Exclusive: “Neo-Couture” Brand MMERCH Reveals Wearable Mint Details

Web3 clothing company mmERCH, which boasts support from space leaders including Ben Roy and Cozomo de’ Medici and concluded a $6 million fundraise in March, has exclusively revealed the mechanics for its upcoming hoodie drop to nft now.

Established by Colby Mugrabi, mmERCH combines real-world, NFT, and metaverse fashion with its upcoming 960-piece genesis hoodie collection.

To get your hands on one of the NFC-chip-enabled hoodies, you’ll need to participate in a blind mint—open to a guaranteed allowlist on the morning of Apr. 16, then with a first-come-first-served mint for select NFT communities that afternoon.

The guaranteed allowlist begins at 6 am ET, closing at 1 pm when the communities allowlist kicks off. Holders of CryptoPunks, Chromie Squiggles, Beeple Everydays 2020 Collection, beef brothko, Tom Sachs’ Rocket Factory Rockets, Claire Silver’s corpo | real, Auntieverse, Max Pain, Dopamine Machines, and CryptoDickButts are eligible to mint in this window.

If any tokens are left, the public mint opens at 6 am on Apr. 17.

The price of the mint will be around .15-.18 ETH, depending on the price of the currency on launch day. While it is possible to purchase using a credit card, you’ll need an Ethereum wallet to receive your mint.\

mmERCH Mint Mechanics

You get three things with your purchase: your hoodie, which comes with an NFC chip turning it into a wearable digital wallet, an NFT featuring a unique drawing of one of 48 characters created by Love and Rockets comic book artist Gilbert Hernandez, wearing your hoodie, and a mmERCH digital wearable useable in metaverses like Mona and OnCyber.

During the allowlist mint periods, the NFT will reflect the original drawing by Hernandez, but once public mint begins, these will come to life in full color, reflecting the unique nature of your hoodie.

The fully tradable NFT is your access pass for claiming your physical hoodie, as well as for downloading your mmERCH metaverse wearable (these aren’t yet individualized to reflect your specific hoodie). You can specify your size and location for free shipping of your hoodie (check the website to make sure your country is included for shipping).

Everyone who mints will also get a unique NFT receipt—a limited edition created especially for this drop by Toad Swiback.

Each of the 960 pieces in the collection is unique—and, just as we might expect, some of the traits are rarer than others. The torso, arms, hood, and front pocket of each hoodie can arrive in a variety of different patterns. Monochrome hoodies are particularly rare, with only fifteen in the collection, and 100 of the hoodies are made of luxurious cashmere, knit in Italy from hand-dyed yarn with an embroidered logo. The remaining 860 garments are high-quality, too: made from French terry fabric and assembled in Los Angeles with a silkscreened logo.

Founded in 2022, mmERCH catapulted into the public eye with a $6.4 million fundraise, led by Liberty City Ventures and including FlamingoDAO, 6529 Holdings, and Christie’s Ventures.

The successful round, announced in March 2024, also includes fashion luminaries such as designer Tory Burch and model Karlie Kloss.

Making mmERCH Happen

Founder Colby Mugrabi got into the NFT scene after Beeple’s major, viral 2021 sale of 5,000 Everydays. “My husband is an art dealer. So he started getting inundated with calls about ‘Who’s this artist Beeple? What’s an NFT?’ And I just started researching the space—web3, NFTs, the metaverse, all the buzzwords—and realized pretty instantaneously that this is where the future of my brand should live,” she told nft now.

With deep experience in fashion brands, Mugrabi was intrigued by applying a generative, algorithmic process to fashion.

“Fast forward to August of 2021. I discovered ArtBlocks for the first time and started really being fascinated with generative art. To me, in the context of art history, it brought to mind when the camera was invented, and suddenly, it opened up a whole new meaning of art as a photographer. To me, generative art is just another process through which creatives can apply their specialty towards creating outputs. So that, to me, was really intriguing. And then, always reverting back to a fashion mindset, I immediately thought, why has no one ever applied a generative design process toward a physical product? That’s how I started my journey towards mmERCH and came up with the idea for a web3-native, generative fashion brand,” she said.

To create the hoodies, Mugrabi had to source everything, from fibers to factories that could make up the finished pieces to a high level of quality. “I don’t have a background in manufacturing—I didn’t really understand the intricacies and the complexity of what I was trying to do when I sought out to do it. Because every single person I spoke with in the fashion industry with a real knowledge and understanding of manufacturing told me that this couldn’t be done,” she told us.

Mugrabi brought in expert help of her own, which helped her find the right people to bring her vision to life. “I hired a great director of manufacturing—a 30-year veteran. She orchestrated conversations with over a dozen factories,” she said.

Anyone wearing one of the hoodies in the physical world will make quite a splash—the bold, bright patterns are instantly recognizable and feature vivid colors that will get anyone noticed. The NFC chips will also offer opportunities for mmERCH, or other brands who partner with them, to offer unique digital collectibles or real-life goods and experiences to wearers.

For NFT NYC attendees, the team is also hosting an RSVP-only party on Thursday, Apr. 4, which will feature a sneak peek at some of the hoodies, a display of their investor seedphrase’s Autoglyphs collection, and mmERCH pins, bags, and stickers.

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