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© Ari Marcopoulos

GQ Style Magazine

Supreme genius James Jebbia on creating the coolest streetwear brand

Streetwear brand Supreme sold 50 per cent of it stakes this week to a private equity firm for a rumoured $500 million. If that's correct, it makes the billion-dollar brand one of the most successful and influential of our time. Back in 2012, GQ Style sat down with founder James Jebbia to talk about how he started Supreme, the inspiration behind this cult streetwear-come-skate wear brand, and why it's had such a huge impact

The city is happening. Hot and sweltering. Hip­hop is at a peak: Pac, Snoop, Suge, Biggie and Puffy are indulging in a cross-coast beef. Staten Island's Wu-Tang killa bees are swarming all over the globe. The Queensbridge projects are about to change everything, birthing rappers Nas, Mobb Deep, Capone-N-Noreaga, Cormega and Tragedy. The Manhattan streets are unruly and rebellious, with The Limelight and Tunnel being the chemical palaces for the club kids.

This was New York pre-internet, pre-mobile phones, pre-gentrification... Pre Rudy Giuliani bringing out the NYPD street-sweepers and cleaning up the city. Aaron Rose was showcasing the emerging new generation of stateside art and photography talent in his Alleged Gallery. That summer, photographer Larry Clark documented the downtown tearaways in his epochal movie Kids, scripted by a teenage Harmony Karine. It was also the year James Jebbia opened the doors to his Supreme skate store on Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan, in its own way also an incredible NY moment. Without realising it, Jebbia managed to bottle the energy of the city and the style of the streets with his skate and fashion brand.

Nyco army trench coat, red and white cotton thermal striped T-shirt and yellow wool flecked beanie, all by Supreme.

© Ari Marcopoulos

If you decide to label your brand Supreme, you need to step up and ensure it does exactly what it says on the packet. Throughout its 18 years, Supreme has defined and refined what it means to be cool. The brand's effortless logo - a Barbara Kruger-influenced red box surrounding a white block typeface - is an iconic emblem for a worldwide gang as recognisable as the LV monogram or Hells Angels' rocker for those who know.

James Jebbia rarely steps out to front his business. He is calm, considered and authoritative but resists almost all publicity, letting the label speak for itself. He doesn't aspire to be the star of the show. He isn't that player who snaps your hand through a tricky, finger popping handshake then loses you in street ebonies. "I’m not a DJ, I'm not a scenester," he says. "I'm too busy to be bullshitting around as we are constantly working to make sure all aspects of the business come off right." Jebbia's personal style is understated, neat and crisp, today's outfit being a grade-four buzz cut, worn with a button-down Oxford shirt and dark jeans. His accent has a transatlantic shade, yet is still resolutely British. Born in the States to a British mother and American father who worked in the US Air Force, James and his family moved to Britain when he was just 18 months old, before he gravitated back to New York aged 19. "I came over here with $100; it was 1983 and I just ended up staying. New York at that time was very inexpensive and it was very easy to get a job. We lived on Staten Island and you could get cheap rent. It was a good time to be in New York."

Harris tweed coach's jacket, striped cotton Oxford shirt, beige five-pocket canvas trousers and red and beige suede baseball cap, all by Supreme

© Ari Marcopoulos

Sitting behind his desk in the Supreme office in Soho, James' work space is bright and airy, with KA WS artwork and a framed photo of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, sitting on the bonnet of his silver ghost Rolls Royce with an MVP license plate hanging on the walls. On the floor in the corner sits a collection of new boot samples and a pair of legendary rapper and graffiti artist Rammellzee's 3-D tracers pieces. James' office is located above the space where he first found work in fashion: a store then known as Parachute, where he was taken under the wing of its owner, Morgan. "He was a good boss, a real mentor. Parachute was a bit futuristic, it was kind of cool; Gary Numan came in and Michael Jackson wore the leather jacket with the big epaulettes. It was a great time but I just wanted to do more."

With his girlfriend at the time, James started a market stall on Broadway and West 4th, making and selling backpacks. In 1989, he opened his first seminal store, Union, on Spring Street. "I was very satisfied to just be doing my own thing with Union. Working 10 hours a week or whatever didn't matter. We were able to pay our rent and it felt good. That's how it all started."

Rose-patterned knit jumper and cotton Oxford shirt by Supreme

© Ari Marcopoulos

The key stores then around the Downtown area were X-Large, Stüssy, Triple Five Soul and Union. While James was trying to stock Stüssy, a chance meeting with Shawn Stüssy led to James running the Stüssy store on Prince Street. "I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without what Shawn has done," James admits. "He came in and he was really cool and he saw that what we were doing was a little bi new. Shawn was a huge personal influence too, because at the time he was doing such great stuff. He is a unique character and was definitely another mentor for me."

Shawn Stüssy was the forefather of what would become streetwear as we now know it. With an eye on the skate and surf cults, Shawn created a style with Stüssy that was coveted globally not just as clothing but as a way to join Shawn's posse, the Stüssy World Tribe. Setting up teams in NY, London, LA and Tokyo, his collaborators included the brains and brilliance of designers Paul Mittleman, Hiroshi Fujiwara and distributor Michael Kopelman. From hip-hop kids to ravers, surf dudes and grebos, they were all drawn to Shawn's baggy denims and signature hand-written emblems.

Red melton wool hooded Varsity jacket with leather sleeves, plaid cotton shirt and black cotton work trousers, all by Supreme

© Ari Marcopoulos

When Shawn moved on from Stüssy and sold his share of the business, Jebbia made the decision to launch Supreme. "I really liked what was coming out of skate culture at the time. So I just thought, “OK, let’s do a skate shop.” This was at a time before the internet, where you could take a chance; if it worked great and if it didn’t, then OK. We opened the store and it was very bare bones. The guys I hired were very key. Everybody who worked in the store was a skateboarder. And there were a lot of young people starting to skate and they would gravitate towards the store because of the crew who worked there, so the store became like a hangout."

The architecture of the Supreme stores and their sales assistants have always played a crucial role in establishing the brand identity, with the staff bringing the ubiquitous, middle-finger-to-the-world attitude. The shop kids were gnarly and raw and generated an intimidating, real vibe where skate videos played all day and the freshest hip-hop mixtapes blasted -out on to the sidewalk. But such intimidation never discouraged customers from visiting.

"The staff would come out with the cocky attitude, but everything always looked really good," James concurs. "It was very precise, and we were smart enough and proud enough to be like, "Yeah, we have got good stuff and we are going to treat it well." We aren't doing much different now; the people that worked there, they were the ones that really helped establish what we are."

Green, red and black leather down jacket, newsprint cotton T-shirt and black slim denim jeans, all by Supreme

© Ari Marcopoulos

Gravitating to the store were a host of locals and downtown rebels. There was Justin Pierce (Casper in Kids), skateboarders including Harold Hunter and Jason Dill, artist and illustrator Gio Estevez (who was also the store manager) and Aaron Bondaroff, CEO of the anything brand, co-founder of the OHWOW art collective and model in this feature. There was also the art and photography crowd, such as Ari Marcopoulous, Kenneth Cappello and Terry Richardson. Ari and Terry's photography established an identity for Supreme, their images becoming synonymous with the brand. Ari's documentation of the mid-Nineties scene forms a collaged backdrop at Supreme's stores in Tokyo and London, while Terry and Kenneth have shot lookbooks for the brand and fly-poster campaigns and T-shirts that have seen the legendary box-logo tee worn by Lou Reed, Kermit the Frog, The Diplomats, Raekwon, Lady Gaga, Mike Tyson and the latest with rappers Three 6 Mafia.

Each season the collection is perfectly pitched - a ti1neless capsule of Americana that sits neatly alongside legendary American outdoor, workwear and sportswear heritage including Ralph Lauren, Hilfiger, Polo Sport, Carhartt, Nautica, Dickies and North Face. Supreme don't do runway shows; they simply have a holding page on their website that keeps fans coming back time and again, waiting for the release date of their latest product drop. When the collection arrives in-store, a roadblock of fans floods the neighbourhood. The word-of-mouth excitement among guys interested in stylish clothes is - in this day and age - breath-taking to see. The customers know that each product comes in such limited quantities that once a particular item has gone that’s it. It ain’t ever coming back,

The Supreme look is delivered between the styles continuously appropriated by the hip-hop and skate worlds: Ivy League, collegiate, military and sports­wear themes, denim, checks, plaids and stripes, alongside a classic workwear influence. The collection weighs in with a referenced knowledge that goes into fabric, cut, details and durability, making each piece often feel and look like perfectly preserved vintage.

Black wool overcoat and deco cotton shirt by Supreme; denim 505 jeans by Levi's for Supreme

© Ari Marcopoulos

A fan of APC, Katharine Hamnett and Jil Sander, James explains the brand's evolvement under his guidance, which now includes tailoring, shirting and suiting. "We were one of the first to say, "Let's make a really nice shirt for skaters and let's make it really well." We don't dumb down for somebody young; we are always trying to do something new." Unbound by trends, there's a simple thumping heart at Supreme's core. The brand remains inspired by moments in time in NY. It's as simple as that - stimulated by the NY streets, for those streets, and beyond."

Over the years, Supreme has collaborated with (among many others) Levi's, Vans, The North Face, Nike, Comme Des Gargons, Adam Kimmel, Malcolm McLaren, A Bathing Ape and W Taps on their fashion - and skateboard graphics with Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Harmony Korine and most recently Jake and Dinos Chapman. So how do the collaborations come about and how do they maintain such a high quality of contributors? "We are very careful with our collaborations. There's got to be a reason behind it; we don't abuse it and we don't want to lose people’s trust."

As James expands the business with additional stores around the world, (LA, London, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka, with the third Tokyo store recently opening in Shibuya), he's quick to establish that his ambition for his company is to maintain its integrity. "If I was to stop working tomorrow, I'd be like, OK... I did what I wanted to do; I did what I liked, what I really believe in, and I'm fine with that. In an ideal world, we can just remain a small but tight business that grows naturally." James' philosophy behind Supreme is straightforward: "We just want to make really great-looking clothes that are well-made, fit well... that you can skate in. It's just about rebellious youth who are into cool shit."

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