Supreme Is Dead, Long Live Supreme
"Supreme is dead." Blogs, forums, Discord groups, Instagram commenters, and prosaic TikToks have uttered this ad nauseum for at least a decade but finally, the Supreme doom-mongering actually bears weight.
At the moment, I think it's hardly controversial to posit that, today, Supreme is currently not the culture-defining juggernaut it once was.
What do I mean when I suggest that Supreme may actually be "dead," though?
Within the ever-nebulous realm of streetwear, a "dead" brand isn't necessarily one that's inactive or undesirable. Instead, "dead" brands are simply popular ones that have become less relevant.
Supreme remains one of the biggest brands on the planet but it isn't nearly as culturally powerful as it was, say, five or six years ago, and the decline is tangible: not in the quality of its product, not in the power of the branding, but the lack of buzz around what was once the buzziest brand in the world.
All big fashion brands go through these phases and that's all this is: a phase.
Supreme is always gonna be around, it'll always be worth talking about and I've really enjoyed its recent collections. I'm sure that, within a few years, we'll be talking about how Supreme is suddenly back, baby..
It's crucial to note that Supreme retains some of the strongest name-brand recognition in the biz, a factor that Supreme parent company VF Corp seems to value above actual sales.
Though Supreme's revenue apparently hasn't quite reached VF Corp's $600 million goal — VF Corp doesn't announce returns for individual brands but reported figures put Supreme's yearly revenue somewhere below $450 million — VF considers Supreme's branding "goodwill" valuable enough to offset the debt it incurred when it paid $2.1 billion for Supreme back in 2020.
But familiarity ≠ clout. I mean, just because something is an establishment with an internationally recognized trademark, it isn't necessarily "cool."
Look at one-time Supreme challengers like Anti Social Social Club, now "dead" in its own way and owned by the company that operates Martha Stewart's brand.
Anti Social Social Club is no longer "cool" in the way it was a half-decade ago but it's never been more visible. To this day, every ASSC drop sells out as quickly as it releases, for instance,. And yet, anyone who's even marginally tapped in to culture would paradoxically consider ASSC a "dead," or uncool, brand. That's streetwear for ya.
The difference, obviously, is that ASSC was lightning in a bottle, an overnight success never intended to be anything more than a catchy name. Meanwhile, Supreme's been a cultural touchstone since the '90s.
Thing is, Supreme really hasn't changed much since then.
Like, it was nearly newsworthy that Supreme finally switched the domain for its bare-bones website from Supremenewyork.com to the Shopify-powered Supreme.com in early 2023.
This stubborn consistency has served Supreme well for years.
Solely based on the strength of word of mouth and IYKYK clientele, Supreme became arguably the most powerful clothing brand in youth culture for the entirety of the 2010s. Its high-profile collaborations sold out in milliseconds as merch-crazed fans devised bots to auto-snipe coveted drops, resharing photos of themselves flexing their new goods on Tumblr.
But times are a-changin', even if Supreme itself isn't. In the age of social media, it's iterate or die and Supreme clearly has no desire to iterate, even as its competition multiplies.
Here's an anecdotal example of how that's cutting into business: back in the day, even the middling Supreme collabs used to sell out instantly, if only because enterprising flippers would attempt to make a buck on the resale market.
However, Supreme and The North Face's Spring/Summer 2023 collection — typically one of Supreme's hottest drops — sat online for days.
On the secondhand market, Supreme's SS23 TNF Nuptses are selling for maybe $100 or so over retail.
Some of Supreme's past Nuptse designs can resell for upwards of four figures, for comparison.
The lack of excitement is palpable especially on third-party Supreme platforms, where fans rate and discuss recent Supreme drops.
Over on SupremeCommunity, weekly droplist rankings that used to attract tens of thousands of votes from fans only draw a couple thousand reactions at most, and the feedback is overwhelmingly negative to most of the collection (admittedly, that's par for the course with Supreme fans).
Fact of the matter is that more and more Supreme product is sitting around.
Not that the product is worse than it used to be, by any means.
Actually, I'd posit that Supreme is currently killing it design-wise, thanks in no small part to new creative director Tremaine Emory.
Supreme's SS23 season has delivered big-name collabs like new Nike Dunks and the kitschy Supreme-branded Tamagotchi, and the in-line product is seriously great: I'm genuinely impressed by the covetable statement pieces, the relaxed silhouettes, the slight acquiescence to trends.
The mature needlepoint shirts, pinstriped suits, moto-inspired leather jackets, baggy denim jeans, crocheted bucket hats: this is clever stuff that's both as wearable and self-indulgently weird as the Supreme of yore, except even better.
But the kids who gathered in droves outside Supreme's new LA store weren't clamoring for cool product: they just wanted to flip sneakers.
Such is the state of any brand big enough to get a Nike Dunk collaboration, to be fair — and embarrassing dudes have flexed Supreme collections since time immemorial — but there are a lot of kids who see Supreme as streetwear's elderly (not elder) statesman.
If we're at the point where 16-year-old sneaker convention attendees are pondering that Supreme is only just now ready for a comeback, maybe it's actually been gone for a while.
Who swiped Supreme's crown?
I'd argue that it wasn't any one brand but a collective of labels empowered by social media and reconfigured creative direction.
There is no more streetwear monoculture; the audience has splintered.
Saved from the ignominy of mall retailers by a killer creative team (including some oversight from current Supreme CD Tremaine Emory), Stüssy is now the streetwear king, coveted by both the TikTok set and fashion-y folks.
Supreme's once-unchallenged collaborative dominance has been entirely upturned by Palace Skateboards, which created so many insane collaborations in 2022 alone that they deserve their own list. Supreme's bizarre accessories no longer provoke; now, MSCHF's ingenious conceptual projects do the talking.
Kith, the approachable yin to Supreme's standoffish yang, continues selling thousands upon thousands of SKUs to an enormous international audience.
Tyler, the Creator's Golf Wang, PLEASURES, Brain Dead, FTP, Fucking Awesome, Stray Rats, Market: sure, these brands all appeal to a wide, overlapping consumer base but they also channel a core clientele of devotees who follow every move not unlike Supreme shoppers of year's past.
This is true across the world. In the UK, for instance, local labels like Corteiz and Clints do the same, organically driving levels of hype not seen since Supreme's heyday.
All this is to say that Supreme is dead. Not "dead" in the literal sense, mind you: Supreme is still a big name with a big following that sells plenty of clothes.
It's just that Supreme ain't nearly as hyped, as exciting, as vital as it once was.
One day, Supreme will probably once again be the coolest clothing company on the planet (waiting on that second Louis Vuitton collab). But, for now, it's taken a backseat to the usurpers.
No one's on top forever.
