How To Be Punk In WEB3

So here’s a hot take: there’s a school of thought that says Web3 is the new punk.

Purists of the original punk movement will file it under ‘ideas to instantly reject’ (it would be disappointing if they didn’t) but there’s spiritual crossover between Punk and Web3. Can both be described as a catalysing cultural force committed to disrupting power structures? Heavy check mark so far. But is it even possible to be punk in an era when you don’t have to physically turn up to register your dissent, and you’re more likely to join a Discord server than start a band? And what does punk even mean for a Web3 creator like The Fabricant?

Punk arrived as an explosive movement that found energy in anger and power in chaos. It was raw and unapologetic, resisting the era’s social norms and institutions. It provoked countless outraged headlines with its ‘fuck you’ swagger that still resonates, and its underlying message should be written in stone:

The black hoodies of the Web3 crowd might lack the visual punch of the early punk scene, but there’s a similar call to arms: A decentralised and permissionless internet powered by blockchain, that places community and identity front and centre.

This is punk for the tech era. The wrapper might have changed but the attitude still holds true: why tiptoe around the status quo when you can radically overturn it? Give power to the people, or at least their avatars.

And this is where The Fabricant enters the chat. If a punk spirit means you speak your mind, take creative risks and question everything, then we 100 percent claim it.

We’ve never found comfort in conformity, it’s not who we are and it’s not what we stand for. The Fabricant was founded from a desire to storm the fashion industry’s ivory tower and sabotage the cultural complacency that kept it believing that it didn’t need to transform.

When we arrived in 2018 innovation was a dirty word. We were told “fashion doesn’t do tech” and non-physical clothing was both “stupid” and “unworkable”. But there’s nothing like a big fat ‘no’ to light a bonfire of motivation; we weren’t just going to prove them wrong, we were going to build an entire digital fashion movement that told them so.

If punk’s original battle cry was about defining the world on your own terms and disrupting the narrative, then we also get to say what that means today. From The Fabricant’s perspective, it’s an act of defiance to resist the doom-scroll of Crypto Twitter. Instead we’re forming a tech movement that’s based on solutions and inclusion. This is our take on what Web3’s punk spirit means for digital fashion:

Do whatever it takes

There are plenty of ways to cut corners on digital craft but it’s not what we do. Creative integrity matters to us. We were founded by creators and we believe in pushing boundaries on 3D craftsmanship to demonstrate what’s possible. We’re never going to settle for less.

Take the visual road less travelled

We could keep it simple and be pretty pretty, but we’re committed to creating a digital fashion space where it’s ok to embrace your ugly and celebrate your weird. It’s risky to create aesthetics that challenge or provoke, and our dark deserves as much room as our light. Identity exploration should take many forms.

Remember it’s not all about you

No one gets to own a cultural revolution. Everything we’ve ever done has been about creating something bigger than ourselves — nothing is a success unless we’ve elevated and enabled the creators around us. Collabs and shared wins are how we’ll co-create our story. The future belongs to us all.

Be uncompromisingly early

Is earliness a punk flex? We think it is. It takes courage to make something happen while everyone else waits to see if you take a hit.

We were too early 4 years ago with the concept of a digital-only fashion house.

We were too early in 2019 selling the first digital fashion garment on blockchain.

We’re still too early right now building The Fabricant Studio, our collaborative creation platform that allows anyone to co-create NFT garments, when everyone else in the space is chasing the low hanging fruit of PFP projects.

And if you remember only one thing remember this: The journey to a permissionless and decentralised Web3 has infinite punk possibilities. This is ours. You’re free to define yours on our own terms.