I’ve never seen any official Zwift sources commenting on this evidently intentional treatment of the avatar in the garage and Drop Shop, which has been ‘normal’ across multiple platforms for a couple of years. Would also be curious to know why it’s done this way.
As you may have seen, nine days ago a garage/Drop Shop bug was corrected, which affected the luminosity of the avatar so badly that it was far harder to make out any colours at all.
We can only assume that the current state of affairs is considered desirable. 