“Why do humans even wear logos?  Because we’re cognitive misers, and brands are the brain’s little shortcuts. But brands (and clothing in general) also help us save energy by attracting the people we’ll enjoy and repelling others.” 

Our Journey to "Composable Clothing": Part One  

We shared this observation in our February ‘22 newsletter and continued, “that’s why all of our external branding will be removable and interchangeable. . .  We created this system to make it easy for other activists, artists, and adventurers to hack our gear for visibility and like-minded community.”

Even though we’d been building in public for almost a year, the post of our badge was our most engaging to date, and we knew we were on to something powerful. 

People obsess over brands for good reason, so we believed that it was time to empower people to rep what they wanted and to enable them to do it on durable, modular, multifunctional apparel.  

So why not just use velcro or even adhesive?  There’s a reason velcro only appears on kids' shoes.  If you’ve ever had it on a bag or put it in the wash, you know it’s a menace: it catches and snags everything it touches, and eventually, it just stops working.   Sure we love the thrill of slapping a backstage pass on our jacket, but there’s a reason we only wear it for one night.  

When we saw fun magnets substituted for scratchy velcro on baby bibs, we decided to make our own. We cut a custom mold with Fidlock in Germany and spent countless hours and iterations with our manufacturer in Portugal attaching them to the garments.  Then to get the badge to work with the garment again required countless hours and iterations with the best (and one of the only— but that’s another post) label suppliers in the world.  We iterated through 3 Shanghai lockdowns and a ship stuck in the Panama Canal.  Finally, they clicked into place.  

We wanted our garments to be enduring platforms for self-expression— so that you could declare not only your community affiliation but also your cause if that’s what the moment required.  And we wanted them to feel wonderful, which they do.  

Why not just make something fast and cheap to see if there’s demand?  Especially since it’s almost impossible to assess the quality of a garment online, even with incredible photography?  Because cheap, poorly constructed clothing is killing the planet, and we’re sick of it.  And we’re betting you are too.

As soon as we joined Seed Club, FWB, and Protein this past Spring, we began planning our badges together because we knew that online communities would want to be able to recognize and support each other IRL.  Since then, we’ve been thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with others in the Web3 space.  If you’re a club or a DAO, a Web3 community or an outdoor community, a “regen” or just working for positive change in the world, help yourself to these guides for making your own community badge come to life.  If you’d like to do so and participate in our community as an owner, then we would love to hear from you! Please reach out to us at partner@earlymajority.com.