The Web3 Fashion Manifesto: First Pages Launched.
Having been in New York for a month now, which in web3 time is an eternity as it moves even faster than a New York minute, the stories that I’ve collected from the often unseen people who really make the fashion industry and culture in this city move could fill rows upon rows of an infinite library.
It’s endlessly perplexing to me why the long tail of creatives continue to simp ever cheaper quality mega factory made fabrics, materials and other components for pretend authentic and wannabe indie fabrication when there is such a historic and deeply rich wealth of supplies locally within reach and with tremendous stories naturally included.
It’s almost sad to see the streets throughout the Garment District nearly empty, a shadow of what they once were. And when I talk to the fabrication stores, this recent reality where there is no likely space for them to continue in their line of work seems all but impossible to overcome. It’s seriously heartbreaking.
But just like there was a time in this city when it was called ungovernable, when well over a million people had left and even when it seemed like any semblance of good food would be drowned out by an endless race to the bottom of fast food franchise corporate crap, it turned out much better days were still to be found and made ahead. Today, even after 2 years of rolling pandemic lockdowns, the food scene in particular is a great example of what happens when a love for a local sense of place and belonging combines with tremendous and diverse skills. Food in this city has been in a golden age for well over a decade now, fast food economies of scale be damned.
There’s something about the mix of quality goods, personal relationships between suppliers and customers, intricate local histories, and hyper-networked communities that generates far more value than simply ordering the latest bulk shipment of fall apart fast landfill destined fabrics, garments, and accessories. The journey of food and so many other similar industries in NYC offers a blueprint for the equally essential textile supply and fabrication shops throughout the Garment District and beyond.
F3Manifesto revitalises the Garment District and all densely woven clusters of fashion history throughout the world by way of bringing light to the stories, substance and style that are so inherent and deeply intertwined with everything fashion and culture in New York represent.
The manifesto will be televised in the new reality of what that means.
Self sovereign networks replace the old broadcast oligarchs and this revolution liberates the means of creative production for all.
The spark and thread that makes the self sovereign revolution manifest starts here.
The first pages of the manifesto are live now, and will continue to be revealed and curated progressively— from text to textiles, from stores to stories, compiling and creating content across text, audio, video, fabric, events, digital and physical experiences and more.
It will be released in an entirely decentralised manner across different mediums, becoming increasingly more on-chain and web3 native over time— from medium to mirror, YouTube to gitbook, NFTs to Pinata…
