As part of i-D‘s ongoing 35th anniversary festivities, the legendary fashion publication sat down with Supreme’s James Jebbia to discuss the brand’s image, legacy and roots, as well as his personal fondness for the longstanding magazine – hardly surprising given his label’s famously eclectic cultural lens.
Read some choice excerpts below, and check out Supreme’s recently unveiled collaboration with Thrasher while you’re at it.
““We’re not thinking about image and legacy, we just want to make great stuff, season in, season out, no more, no less. New York is a great place and I’m lucky to have worked with a lot of the same people for a long time, and we’re just all on the same page. We’re not trying to be everything for everybody. We’re not trying to please the masses. We just want to grow at a reasonable pace. Supreme hasn’t changed for 20 years, and that feels very simple to me.”
When pressed to identify a moment he would hold up as a pinnacle in Supreme’s evolution, without much hesitation James says, “When we did the posters with Lou Reed, shot by Terry Richardson. Simply because before that, there was a perception of what a brand like Supreme could be about and what we represented to a lot of people – and to most it’s skateboarding and it’s hip-hop. In my head, it wasn’t just that. But when we worked with Lou Reed, it made people question what that was all about. To us it made perfect sense, he was an awesome musician and he was a rebel. It allowed us to do other things that wouldn’t be expected from a skate/streetwear brand, in a way that we could go in other directions if and when we wanted to and it would still feel real and natural.””
For the full feature, head over to i-D.