Supreme Might Want to Scout Its Next Artist Collab at This Book Fair
September 26 was a rough day to be outside in New York. It was windy and wet due to a much-reported-on nor'easter, the kind of weather that makes staying home feel like the only reasonable option. And yet, hundreds of people still made their way to MoMA PS1 for Printed Matter’s annual NY Art Book Fair.
Inside, dozens of artists, graphic designers, publishers, print studios, and indie makers packed the building with books, posters, zines, stickers, comics, and just about every other object you can put ink on. If anyone needed proof that print still matters, this was a pretty convincing argument. This time, though, I decided to pay less attention to the books. I wanted to see the clothes.
The logic was pretty simple: If you run a print studio and can make incredibly complicated artwork work on a piece of paper, what’s stopping you from doing the same thing on a T-shirt? Turns out, absolutely nothing.
Every table felt different. One vendor pulled from their hometown or cultural background, another from old advertisements, obscure photography, personal memories, or something they saw on the subway that morning. No two booths looked the same.
And almost every other booth had some kind of merch hanging behind it or folded on the table. There were graphic tees, wildly colorful long sleeves, screen-printed hoodies, tote bags, hats, and even hand-painted underwear.
The variety was wild. One table had a maximalist long sleeve covered almost completely in graphic prints. A few feet away, someone was selling a simple tote with one perfectly placed joke. Some pieces looked like bootlegs. Others could have been hanging inside Dover Street Market. And it was all better that nobody seemed particularly concerned with being "cool."
Maybe that’s why the clothes here felt so refreshing. The T-shirts and totes were extensions of the same little universes spread across the tables in the forms of books, posters, and zines.
Streetwear has spent decades borrowing from independent artists, underground publishing, punk flyers, comics, photography, and DIY print culture. Sometimes its a collaboration, often its an imitation. But at Printed Matter, you get to see all of those things before they’re filtered through a fashion brand. And if Supreme needs an artist for its next collaboration, it could probably find one here.
