Supreme has withstood a lotta ups and downs throughout 2023, from a lackluster consumer response to following slumped sales to a banger Fall/Winter 2023 collection that's delivered some of Supreme's best collaborations in years. What better way to end the year than by cementing a new creative director or two?
Two would be right: October 2023 scuttlebutt suggested that Supreme was thinking about hiring a duo of creative directors to replace Tremaine Emory, the Denim Tears founder.
According to the rumors that sprung up en masse on October 19, Supreme was looking to hire Remington Guest and Heather Haber, Advisory Board Crystals' co-founders.
If true, this would've make the pair Supreme's first creative director duo and Haber Supreme's first woman creative director.
To get to the bottom of things — as much as anyone can with a brand as press-shy as Supreme — Highsnobiety reached out to Supreme, representatives for Supreme, and Advisory Board Crystals itself.
ABC.'s friendly founders demurred to comment but, on October 20, a representative for Supreme confirmed to Highsnobiety that the rumors were false.
Though there's always the possibility that the ABC. folks could one day go to Supreme or that Supreme may eventually hire a creative director duo, but these recent rumors are entirely unfounded.
Note that these allegations came exclusively from the usual spurious streetwear sources, most of whom simply reposted the others' near-identical captions and images in a tremendous display of journalistic integrity. Some pages have since deleted their posts in shame.
Whispers of Supreme hiring the Advisory Board Crystals folks first sprung up on streetwear-related Reddit pages.
Not exactly the font of truth you ought to be turning to for guidance but given the shocking prescience possessed by Supreme leakers — Supreme's collaborations are frequently revealed online weeks, if not months, before they're announced — perhaps it's worth taking things with a little more than a grain of salt.
Furthermore, an anonymous source reiterated the Advisory Board Crystals/Supreme rumors to Highsnobiety, urging us to look closer. So we did.
In under a decade, ABC.'s co-founders have turned their brand into a quiet powerhouse, releasing multiple surprisingly expansive clothing collections each season and turning out collaborations with household names like mega-retailer KITH, skatewear giant Vans, and the NBA.
This is the kind of super-hyphenate reach is practically mandatory for past Supreme creative directors like NOAH's Brendon Babenzien, AWAKE NY's Angelo Baque, and Proper Gang's Max Vanderwoude Gross, though all of those men were hired from within — Tremaine Emory was the first external hire Supreme made in its 30-year history.
Tremaine Emory publicly confirmed his departure from Supreme in late August 2023 over what Supreme loosely termed creative differences and Emory objectively termed systematic racism.
Especially in light of Emory's salient points about the fashion industry's seriously lacking diversity quotas, it would indeed be odd that Supreme's leadership would again hire white designers as its creative leads.
But there you have it: the rumors are fake news. Always nice to have the last word about anything Supreme-related.
