The luxury fashion retailer Gucci will now accept ApeCoin — the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s proprietary cryptocurrency — as a valid mode of payment in select US branches, according to a Tuesday tweet.

Given ApeCoin’s origins as a limited, claimable cryptocurrency originally intended for Bored Ape and Mutant Ape holders, this partnership aims to offer holders of these esteemed NFTs and cryptocurrency a new way to represent their community IRL — via garments from the legacy high-fashion brand.

In recent years, Gucci has been gradually planting its roots in Web3. In 2021, Gucci contributed to the massive bull run in the NFT space by turning its Aria fashion collection into an NFT video, which sold for $25,000 at Christie’s Proof of Sovereignty sale.

Luxury fashion brands are adding NFT offerings

Following this, in January 2022, Gucci and many other noted names in the fashion and art worlds launched a collection of 10,000 programmatically generated NFTs in partnership with Superplastic. Then in March, Gucci launched a collection of its own — the 10KTF: Gucci Grail Mint Pass collection. This project enabled holders to create custom PFP outfits consisting of pieces based on eleven of the most popular NFT projects at the time.

However, Gucci is far from the only luxury fashion brand making its way into the NFT space. Brands like Prada and Balenciaga both made their NFT debuts in 2022, packaging their high-value physical offerings with equally-exclusive digital drops. For members of the NFT community that also hold a strong interest in high fashion, the growing prevalence of NFT projects led by luxury brands is a welcome sight. But this is expected, since Web3 presents a limitless horizon of new possibilities — whether you’re an individual or one of the biggest brands in the world. And for the brands, Web3-first initiatives present new opportunities to create brand loyalty campaigns with unprecedented levels of depth and engagement.

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