A crowd of hundreds of street kids flashing a dandy streak in their camo and their leopard print had been assembling like a slow-motion flash mob since the night before — ever since word trickled out that the 2012 spring-summer collection for Supreme, the cultish street-wear brand, was about to drop. In certain urban circles, a new Supreme line qualifies as an event, on par with a new iPhone. Fans camp out on folding chairs and sleeping bags.
The die-hards, however, can get restless, so to break the tension, the young man, adopting the role of hip-hop hype man, decided to “make it rain” — to use a strip-club parlance. As ASAP Rocky’s rap anthem “Peso” thumped from a car parked nearby, he sent bills fluttering over the whooping crowd before tumbling into a triumphant crowd surf.
Passers-by in suits offered quizzical looks. But that’s perfectly fine with Supreme. No offense, but if you don’t know about Supreme, maybe it’s because you’re not supposed to.


For much of its 18-year existence, Supreme was confined to the in-crowd, a scruffy clubhouse for a select crew of blunt-puffing skate urchins, graffiti artists, underground filmmakers and rappers.
“It is a little club, a secret society,” said Tyler, the Creator, the rapper with the group Odd Future, who showed up at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards decked out in Supreme.
Word, though, is getting out. Once dismissed as skate-wear by fashion people, Supreme has been embraced by a new global tribe eager to crack its code.
Huge lines, once endemic to its New York flagship in SoHo, now form at satellite stores in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and other cities. The current issue of British GQ Style, a men’s fashion bible, hails Supreme as “the coolest streetwear brand in the world right now.” And the Berlin culture magazine O32c called it “the Holy Grail of high youth street culture.” The Business of Fashion site called it “the Chanel of downtown streetwear.”
On the red carpet, Supreme has become a certifiable thing for rappers and pop stars. At the recent Paris Fashion Week, Kanye West arrived at the Céline show wearing a green-camouflage pullover field jacket by Supreme. In September, Frank Ocean performed on “Saturday Night Live” wearing a Supreme hockey jersey adorned with a Southwestern-style thunderbird.
For any other brand, such sightings would be considered a P.R. coup. But they are beside the point for Supreme, which is so fiercely protective of its anarchic downtown heritage that it would rather be ignored by the masses than misunderstood.
“Most businesses just have a goal of getting as big as possible,” said Glenn O’Brien, the style writer. But Supreme does not “try to be in every department store in the world,” preferring instead to stay underground and boutique.
“Supreme is a company that refuses to sell out,” he said.
SUPREME is also a company that plays hard to get. That uncompromising spirit starts with the stores themselves.
Opened in 1994 by its press-shy founder, James Jebbia, the Lafayette Street store pioneered an art-gallery-cum-storage-facility chic, with its white walls and plywood shelving.
The Container Store this was not. The retail experience — from the Bad Brains blaring overhead, to the store clerks who sized up visitors with blank stares — could be forbidding.
Shoppers could look but not touch, especially during the early days, recalled Aaron Bondaroff, a founder of Ohwow gallery who worked at the shop in the 1990s. Anyone who mussed the folded T-shirts could expect a scolding.
The subtext was clear: One had to earn the right to shop there.
“I walked in there and, even as a girl, I still felt intimidated: these were real skate kids,” said Vashtie Kola, a downtown music video director and party promoter, recalling her visits in the ’90s. Like the skate world in general, the store, she added, was “a place where authenticity is of extreme importance.”
“People can pick up on your scent,” she continued. “It’s a hard world to gain respect in.”
Then, as now, the merchandise was every bit as coded. Supreme channels various underground style currents: the punkiness of Dogtown-era skatewear, the macho utilitarianism of military gear, the brash colors of ’80s hip-hop — and merges them into a singular aesthetic.
Prices are hardly astronomical (jeans are about $130; hoodies, $170), but Supreme cultivates the same covetous frenzy that might greet a new $9,000 Hermès Birkin bag.
Limited runs help stoke demand. A corduroy shell jacket, a collaboration with North Face listed at $298, recently sold out in one minute online and appeared almost simultaneously on eBay for $700, according to Peter Panagakos, of Strictly Supreme, a members-only Web site where Supreme zealots trade rumors and merch. (Invitations to the site are themselves highly coveted.)
Collaborations with bien-pensant contemporary artists further enhance Supreme’s esoteric air. The current fall-winter collection, for example, includes an Army-style M-51 jacket, featuring artwork by the skateboarder and artist Mark Gonzales, for $298. Skate-deck collaborations with artists like Damien Hirst and Richard Prince may retail for less than $100, but are “collected like art,” Mr. O’Brien said.
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