he observed, not on himself or another
designer, to chart the brand’s creative path.
“The influence was the people who were
around the shop—the skaters,” Jebbia says.
“They would wear cool shit; they wouldn’t
wear skate clothes. It would be Polo, it would
be a Gucci belt, it would be Champion. We
made what we really liked. And it kind of was
a gradual thing. From a few tees, a few sweats,
a pair of cargo pants, a backpack. But the
influence was definitely the young skaters in
New York. Also traveling to Japan and seeing
their great style. Traveling to London. It was
a combination of that. I never really looked at
it as ‘This is what a skate brand must make.’”
Supreme is famous for its box logo—a red
rectangle with white text, inspired by the art-
ist Barbara Kruger’s text and photo-collage
work—which appears every season on T-shirts,
hoodies, and caps. But for years Supreme has
also been making oxford shirts, chinos, selvage
denim, M-65 jackets, pocket tees, and other
pieces that speak to a di≠erent kind of down-
town population: artists, architects, graphic
designers—anyone who might otherwise be
shopping at A.P.C. or Agnès B. for quiet, casual
clothes that fit well and last a long time. There
have been far fewer blog posts dedicated to
Supreme’s flannel shirts and cashmere sweat-
ers, but all of these sensible pieces are just as
fundamental to the brand as the box logo itself.
“I’ve always looked at it as, why shouldn’t
we make good stu≠ ?” Jebbia says about
exceeding the expectations of a skate brand.
Supreme stores are notoriously impeccable—
the T-shirts, folded with razor-sharp edges,
neatly stacked; the clothes spaced just so on
the racks.
Jebbia’s retail mastery comes in part from
his experience working at Parachute in the
1980s. The now defunct brand of futuristic
fashion—worn by notable style beacons of
the era such as Madonna, Michael Jackson,
David Bowie, and Rip, the abhorrent drug
dealer from Bret Easton Ellis’s novel Less
Than Zero—once had outposts in Chicago,
Los Angeles, Toronto, and Bal Harbour,
Florida. The shop was on Wooster Street,
across from the original Comme des Garçons
boutique, which had opened in 1983, the
year Jebbia arrived in the States from Sussex,
England, when he was 19.
Six years later, in 1989, Jebbia opened the
foundational streetwear boutique Union on
Spring Street, which led him to a meeting
with Shawn Stüssy. Before long, Jebbia was
starting the first Stüssy store in New York,
also on Wooster Street. Union and Stüssy,
along with Triple 5 Soul and XLarge, made up
a new kind of retail scene in SoHo, one based
around a subculture, not designers. There
was just one piece missing: a skate shop.
“I was not thinking about it at the time,”
Jebbia says. “But it was just an instinct that
something was needed.”
brent
(Brent)
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