Gucci pivots to gaming with new Arcade app

What happens when high fashion hits the arcade? Apart from an edgy shoot for a glossy magazine, that is.

If you’re Gucci’s flamboyant creative director Alessandro Michele the answer is an haute couture app that lets game-hungry Vogue readers give themselves blisters playing a selection of knowingly retro video games, featuring a variety of characters from one of the fashion world’s most iconic houses.

Slotting into the existing Gucci App, the Gucci Arcade currently offers two titles, Gucci Bee and Gucci Ace, both of which offer dedicated gamers the chance to collect a series of Gucci-inspired badges. These digital badges can then be proudly displayed in a digital trophy cabinet for all and sundry to admire.

The Italian brand says that the new offering is a showcase for Michele’s “unique ability of combining the past with the present, using contemporary technology to tell stories in an eclectic and pioneering way”.

Gucci Bee is a Pac-Man kind of thing that sees you buzzing around a maze as a Gucci-clad bee, while Gucci Ace is “inspired by the idea of revisiting the past, living in the present and looking to the future,” and sees the player traversing a trio of levels that skip through gaming history from the early 8-bit days to the mobile-dominated present.

We’re reliably informed that a slew of games will be added to the app in coming months, all of which will “naturally employ and display the hallmarks,” of the Gucci brand.