MNTGE, a digital fashion business, launched its first access pass in December, followed by its first digital garment drop from designer Sean Wotherspoon in February. But it’s getting more physical with this week’s launch of repurposed vintage jeans connected to NFTs.
MNTGE (pronounced “Mintage”) will release only 100 pairs of vintage Levi’s denim jeans with embroidered produce patterns by Sean Wotherspoon for the Fruits & Veggies jeans drop, which begins Wednesday. The MNTGE co-founder has previously designed clothing for Nike and Adidas and has a prominent streetwear boutique.
Each of the 100 total pairs, which come in a variety of sizes, will cost $200 to MNTGE Pass holders or $250 to non-holders once the general sale begins tomorrow after the passholder window closes. The Fruits & Veggies release heralds the opening of the MNTGE Market physical fashion storefront.
MNTGE co-founder Nick Adler, who is also a business associate of musician Snoop Dogg, told Decrypt that the startup first targeted Web3 natives in order to develop a core network of collectors. With the release of the first physical garment, MNTGE is expanding with a larger purpose in mind.” Now that we’ve established that community,” he says, “we really want to be something that can be broad and culturally embraced.”
Wotherspoon’s standing as a vintage aficionado and tastemaker—someone who knows youth culture and understands that consumers seek one-of-a-kind clothing—was cited by Adler. It fits the feel of NFT culture and unique asset ownership, but it is also much larger.
“We took a little bit of magic from Sean’s thoughts around Fruits & Veggies, and he played with that and came up with this denim,” said Adler. “We were ecstatic immediately away. We thought this was something exceptional, so we centered our entire brand promotion on it.”
The jeans also have an NFT component. Each has an NFC (near-field communication) tag stitched in underneath the Levi’s tag, which has a sewn MNTGE logo on top, that can be scanned with a smartphone. This entitles the owner to a free NFT minted on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon.
That NFT can not only validate the MNTGE gear, but it can also possibly give holders with special benefits, such as future perks inside the MNTGE ecosystem or partnerships that provide token-gated entry to events or other privileges. Concert festival partnerships were highlighted by Adler as a potential objective for the firm.
“We want you to walk around music festivals and pick up playlists.” “We want you to feel as if you have special access or seating,” he explained. “We want artists to think, ‘I’m going to work with MNTGE because they’re thinking about the future, and their products are more like a brand as opposed to a merch item.'”
According to Adler, MNTGE’s future will be both digital and tangible, as the firm prepares the next digital fashion drop with another designer. It also intends to collaborate with well-known Web3 artists to produce patches that can be adhered to its changeable digital fashion, and it is looking for ways to incorporate its NFT-based clothes into big video games.
“We are continuing to move with culture and with technology,” stated Adler.
