“They were easy adapters to a kind of dissonance, where you have several things at different points on the cultural spectrum that are all connected by a kind of aesthetic or vibe,” says Korine. The very first employees were extras in Larry Clark’s film Kids, written by Harmony Korine, who lived in the neighborhood and recalls Supreme as less of a store, more of a hang-though within a year, designers from uptown as well as Europe and Japan were paying attention. The kids he employed, often skateboarders themselves, were cool, opinionated-and, yes, often scowling at the uncool-but allowed outsiders a view into their clique. Jebbia built a spare space (the very notions of spare and clean soon becoming Supreme trademarks), then brought in good skateboards, cranked the music, and played videos constantly-wildly disparate things like Muhammad Ali fight videos and Taxi Driver-to draw onlookers. Lafayette was then a relatively quiet strip of antiques stores, a firehouse, and a machinist, but also a Keith Haring shop-a downtown art-scene connection that, in hindsight, was key. “It was less commercial-it had more edge and more fuck-you type stuff.” So he decided to open his own skate shop on Lafayette Street. “I always really liked what was coming out of the skate world,” Jebbia says. “Now what the hell am I going to do?” he recalls asking himself. Next, Jebbia helped run a shop with Stüssy until Stüssy decided to retire. Union did well enough until it began to sell clothing designed by Shawn Stüssy, the skateboarder and surfer, at which point it did great. From there, he worked a table at the nearby flea market, then founded a store, Union, on Spring Street that sold British goods and streetwear. By the time he was nineteen, Jebbia had left England and was a sales assistant at a SoHo store called Parachute. Nothing about Supreme was planned in advance, its success a coincidence of place, time, and hard work. Photographed by Anton Corbijn, Vogue, September 2017 “We’re just trying to show people things that we do-no different from what a magazine did 20 years ago.” (They published six issues of their own magazine before developing their website around 2006.)įounder James Jebbia at the Supreme office in SoHo. “We’re not trying to overconnect ourselves,” Jebbia says. Supremeheads understand the nuances of marketing nonsense their nose, both for corporations pretending to be human and for brands trying to throw themselves at potential customers, is highly refined, a reason Supreme uses social media primarily as an exhibit space. “Supreme is family-oriented, and that matters most to me,” says Elsesser. Elsesser is the kind of person marketers think of as an influential outsider but whom customers see as just a cool skater.
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Supreme keeps advertising to a minimum and works with people like Sage Elsesser, the pro skater, who models for its look-book. If Jebbia was anxious to get press when he started, now he worries about overexposure. It’s like, If I love this, it may not be here, so I should buy it.” When I grew up, I think everybody felt that way.
“But we also want to have the feeling that this won’t be here in a month. “We can have a leather jacket for $1,500, and if it’s a good value, young people will understand that,” Jebbia says. A Supreme drop, for those who haven’t experienced it, is an event. More than just selling sweats and tees and hats, the brand brings out a new collection two times a year, like any fashion company-generally, an online look-book, followed by a few pieces dropped every Thursday, each item available both online and in the stores. The Vuitton collaboration was also, for many in fashion, their first glimpse into the secretive world of Supreme, which has become a kind of shorthand for authenticity, immediacy, speed, and deftness in its way of doing business.
They know what they want, and they are very loyal-and a customer who is loyal is a real aspiration for anybody with a brand.” “When you see the lines for Supreme in New York or London,” says Jones, “you see so many different types of people, and they are people you can relate to-they understand high-low, they’re smart, they’re intelligent, and they’re humorous.
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