Brooklyn Vegan reports that the trendy urban clothing brand known FUGAZI is opening up a flagship store on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The store, located at 55 Canal Street, will sell the brands' jackets, hats, shoes, and pants—some of which are adorned with the word "FUGAZI" in big block letters.
"Fugazi" is, of course, an old slang term for something is fake or damaged beyond repair. It's perhaps also better known as the name of a legendary Washington, DC post-hardcore band that famously took "The Path of Most Resistance," brazenly rejecting every form of profiteering, merchandising, and generally capitalist exploitation around their music—to the point that fans began selling bootleg t-shirts emblazoned with the words "This Is Not A Fugazi T-Shirt."
Meanwhile, this is how FUGAZI, the clothing brand, describes the philosophy behind its merchandising:
Fugazi® is a post-structuralist commentary on streetwear and the modern-day consumerist phenomenon. The brand's take on fashion and clothing is rooted in the new sincerity of metamodernism. The brand exists as a study on the nature of streetwear; critiquing how something as simple as an everyday garment holds power within contemporary society while at the same time partaking in the grand charade that is "fashion". The symbol shatters itself while simultaneously being constructed.
(That's a nice registered trademark there, too).
That mission statement does seem weirdly in conversation with the song "Merchandise" by the band Fugazi, although I feel like it may have missed a few points here or there (something Ian Mackaye is painfully familiar with). As the band sings in the song:
Merchandise, it keeps us in line
Common sense says it's by design
What could a businessman ever want more
Than to have us sucking in his storeWE OWE YOU NOTHING
YOU HAVE NO CONTROL
WE OWE YOU NOTHING
YOU HAVE NO CONTROL
YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU OWN
YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU OWN
YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU OWN
YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU OWN
Fugazi store opening on the Lower East Side (no, not that Fugazi) [Brooklyn Vegan]
