is one of the most enduring aspects of the PlayStation Home experience.

As a meta-game, it has spawned countless discussions, competitions, groups, and even inspired the creation of some personal estates. If the appeal of Home is the lure of being able to live inside a video game world, then fashion is how you demonstrate the sort of world you choose to live in when you can be whatever you want to be.

Laugh at it at your own peril. Home, as a social MMO experience, is remarkably profitable when it comes to virtual apparel and accessories. If all of Home boils down to the experience of selling us to each other — of facilitating social engagement between gamers — then those who stick around with Home long-term almost invariably end up with rather substantial virtual wardrobes for every social occasion and setting.

Conrad Max, one of Home’s most notable users, has a fantastic signature line: “The way you play the game is the way you live your life.” And in Home, this is particularly true. How do you play the game of Home? What do you choose as your methods of self-expression? And what does it say about you as a person?

Fashion, whether you like it or not, is a part of how you choose to express yourself. In the real world, we weren’t able to choose our gender, ethnicity, height, weight, or other general physical appearance traits; but in a virtual world, you are whatever image you choose to paint on a blank canvas, able to change at a whim — and what you end up revealing about yourself in your choices is perhaps more than you realize.

So now then. Let’s enjoy an actual PlayStation Home fashion issue.

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