'This is my artistic take on an icon, my remix,' he said, prior to any action being taken by Hermès. And while each MetaBirkin was initially sold for a rather modest 0.1ETH (the Ethereum blockchain's cryptocurrency), prices have since skyrocketed to near real-Birkin levels – with some selling for as much as the crypto equivalent of £40,000.Īccording BOF Rothschild addressed the bag's design on Discord, a chat forum used among the crypto community. Hermès, however, is insisting that the court 'require Rothschild to cease his activities, surrender the domain name to Hermès, and pay damages including his profits from selling the digital assets', as per the article on BOF.Ī post shared by MetaBirkins designed just 100 MetaBirkins, creating a level of exclusivity not dissimilar to that of the original Hermès bag (which can be worth between £8,600 to £145,000), and featuring bright coloured faux fur, patterns and even depictions of famous artworks including the Mona Lisa. I’ve made artworks that depict imaginary, fur-covered Birkin bags I won't be intimidated.' Rothschild disagrees with Hermès' statement and wrote in an online statement this week: 'I am not creating or selling fake Birkin bags. However, it's the use of the name 'Birkin' which has seemingly made Hermès unhappy and reportedly led the brand to lodge a 47-page complaint to the New York Southern District Court last week.Īccording to the letter, Rothschild 'simply rips off Hermès’ famous Birkin trademark by adding the generic prefix "meta",' and 'there can be no doubt that this success arises from his confusing and dilutive use of Hermès’ famous trademarks'. It's important to emphasise here that these MetaBirkins are not real, in the sense that they're not the products of the French luxury house Hermès, nor are they physical handbags. This essentially means that you can buy and sell the 'metadata' associated with a particular image, just like you would a painting or an actual Hermès Birkin.
For those of us on the outskirts of the rather complex metaverse, NFT is short for a 'non-fungible token', defined by Collins Dictionary as 'a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible'.
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