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The Cult of Supreme
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Love it or hate it, there’s no escaping Supreme. Whether it’s on a Hanes T-shirt, splashed across the Louis Vuitton runway, or copped by Kermit the Frog, it’s impossible to go one day—maybe one hour—without confronting the iconic, cherry red box logo. However, beneath the tees and simple logo is over two decades of work, roadblocks, and an unwavering community.
By the time he launched his breakthrough brand, Supreme’s founder James Jebbia had already spent ten years navigating the streetwear industry. Jebbia moved to New York City from the United Kingdom at just 19 years old, and quickly snagged a job at Parachute, a SoHo skate shop. In 1989 he opened his first retail venture, Union NYC, hosting an eclectic mix of English street brands. Two years later he joined arguably the first major streetwear brand in the industry, helping Shawn Stussy open his eponymous brand’s first flagship store in New York.
After parting ways with Stussy in 1994, Jebbia saw a gap in the market and pounced. Skate brands of the time catered to suburban, helmet-clad pre-teens, with the excitement of their first skateboarding lesson still in their eyes and well heeled mothers in tow. Where was the grit? Where were the pros, well out of high school and on the city streets with scratched boards that knew them by heart? Enter Supreme.
Over the next 25 years, Jebbia’s passion project erupted into a household name, breaking boundaries and crashing websites along the way. What started as a clubhouse for New York City skaters became a trailblazer of streetwear and the culture surrounding it, thanks to a wildly diverse roster of collaborations and an excruciatingly consistent air of exclusivity. The brand’s hyper-limited supply remains unmoved in the face of ever-growing demand, resulting in street-long queues of skaters, resellers, and hypebeasts galore. On Thursday mornings, the Supreme drop has become a cultural phenomenon, a streetwear rite of passage, and a disruptor to the traditional retail strategy.
In 1994, Jebbia opened the first Supreme store in a deserted pocket of New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. The space was founded as a safe space for neighborhood skaters, a choice that was and remains integral to the brand’s DNA. Skaters from every borough of New York could convene, collaborate, and shred the empty streets without fear of police intervention or neighboring complaints. It was one of the first stores to have an open concept layout, with clothing hung on the periphery of the store, so that customers could skate in from the sidewalk. The first Supreme products to hit the racks were simple cotton T-shirts, later followed by hoodies and fitted caps—all branded with the now-iconic box logo.
In the early aughts, Supreme took the first steps in its journey of genre-bending collaborations that make it so recognizable today. The brand landed its first partnership with Nike in 2002, resulting in the covetable SB Dunk sneaker. Supreme’s minuscule SoHo storefront began to see a line outside its doors for the first time, with store employees haphazardly playing the role of security. The SB Dunk was also the brand’s first unintentional dip into resell culture—an original 2002 pair is currently selling for upwards of ,000 on StockX.
Two years after the SB Dunk, Supreme enlisted an unexpected major player for its 10th anniversary collection: Kate Moss. When it was still a freshly formed label, Supreme was sued by Calvin Klein for slapping box logo stickers over the brand’s Kate Moss ads. A decade (and substantially larger marketing budget) later, Supreme repurposed the iconic image for ads of their own. Moss returned to the brand in 2012, donning a leopard print coat and box logo T-shirt for one of the most iconic posters (and later, T-shirts) of Supreme’s sparse marketing history.
As its fashion collaborations grew in clout, Supreme began enlisting artists of every caliber to cloak their skate decks in one-of-a-kind prints. One of the most influential of these relationships was Jeff Koons. Notorious for his large scale pokes at pop culture and commercialism—an arena Supreme was quite familiar with—Koons’s Monkey Train trio of decks remains one of Supreme’s most sought-after capsules, boasting resale value in the tens of thousands.
Six years of drops later, 2011 and 2012 gave Supreme some of the most catalytic collabs of its history. 2011 birthed the Supreme X Playboy collection, the first of a lasting relationship and originator of the iconic varsity jacket that is considered one of the biggest Supreme grails to date. The brand’s initial taste of luxury arrived via Comme des Garçons, which took a chance on the growing streetwear industry in 2012 with the start of a now-annual Supreme collaboration. The resulting capsule, featuring slashed box logos and polka dots abound, married Rei Kawakubo’s signature playfulness with Supreme’s untouchable cool. It was a monumental launch pad for the brand, but somehow still a fraction of what was to come.
If there was any doubt of Supreme’s influence after Comme des Garçons, 2017 sealed the deal. In a bold move for both the luxury and streetwear industries, Supreme’s famed logo quietly appeared on the Louis Vuitton Men’s Fall/Winter 2017 runway, following months of fan speculation.
The collaboration instantly became the most anticipated of Supreme’s 23-year history. Hoodies, T-shirts, pocket knives, luggage, and small leather goods were available exclusively at Louis Vuitton stores upon the drop, as well as bespoke steamer trunks and skateboards. The inventory was a tongue-in-cheek fusion of Supreme’s skate roots and Louis Vuitton’s luxury leather origins. Unsurprisingly, the collection sold out almost instantly, with resale value skyrocketing up to triple the items’ retail prices.
Supreme X Louis Vuitton was the first time streetwear was taken seriously in the high-fashion space beyond the dedicated following of such brands. While Supreme’s high-demand low-supply model made them a pillar of exclusivity long before this partnership, working with one of the most storied and prestigious luxury brands cemented its role as a trailblazer in the streetwear space. LVMH saw a 23 percent profit boost in the six months following Supreme X Louis Vuitton, a bump it largely credited to the collaboration, signaling that the fusion of streetwear and luxury is likely far from over.
Later in 2017, Supreme was valued at billion, putting it in the coveted Billion Dollar Club aside Michael Kors and Warby Parker. One year later, the calling card box logo was named the most powerful in the world. Jebbia, notoriously tight-lipped and camera shy, was named Menswear Designer of the Year at the 2018 CFDA Awards. The brand was becoming as commercially successful as ever, all without increasing its supply or little-to-no marketing. The “cult” of Supreme was shifting, from the if-you-know-you-know skate community of ‘90s SoHo to the droves of Instagram hypebeasts, vlogging their wait in a drop line or blowing a months’ rent on a resold hoodie.
Once it was well on its solid ground of success, Supreme leveraged its platform to spotlight more subversive artists. In March of 2018, Supreme revealed a collaboration with Nan Goldin, longtime advocate and documentarian of the LGBTQ+ community. Hoodies, T-shirts, and skate decks were emblazoned with drag queens, transgender artists, or Goldin herself in dominatrix gear. The collection was hit with some backlash from conservative-leaning hypebeasts, but garnered massive respect for Supreme’s celebration of inclusivity and sex positivity.
This year marked Supreme’s 25th anniversary, and the brand celebrated accordingly. An ultra-limited collection, featuring Swarovski crystal-embedded box logo T-shirts and hoodies, drew a clamoring crowd nearly rivaling that of Louis Vuitton’s. The crystallized staples, each hand-appliquéd in New York City, were both an homage to Supreme’s minimalist roots and a commemoration of its luxe growth.
Deeper into its 25th year, Supreme opened a 12th brick-and-mortar location in the retail heart of San Francisco. While San Francisco has long been heralded as an incubator of skate culture and California cool, the booming tech industry has cultivated a silent war of gentrification among young-money newbies and original residents. This brought controversy upon the brand: did this new location signify the billion-dollar maverick drawing further from its skate cred, and leaning into its modern affluent clientele? Supreme, as usual, remained silent on the matter, but the store’s larger-than-life skate bowl and platform for local skate stars seemed to serve as its answer.
Throughout 25 years of drops, controversy, and groundbreaking collaborations, Supreme has forged one element above all else: community. What started as a clique of New York City skaters seeking a safe haven has grown exponentially, now welcoming teenagers, adults, and streetwear lovers who may or may not have ever touched a skateboard. The Thursday drop is a ritualistic practice for fans, a gathering place, and an adrenaline-spiked game of copping the latest pieces before they disappear forever. Supreme’s aloof yet fiercely loyal attitude makes it a trailblazer in the streetwear industry—not only for its occasional leap into luxury, but for its unfailing landing back into the community for which it was founded.
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createdAt:Tue, 05 Nov 2019 20:48:27 +0000
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section:Fashion