An ongoing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on punk fashion had me wishing I were in the city. Punk culture has fascinated me since childhood and here was a serious acknowledgement of a genre that has been commoditised and dismissed in equal measure. For the Met to curate from "Chaos to Couture" seemed only fitting. So it was dispiriting to read the negative reviews of the exhibition, to discover that they have done what popular culture has often been accused of - distilling the very essence of the movement into easily marketed tripe.The exhibition from various accounts is one that boasts of top-end designer labels exercising their version of Punk fashion, thereby ignoring the DIY ethos of punk culture that extends to clothes and indeed life. Punks follow an anti-establishment philosophy that can be lived only when in direct opposition to the state, achieved by being ferociously self-reliant. Yes, even in the clothes they make. It took me back to a far more enriching experience, my meeting with a Burmese punk in Rangoon (Yangon), in a country emerging from decades of military rule and human rights abuse.When I met Kyaw Kyaw (Cho Cho) he had just had his mohawk trimmed; it now stood erect at only six inches. It was a modest turn for him and when he stalked through the five star hotel lobby in combat boots and a studded denim jacket, no one turned to look. It is boom time in Myanmar and this lobby was a hot spot for dealmakers and frontier market opportunists.In present day Myanmar unlikely partnerships are formed and frenetic negotiations over endless cups of coffee are the norm. The businessmen dressed in button down suits for a Rangoon winter were the ones out of place. Kyaw Kyaw, the punk, had been around longer. And it was he who noticed them and spoke with derision. "All these people," he said waving an arm around, "running after money. They aren't free".Kyaw Kyaw had been pursuing freedom for the last ten years, it is what prompted him to dip out of 'mainstream life". But the beginnings were more frivolous; it was the fashion, seeing people who looked different on the streets of Yangon appealed to his adolescent curiosity. During a time when there was no access to the Internet, the tenets of the punk sub culture were passed down orally. The older punks he befriended had learnt about the ideology through books and magazines in the Embassies. They told him about anarchy and self-reliance.He moved out of his home and into an apartment that he shares with three other punks (there are fourteen "real" punks in Yangon). He committed to the lifestyle in the real sense. What's the real sense? I asked him. Anarchy.The punk subculture can be painted in all hues of the political spectrum and influences personal politics as well as freeaesthetics. The interest I had in it in the Burmese context, had to do with the country's political history. When a handful of punks, Kyaw Kyaw's predecessors started out (in the early nineties) it was in direct response to the regime under which they lived.In a lot of ways, this may be considered natural. The need to rebel against authority and to rage against society at large that put up with the oppression, were ambient circumstances. People like him channeled that rage into acts that ensured their freedom from a society that in their opinion bought its peace of mind through subservience to an authoritarian regime.Kyaw Kyaw is twenty-five and has only ever held one job. He told me that he will never work again, not even in the new Burma. There are many nights he and his friends sleep hungry, when their street stall does no business.It sells punk fashion, clothes that are embellished with metal studs and safety pins as well as accessories like wristbands. The shop is a co-operative and individual resources are pooled together and the slim profits shared. It is not about the money, he reminds me, it is about self reliance. He is the lead singer of the most popular Punk band in Yangon, Rebel Riot.But finding a venue for concerts is difficult, so a livelihood is out of the question. The cops don't really like them. During our meeting he picked up a flyer lying on the table and pointed to a man in sunglasses holding a mike. "That's a hip hop singer here, he sings about the shape of a woman's ass". He tossed the flyer aside and smiled. The hip-hop singer had no problem finding a venue.I remember the expectant look on his face as he debated whether to ask me for financial help or not. I was not the first curious foreigner he had encountered, there had been others and he had learnt to expect little.In the "new Myanmar" narrative he and his friends are a colorful oddity, often commoditised by filmmakers, photographers and the like. Their images sold abroad for money whilst they were left behind on the same street corner, struggling. It is not like they want to be paid, he assured me, but it's the selfishness, the lack of consideration for their struggle that gets to him.I think that's what this recent exhibition at the Met didn't get either and I am relieved that I wasn't there to see it.