To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Technology Edit newsletter, click here.
Gucci is partnering with NFT community Bored Ape Yacht Club on a new metaverse initiative that builds on past projects, harnessing fictional characters and storylines to engage and reward the most rapt of fans. And this time, those fans can cop physical Gucci gear.
Following the announcement last week of a years-long partnership with BAYC parent company Yuga Labs, today, Gucci has announced that it will appear in Otherside, the immersive, game-like, NFT-based virtual world inhabited by creatures called Kodas created by Yuga Labs. Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders had first dibs on buying digital plots of land in Otherside via a native cryptocurrency called ApeCoin.
The Gucci project, which becomes available on 6 April, is called Otherside: Relics by Gucci, and it includes a phygital, limited-edition Gucci-branded pendant called a KodaPendant, sold for 450 APE, which is about $1,800. The storyline builds on one currently being told on Otherside’s Twitter account, centring around blue carved flasks that are turned into pendants. Eligible players must complete a series of tasks to be able to purchase a digital pendant, of which only 3,333 are available. The storytelling continues after the purchase, with pendants generating traits that unlock new features in Otherside, and access to a physical counterpart in the form of a GG-eyed Koda silver pendant, coming this summer.
Otherside, which is still in early testing, is only available to people who hold “Otherdeeds”, the term for the virtual Otherside real estate. In the past, projects like these have required ownership of multiple tokens and can require completions of various tasks or achievement of other thresholds.
