The Rise and Fall of Supreme
The Rise and Fall of Supreme
By: Hardy Greene
In 1994, Supreme was founded in New York City by James Jebbia. The brand was a skate-focused streetwear brand that put skaters first and stayed on the cutting edge with eccentric pieces and controversial designs. Jebbia created Supreme as a way for skaters in NYC to represent the underground scene.
Supreme sells a limited quantity of each product they make. These products release in “drops” which occur once a week during two seasons annually. This limit allows products to sell out, and as Supreme has grown, the brand has developed a secondary market where popular pieces could resell for up to tens of thousands of dollars.
Flash forward 20 years from the founding and Supreme is everywhere. Recognizable figures from musicians to athletes were wearing the brand’s most recognizable design – the box logo. This massive popularity led to the development of so-called “hypebeast” culture. The word “hypebeast” is defined as “someone who enjoys something not because of their personal preferences, but the general popularity of it.” This culture is stereotypically housed by wealthy teens using their parents’ funds to buy all of the most popular clothing as opposed to developing their own style, and while this does not make up the entire culture, it is important to understand how it was seen by the masses.
As this massive community of non-skating teens began to look to celebrities for the brands that they should purchase, Supreme rapidly became the favorite choice. The craze that ensued brought the negative connotation surrounding “hypebeasts” around the nature of the brand and Supreme did little to negate this connection. Due to this, many original followers of the brand began to claim that the company had “sold out,” looking past their original audience to instead flood the market with heavily branded pieces that the “hypebeasts” would love.
In this tale as old as time, Supreme continued to focus on the newly given attention and look immediately past the company’s original audience. This led to further negative attention as the brand lost its edge and creative innovation, moving from the designs that pushed them into the spotlight.
Multiple sales of the company to major corporations followed, including to the current owner, the VF Corporation, who bought the brand in 2020. The community dubbed this move “the death of Supreme,” as selling the brand to a major corporation seemed to go against everything the brand represented. Since the sale in 2020, there have been multiple releases that have had the community wondering if the creative team at Supreme has a resurrection of the company in the works. The brand has continued to garner a bit of buzz which, although only a fraction of the hype the company had at its peak, has consumers and former “hypebeasts” interested. Whether this will come to fruition with creative designs and edgy pieces like those the company used to specialize in is a concern that will only be answered with time.
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