Mark Zuckerberg showed up to Prada in Milan and held up the entire show

Dubai: Carey Mulligan was already seated. So were Caitlin Clark and Olympian Eileen Gu. The crowd was waiting, the lights were about to go down, and the front row had two very conspicuously empty seats.

Everyone assumed it must be Rihanna. Or Zendaya. Maybe an actual head of state.

It was Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

The entrance

The Meta chief executive and his wife arrived at the Prada show in Milan on Thursday escorted by a team of security guards, handlers, and Anna Wintour, accompanied by Eva Chen, Instagram's director of fashion partnerships.

The entrance was executed, as one observer noted, with almost secret service precision. The couple did not stop to pose for photographs. They did not mingle. They were ushered straight to their seats just moments before the show began.

What they were wearing

Priscilla Chan looked entirely at home at a Prada show. She wore a demure grey sweater, a floor-length navy skirt and brown platform loafers, which is essentially a Prada mood board come to life. During the show, she could be seen pointing out outfits to her husband.

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, arrived in a long-sleeve tan polo and cigar brown trousers. His grey hoodie era is, it seems, firmly behind him. He has been making more deliberate fashion choices lately, having caught attention for wearing a shearling coat and having worked with designer Mike Amiri on custom T-shirts printed with Latin phrases.

So why was he actually there?

Zuckerberg was not wearing Meta's camera-equipped Ray-Ban smart glasses on the day, but most people in attendance assumed his presence had something to do with them.

Meta has been pushing its AI glasses quite aggressively, recently opening dedicated Meta Lab stores across Hawaii, California, Nevada and New York. A fashion show, particularly one attended by the global press, is not a bad place to make that ambition visible.

The biggest clue was who he was sitting next to. His seat mate was Lorenzo Bertelli, Miuccia Prada's son and the company's chief merchandising officer, who has spoken publicly about the importance of emerging technology, including AI, to the future of fashion.

The two were seen chatting throughout the show.

The timing of it all

It is worth noting that Zuckerberg's Milan appearance came roughly a week after he faced tough questioning at a high-profile congressional hearing on social media addiction.

The reception at Prada was, by all accounts, considerably warmer.

When the show ended, Zuckerberg and Chan did not go backstage to join Miuccia Prada and her creative partner Raf Simons. They left as quietly as one can when surrounded by a wall of security.

Areeba Hashmi is a trainee at Gulf News.