Don't Supreme & Number (N)ine Deserve Each Other?
10 years ago, Supreme and Number (N)ine collaboration would've set the world on fire. Or something like that. Even in 2025, it's probably a big enough deal among a certain contingent of shoppers who still shop Supreme that they'll inevitably snap up the collaborative gear when it drops as part of Supreme's Fall/Winter 2025 collection in the coming weeks.
It's just by now, this brand-new partnership already feels like a throwback. Supreme and Number (N)ine deserve each other. Just maybe not in the way one may think.
The collaboration was announced by its inclusion in the FW25 lookbook that Supreme debuted on August 25. That aggro Mickey Mouse gripping a mic stand is an overt play on Number (N)ine nostalgia.
As of 2017 or so, Number (N)ine, the label founded in the '90s by genius designer Takahahiro Miyashita, began enjoying a second life as a buzzy "archival" label. Some of its louder graphic pieces became downright collectible, coveted by mostly young and uniformly online fashion dudes.
The mic-stand Mickey graphic is a Number (N)ine classic, reiterating a throwback Tokyo Disney graphic tee once worn by Eddie Vedder.
In the Number (N)ine canon, it has since earned the nickname "Mickey Vedder" and was even made into a vinyl toy, symbolic of Number (N)ine's prescient blend of streetwear visibility and subcultural steeze.
But Number (N)ine itself is currently in a state of creative limbo.
After Miyashita sold the imprint to a new parent company in 2010, he moved on to TheSoloist. (which he's also departing, following its Fall/Winter 2025 collection) That company still operates Number (N)ine in zombie form, seasonally watering down and reiterating notions pioneered and perfected by Miyashita decades ago.
Supreme, likewise, is in an odd place. It's shifted corporate owners while weathering both lawsuits and withering critiques from the culture it once epitomized, all while rivals have swiped its throne. When I said that "Supreme is dead" a few years back, I meant that Supreme has very little place in the scene that it helped birth. And I don't think that much has changed in the months since.
That's not to say that Supreme and Number (N)ine don't each command some historic respect to this day. (Though, of the two, only Supreme is still dropping noteworthy collaborations.) But they're both relics of bygone eras rather than icons of the here and now.
Past their prime? Arguable. But certainly a decade from peak relevance, at least, though they're certainly not alone in that regard. Indeed, perhaps Supreme and Number (N)ine are actually a perfect pair.
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