Private company

FUCT

Logo: fuct.com³

American clothing company

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Industryretail¹
Websitefuct.com

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FUCT or Friends U Can't Trust is a clothing brand founded in Los Angeles in 1990 by American artist and designer Erik Brunetti and professional skateboarder Natas Kaupas. Brunetti has said he choose the name "FUCT" because it was a homophone of the expletive "fucked" and he wanted people to question its pronunciation. FUCT has been referred to as one of the pioneering brands of modern streetwear, often incorporating various elements and icons of pop culture alongside anti-government and anti-religious campaigns into their designs including the use of parodied logos.²

The story

Origins

FUCT was first conceptualized in 1990 by Erik Brunetti and Natas Kaupas in Brunetti's one-bedroom Venice Beach apartment. In a 2019 interview with skateboarding publication Jenkem, Brunetti stated that the two "thought it would be clever to call the brand FUCT and present it [as] very corporate, so you had to question the pronunciation of the name based on the way it looked." FUCT's first logo was designed using software available on Brunetti's Macintosh Classic computer. In 1991, Kaupas and Brunetti filed as a business under the name "FUCT Designs". Shortly afterward, Kaupas parted ways with the company.

In 2002, Brunetti stepped away from the brand to focus on personal artistic endeavors before returning to the company in 2005.

In 2013, publishing house Rizzoli released "FUCT". The book was published as a retrospective of the brand's history published to coincide with its 20-year anniversary. The book, written by Brunetti, includes essays by Aaron Rose and Gary Warnett.

Advertising

Throughout the 1990s, the company rarely sold through the apparel trade shows popular at the time. Instead, FUCT chose to market through magazine editorials and full-page, printed advertisements in publications such as the skateboarding magazines Thrasher, Big Brother, and Strength. These advertisements were often self-effacing and controversial in nature, designed to play up FUCT's counter-cultural image. Many of these advertisements included Brunetti's personal phone number as the point of contact for wholesale purchases.

In 1996, Fuct launched its e-commerce website, fuct.com. Fuct used this platform to experiment with selling and marketing their product. The brand's website included a catalog, a newsletter, customer support, and specific mail-in instructions for purchasing garments directly.

Skate culture

FUCT has thorough roots in skateboarding culture. Brunetti and Kaupas met through their mutual affiliation with skateboarding company, World Industries.

In 1998, FUCT released its first and only skate video, Random Acts of Kindness. Shot in New York City and Los Angeles, the video followed the FUCT skate team in addition to numerous graffiti artists affiliated with the brand. The video was shot on VHS and has a 30-minute run-time.

From Wikipedia’s article on FUCT (clothing), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.⁴

Products and brands

clothing

Listed on Wikidata.¹

Subsidiaries and ownership

Owners

Erik Brunetti

From Wikidata.¹

Controversies and legal

Supreme Court case

In 2011, Brunetti applied for a federal trademark for the brand name due to a number of knock-offs online. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the trademark citing the power to "scandalous" trademark applications through the Lanham Act. A federal appeals court in Washington ruled in his favor in 2017, but was appealed by the Trump administration, reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

On June 24, 2019, in the case Iancu v. Brunetti, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Patent and Trademark Office cannot deny trademark registration due to a name being "immoral" or "scandalous", citing that the provision infringes the First Amendment.