The MetaBirkin vs. the Hermès Birkin Bag

The MetaBirkin vs. the Hermès Birkin Bag

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Introduced in early December last year at Art Basel in Miami, Florida, digital designer, Mason Rothschild, created 100 versions of the infamous Hermès Birkin bag in the form of NFTs, which he named MetaBirkins. His main objective was to raise awareness to animal-free luxury and speed-up luxury fashion’s “fur-free” strategies and incorporation of alternative textiles. Nowadays, there is an urgency for designers, brands and artists to explore cruelty-free and sustainable materials in their production, set forth by the display of digital art. The rise of the Metaverse has shed light on how the virtual world is beginning to include digital fashion in a way that excludes textile waste by the use alternative materials such as, in the case of Metabirkins, fur pixels. Rothschild’s recent collection of NFT bags is priced from roughly 0.3 Ethereum to 249, which converts to between $13,000 and $65,000, keeping MetaBirkins in the same luxury division as the real-life Birkin bag. The unique NFTs feature patterns like polka dots and smiley faces, while some display artworks such as Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

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Rothschild’s creations, however, were seen as an appropriation of the exclusive “it” bag, and the luxury fashion house has filed a lawsuit against his work for cease and desist, citing the artist as a “digital speculator who is seeking to get rich quick”, and that his “MetaBirkins brand simply rips off Hermès’ famous Birkin trademark by adding the generic prefix ‘meta’ to the famous trademark Birkin.” The multi-billion-dollar company is requesting for the NFTs to be taken down and that the project’s website to be handed over to Hermès. This case is the first major example to disclose a brand taking legal action over the use of its trademarks in the Metaverse, and its impact could potentially outline the way in which artists and companies will work in the future, as this virtual space is still essentially an unfamiliar domain. Hermès initially sent Rothchild a cease and desist letter back in December 2021, when MetaBirkins was first released.

The artist took to Instagram to post a statement aimed at Hermès that read: “While I am sorry if you were insulted by my art, as an artist, I will not apologize for creating it.”. In his statement, Rothschild went on to defend that “there are countless examples of artists who reference the world and the products and cultural artifacts in it. With that understanding, MetaBirkins is a playful abstraction of an existing fashion-culture landmark”, explaining that “the First Amendment gives me every right to create art based on my interpretations of the world around me.” Following the report of the French luxury house’s initial complaint over MetaBirkins, OpenSea, the internet’s largest NFT marketplace where MetaBirkins was listed, removed them from their platform before any legal action was taken. By January 2022, Hermès filed a suit against Rothschild, demanding that he hand over any revenue made from the MetaBirkins, in addition to paying compensation and legal costs.

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“This is a battle for ownership of luxury in the Metaverse,” indicated Susan Scafidi, academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University. “In the virtual world we can’t rely on claims of scarcity and quality in the same way, and we’ve found a way to create artificial scarcity for what is essentially a digital image via NFTs.”. In an open letter to his community, which Rothschild posted on Instagram, he stated: “I am open to exploring all options with Hermès.” In a utopian world, Hermès would respond positively to this claim, and the two would move forward from the lawsuit and collaborate to create something spectacular together. But what outcome can we really expect from this battle between a single artist versus a multi-billion-dollar brand?

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