Streetwear has many mothers. Originating from surfing and skateboarding in the 1980s, the casual style became a worldwide phenomenon by the 1990s. While no individual company is exclusively responsible for creating streetwear, some considerably pushed it to global popularity. One of those brands is FUCT. Founded by artist Erik Brunetti and skateboard legend Natas Kaupas a whopping 29 years ago in 1990, the Los Angeles-based company’s name is an acronym for “Friends U Can’t Trust.” More importantly, however, it’s obviously homophonous to the expletive “fucked.” Which, you know, is apparently enough to spark a trademark controversy that was eventually escalated all the way up to the US Supreme Court – but more on that later. FUCT draws inspiration from all aspects of pop culture: music, design, film – you name it. In fact, FUCT is credited as being the first-ever brand to incorporate a movie into its t-shirt design (the film in question being Martin Scorsese’s mafia epic Goodfellas). Besides, FUCT has cooperated with well-known photographers such as Larry Clark (Kids) to shoot campaigns with stars such as Snoop Dogg, Kate Moss, and Keith Richards. In short, FUCT is the godfather of streetwear. There’s so much to tell about FUCT that one could write a book about it – which one did, back in 2013. While it’s gotten relatively quiet around the brand in the last decade or so, it never went anywhere (in fact, Brunetti was busy catering to the Asian market with a Japan-exclusive spin-off line FUCT S.S.D.D.). Until recently, that is. Filing for a federal trademark in 2011, Brunetti was denied one by US Patent and Trademark Office’s director Andrei Iancu on grounds of FUCT’s name being “scandalous.” While a federal appeals court ruled in Brunetti’s favor in 2017, the Trump administration (yes, really) appealed the decision – which put the case Iancu v. Brunetti on the table of the Supreme Court judges. On June 24, 2019, the highest court of the United States of America subsequently ruled that the Trademark Office cannot deny a trademark on the grounds of a name being “scandalous,” seeing as such a denial would infringe the First Amendment. When was the last time your friends’ internet t-shirt company was discussed by some of the highest dignitaries of the country? Exactly. You can buy FUCT at our web shop and our store in Frankfurt.
