s-double.com
supreme
good read about one of the main influencers behind my store in 2000
Supreme is a different sort of fashion company. Some people would call Supreme street fashion, some would call it skater fashion, but really it’s beyond classification. They make clothes and accessories, but they also make skateboards, and the skateboards are collected like art. In fact, they’ve put out skateboard decks by artists such as Larry Clark, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Christopher Wool, Nate Lowman, and most recently, Damien Hirst. Their shoes and other products are collected as fanatically as art. Sometimes when a new item comes in, customers line up on the sidewalk for 24 hours, sleeping on the street to be among the lucky few who are able to buy it—there’s a big secondary market for Supreme stuff, in part because it is produced in only very small quantities, but also because Supreme has just two shops in the U.S. (one in New York and one in L.A.), five in Japan, and they sell to a very limited number of other stores, like Hide Out in London and Colette in Paris.
Supreme’s founder James Jebbia was in on the first wave of skater fashion, partnering with Sean Stüssy. When Stüssy left the business, Jebbia opened up Supreme in 1994 in a small storefront on Lafayette Street in downtown New York. Fifteen years later, Supreme is at the pinnacle of populist youth fashion. It’s as big as it wants to be in New York and L.A. and huge in Japan. It’s got a renegade eye, outlaw good taste, and a sort of cult following that lives on the razor’s edge of fashion, art, and sport.
GLENN O’BRIEN: So how is the recession treating you?
JAMES JEBBIA: Our business is really good. We didn’t plan for a financial crisis, but we were
already working hard, trying to make really good product, and we’ve always tried to keep our prices as reasonable as we can.GO: We’re seeing an interesting moment in the marketplace. I think it’s a time for new values. I think some of these empty luxury brands are going to disappear.
JJ: I agree. I don’t wish for anybody to go out of business, but I think there are far too many things in New York that really shouldn’t be here. I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for more than 20 years, so three or four times I’ve been through things where it’s like, “Wow, it’s a tough time.” Ever since September 11, I’ve been quite conservative in what we’ve ordered. We’ve never really been supply-demand anyway. It’s not like when we’re making something, we make only six of them. But if we can sell 600, I make 400. We’ve always been like that—at least for the past seven or eight years. For every season, we put in a lot of work to try to create exciting stuff. So it’s not like in these difficult times we’re going to suddenly pull up our socks—we’ve always been busting our asses every single day to try to get it right.
GO: Was it like that in the beginning?
JJ: Not really. We opened in 1994—
GO: That was during an economic downturn, right?
JJ: Yeah, but we did good in that environment . . . It was really a different time. I had the Stüssy store right here on Prince Street, but Sean Stüssy, the designer, didn’t know whether he was going to do it for that long. He’d made a ton of money, and then I think he decided to retire. So I thought, Shit, I’d better be doing something else, too, because I don’t want to count on this. I’d always loved what went on in skateboarding. I’d never skated myself, but I loved the graphics—I really liked the rebelliousness of it. And a lot of kids who worked for me skated, but it seemed to me that there were no skate shops around. So I was like, “Okay, cool, maybe I’ll do a skate shop.” It cost me, like, $12,000 to open the store. Rent was two grand. It was like, “Hey, if we do five grand a week, then great!” We didn’t really do any business at first, but we did okay. I really liked all of the hard goods—the decks, the wheels, the trucks. But all of the clothing that the skate companies put out was crap. These companies had to sell to a wide range of people, and a lot of them were very young. When people think of skaters, they think of, like, the 12- or 13- or 14-year-old kid. But in New York, it was the 18-to-24-year-old hardcore kid who wasn’t wearing any skate stuff. They’d wear a hat or whatever, but they wouldn’t wear the clothing,because it would fit badly and was bad quality, and skaters want to look good and pick up girls. So we slowly started making our own stuff. It was a time when it was a lot easier to do that kind of thing. It was easier to make a sweatshirt in Brooklyn, or do these hats locally, because you could get nice things made fairly easily. And because we didn’t have to worry about appeasing a 14-year-old kid in a mall, we spent a lot of time trying to make the right stuff. We didn’t dumb it down—we only made things that we really liked. I feel like kids in New York appreciated that, and after a while we got a bit of a following in Japan and in Europe, and we’ve just kind of done it the same ever since. We’ve kept on that same mission of just being a small company, but really trying to make our product as good as anybody else’s and concentrating on what we can do well. That’s why I’ve appreciated you as a customer. A lot of people dismiss what we do. They think, Well, it’s skate, so it’s got to be, like, big baggy pants, cap backwards, big chain . . . They don’t understand that just because skating is the culture we’re working in, it doesn’t mean that we can’t make good things.
GO: Well, I stopped in eventually because I was in the neighborhood. I’m probably the age of your customers’ fathers and I must have walked by Supreme a thousand times before I ever walked in. But I guess I saw something in the window and I thought, “Gee, that looks good. Maybe I’ll go look at that.” Then I immediately realized that both the quality and the concept were great. The khakis or the jeans that I have from you is stuff where I’m like, “Why didn’t I buy three pairs?” A.P.C. is also like that—there’s an independent mentality.
JJ: Definitely. I feel like A.P.C. has done a great job of really sticking to what they do. They keep an eye on what’s going on in fashion, but it’s always rooted in a ’60s kind of French style. Our stuff is pretty similar each season, but we keep an eye on what’s going on, and it’s always fresh, and there’s always, I think, a sense of the early ’90s to it. That era is definitely a big influence running through everything we do—that was a really special time. And since we started back then, I think it’s fine for us to always look to that era and get a lot of influence from it. It’s not nostalgic—it’s more like it’s a part of us.
GO: How did the name come about?
JJ: Supreme wasn’t meant to be a brand. I just was like, “Hey, that’s a cool name for a store.” But it’s become a problem since it’s become a brand because we don’t own the name. It’s a good name, but it’s a difficult one to trademark.
GO: Interview is kind of like that. Somebody has an Interview out in Russia now. But you also have a great logo, so that probably makes it easier in a way.
JJ: Yeah, it does. That kind of thing used to bug me more. I know there are other Supreme shops in other countries, but after a while, people know what the real thing is. With Supreme, there were no grand plans—with the name, with the store, with anything. It all just evolved. These days, it’s a lot more difficult to do that. You’ve got to come out with all guns blazing right away or you don’t stand a chance. Whereas when we first started, there weren’t blogs ready to shoot us down the day we opened. We were given time to make mistakes and grow.
GO: How did you get big in Japan? Was it Japanese kids coming here and then taking stuff back with them?
JJ: Yeah. Do you go to Japan much?
GO: I used to go a lot. I’m dying to go back.
JJ: I go maybe once a year and I always get inspired. I think what happened was, right when we were starting, there was a little scene building up in Japan. There were a few new Japanese brands starting up for young people. Now, they don’t need any more product out there, but if it’s something that’s legitimate, then I think they’re very keen to embrace it. So our eyes were never on Japan. It was more like—
GO: They found you.
JJ: Yeah. We never pandered to the Japanese customer. We still don’t. It’s more like we’re just trying to make stuff for that real pain-in-the-ass, picky New York kid. And I think that the kids in Japan could see that and say, “Okay, yeah, that’s legit. There’s nothing else quite like that going on.”
GO: Japanese connoisseurship is so interesting. There’s this great, educated taste. Last night, I was lying in bed with my wife, watching the football game. She was on her laptop and she said, “The Japanese are ruining the ceramics market!” I said, “What?” She’s really into modern design, and I guess a lot of the modernist stuff she collects has gone through the roof because the Japanese are buying it now. She said, “Our plates have gone up five times in price!”
JJ: What I find in Japan is that there are certain people who have a lot of influence. So if there’s somebody, say, like, Nigo or Hiroshi [Fujiwara] . . . This isn’t dropping names, but if those guys are into, like, [Jean] Prouvé furniture, then it’s going to become popular. They
really do have people there who influence society, and if those people deem that they love something, then it becomes this big thing. These Japanese collectors know what they’re buying, though, from denim to records to stereo equipment . . . They’re very smart.GO: When did you start doing your own skateboard decks?
JJ: We started doing decks probably around 1997, but more the logo kinds of ones. Maybe once a year we’d do something—no big deal. Then we started doing more around maybe 2000 or something.
GO: Who was the first artist you worked with?
JJ: The first actual artist was Rammellzee.
GO: Was he difficult to work with?
JJ: He was actually one of the easiest people to work with.
GO: Really?
JJ: Yeah. I had him do these pieces in the store. It was very much like, “This is the money I want and I’ll do it.” He was very much like that. Rammellzee is not politically correct. When he comes into the office, he’s a bit crazy and the girls are a bit scared of him . . . [laughs] But I think his decks were the first decks that we did. Then from there we did something with Ryan McGinness and then with Kaws. But I think what really got attention was when we did those Larry Clark decks. What’s important for us is the kid who comes into the store. It’s actually easier to get the art crowd, because they’ll buy anything if they think they can make money off of it. But for us, it’s not good if a kid doesn’t look at it and say, “I don’t know what the fuck that is or who did it, but that’s really cool.” Larry’s decks, I feel, were very much like that. We got both audiences into them. Then Jeff Koons saw the deck that Larry did and liked it, and he did some decks for us, which was really cool. Jeff was as easy to work with as anybody that we’ve worked with—he was just as into it. I really appreciated that he cared that young people liked them and that they looked good. He wasn’t tormented. He didn’t drive us nuts. It wasn’t like some rarefied experience. Since then, that’s really been our approach. Working with these artists is quite a simple process for us: We don’t make a big deal of it, they don’t either, and I think that’s kind of why it works.
GO: One of the great things about Jeff is that he has the original spirit of Pop art. Pop art was supposed to change the world, and then it got sort of co-opted by the market. But it’s great when artists makeproduct that gets out there to lots of people.
JJ: There have been a couple of artists who we’ve thought it would be good to work with, and then they’re like, “I can’t have my artwork on a skateboard.” But I don’t think somebody like Jeff needs to worry about his place in the art world. Now when we work with people, it’s because they get a kick out of it more than anything else. It’s as simple as that. Nobody’s making a ton of money off of it.
GO: I’m friends with Christopher Wool, and he can get a little tortured because he’s a perfectionist. I said, “I really like the decks you did.” He said, “Yeah, but the brown one isn’t the right color. It doesn’t look enough like shit!”
JJ: [laughs] Again, Christopher was quite easy to work with. I wish we could have done the text ones, but he didn’t want to do them. But while it’s important for us to work with these big artists, it’s just as important to us to work with people who nobody knows. It’s just as important when somebody sends us something like a graphic or whatever, and we think, Wow, that’s great. We’ve got to keep our balance because we don’t want it to be like, “Oh, they’re just doing this high-end stuff.” I feel the reason that we get to work with a lot of people is because it is a street-level kind of thing. And we don’t number these things, but they are of a limited run. It’s funny, because we often get these art people who come in and get really mad when we don’t tell them the edition . . . They get really pissed. It’s like, “Look, it’s 68 fuckin’ dollars. Don’t worry about the edition. If we really wanted to do that, we’d be selling these for a thousand dollars. Buy it and like it and get the fuck out.” So it’s funny how some of the people who come in just don’t understand. We know we could sell these things for more, but we want young people to be able to buy them.
GO: But that happens with the shoes, too, when the kids are lined up around the block . . .
JJ: Yeah. But when we do a pair of sneakers, they’re never that limited—for us, at least. They’re limited to our stores, but I’m not into making six of something. If we’re doing a pair of sneakers and they’re 90 bucks, then, yeah, there are probably going to be 1,000 or 1,500 pairs. I hate things when they’re too precious. That’s why we never, ever classify our stuff as limited. Ever. In an ideal world for us, I look at it like the product sold out within two weeks. Ideally, we have it and it’s gone in two weeks and then it’s done.
GO: A lot of those kids must be selling the sneakers. I see them on eBay or whatever.
JJ: Yeah. But I just look at it like that’s what kids do nowadays. You get a lot of young people who will come and line up and sleep out overnight to buy something, and then they put it on eBay. If they’re hustling to make a hundred bucks, fine. I have no problem with it. I used to think more of it. But now I just think it’s no different than somebody going and checking out a blog or something. To be honest, I’d worry if that didn’t happen, because then it’d mean that people don’t like our product.
GO: I have some friends who collect sneakers, and they just keep them in the box. Do people actually wear them?
JJ: I think people do both. A lot of these sneaker collectors buy two pairs—they wear one pair and they save one pair. But that whole sneaker game has fizzled a bit in the last couple of years because the sneaker companies started to actually market to that customer and kind of ruined it. Before, it was a phenomenon. People would be collecting Jordans and all these unique pairs. But the sneaker companies started to look at it like, “That’s a customer we’ve got to go after,” and, as always happens, they kind of did it too much . . . And the customers aren’t dumb—after a while they say, “Hey, they’re just playing us.” So every single time we put out something new, I’m nervous. I’m never like, “Yeah, these are sold out.” I’m always nervous. Because you never know. We always try to make things as good as we can, but I never count on that. So when I do see a line in front of the store, I’m like, “Cool. People still like the stuff.”
GLENN O'BRIEN IS INTERVIEW'S EDITORIAL DIRECTOR.
http://soytuaire.labuat.com/
you have to check this out. have fun. write your loves name with it.
http://soytuaire.labuat.com/
http://soytuaire.labuat.com/
photos from banksy's bristol show
don't tell anyone but this last one is banksy.. much love. great show -Godspeed
Go to london.
Typically for a man who keeps his identity secret, the whole project has been shrouded in mystery, with media, local councillors and even staff at the museum only finding out about the project Friday, the day before it was due to open.
It has over 100 exhibits, including 70 new works. One of the pieces is a sculpture designed to convey a mother bird and two chicks in a nest but using three CCTV cameras instead to symbolise Britain's surveillance society.
"This is the first show I've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off," Banksy was quoted by the BBC as saying. "This show is my vision of the future."
Many of Banksy's works are hidden amongst the art museum's more traditional paintings, mimicking a 2003 stunt when he smuggled a work into the Tate Britain gallery in London and stuck it to the wall. It went undiscovered for hours.
Banksy became famous through illegal outdoor graffiti, including painting on the West Bank barrier and leaving a life-size figure of a Guantanamo Bay detainee at the California theme park Disneyland.
Simon Cook, deputy leader of Bristol council who has responsibility for arts, said he was thrilled Banksy was back, despite his controversial nature.
"Everybody assumed it (his new exhibition) would be in Los Angeles, in New York, in London, but he insisted it came to Bristol... and it's just him coming home," Cook said.
A PR company representing Banksy released a statement, which it said came directly from the artist, explaining why he was staging the show in Bristol.
"Banksy, who is rumoured to hail from the Bristol area, but has never revealed his full identity due to ongoing legal complications, is mounting the show as a salute to the city, which supported his early street career," it read.
From small time graffiti artist to global star, Banksy's work has become so valuable that several of his street works have been salvaged and sold, including a painting on a wall in London that fetched 208,100 pounds in an online sale in 2008.
One of the highest sums paid for a Banksy at auction was 288,000 pounds for "Space Girl and Bird."
art of the week..
thought it was cool 
this was a fun stencil a saw in encinitas
and since its the anniversary of peace in china.and last but not lease - again a peace dove from dave kinsey.. one of my favorites.
options for my wedding dress up...
well, we picked our colors..
down below you see me at the swap meet trying to get a good deal on some vest for the wedding.. bought a half dozen in pink for the boys and i, then i tried on the tail coat tux which supposed to be the most formal of the formal.. however amy thinks i look like a waiter.. i agree. so i think were gonna do the long coat.. boy i love the swap meet culture. two jackets, six shirts, cufflink sets for all, 6 bow ties, 6 vests, all matching and all dry cleaned, except the white oscar de la whoever dinner tux coat i bought. anyhow, all that - oh, plus six hanky's for a whopping total of $75.oo
went to the apple store to fix my old mirror tower.. learning from the genius boys.. on my way out i couldn't help but to play dress up @express in search for my ultimate wedding get up. Just trying to get my creative juices flowing..
and i just made this jacket last week when all my students left for practicum (loveoutloudtour.com) i'm thinking about screen printing my tux.. as i did this one only with my wedding graphics..
looks like i skipped a month
boy blogging takes work.. heres' some random photos from the month.
here's a bike i really like..
my bike i might sell.. #1 selling bike in the world .thanks china...
the univ bike i like.. ghetto but good looking.
doesn't seem bike related but it is.. lance armstrong's new nikes. live strong
amy was house sitting this off manchester last weekend where the owners son set the record for laps around the track in a 24 hour period.. here's one of his cool tropheys..
might sell all of my bikes for this:
Passion for the Christ
Well back in two thousand three my friend Shepard Fairey (obeygiant.com) and I both got head hunted to do graphics for Mel Gibson's theatrical depiction of the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus before His death. Anyhow, because of a movie marketing fubar... our art projects never surfaced the big screen. they did however sit in our hard drives for years with a good chance of going with us to the grave... anyhow, i will not let that happen and this season as a novice artist I kindly asked Shepard for the rights to represent this project again.. with that said, here are some screenshots of one of the styles in which will soon be a silk screened poster... be on the look out..
ever since first seeing Shepards' radicals portraits in his San Diego BLK/MRKT office... i have always wanted to get him to do a picture of my favorite radical.. Jesus.. well, thanks to Mr. Mel Gibson - it finally got done..
chapter + Verse
well for the past five years now i've been going to a weekly bible study by Mike MacIntosh called Chapter & Verse...aka C+V. It's been a great study in the building of my foundation in the word of God.. anyhow, can't wait to go again tonight.. if you wanna watch online; just log onto horizonsd.org at seven pm and click on the live webcast.. it'll change your life.. or at least it should as God's Word is supposed to... also, usually a friend named Evan Wickham leads worship.. look him or his brother Phil up if you want to hear someone sing songs of solace.
yesterday baseball season started
this view was from a potential wedding spot atop the diamond view towers in the east village. anyhow, padres played yesterday... got free tickets to last fridays game but gave them away freely as well.. as the word says in the JK paraphrase.. what was freely given to you - freely give.
salvation is free.. Godspeed
found this from when my boy danny and Will played at my art show last last december. invisible God we trust
two years ago.. a bit old but classic.. A great night with live screen printing from yours truly, dirty drums all night from mike and danny, and massive inspiration via screen prints and paintings for our friends and family.
keep posted as we're past due for another show. Godspeed. Danny Barragan is beating a vintage rogers set / custom with invisible God logo and willow aka the Gaslamp killer is spinning some rare beats in the back.... Will has always DJ'd my fashion and art shows from the past when i had my store and Danny I met way back through mike russell aka MHE / MRR / dirtydrums.com
twenty nine
well i used to write every year on
my myspace.com/joekraft about my birthdays and the turning of the ages.. but i forgot at 28 - although it was great and filled with powerful emotions i never got around to it.. and five months ago at 29 i didn't write anything either.. but i wont let that happen again.. so if it's not too late here it goes.. actually i'll just post what my girlfriend wrote me.. and maybe i'll write something later.. but the day was great.. Amy picked me up at about 6am and took me to my favorite surf spot so that i could body board - windansea.. then we went and had breakfast at hash house a go go in hillcrest.. then shopped at buffalo exchange for what, i don't know - .. afterwards went to my home, washed out the wetsuits and read the Word.. then went to ride our bikes to the bus (which i have never really taken - except to bboy summit but i was like 14 then..) to downtown to visit friends shops and hang out.. however i missed the bus by a traffic light because i had to turn back to fix my fixed gear saddle.. ugh.. we were a bit upset to see that there was already another bike on the next bus we we couldn't put both bikes on... we we rode away, got an avocado shake in the mecca... then attemted to go to this random chinese restaurant that i have always wanted to eat at.. they were closed.. but as for the "5 for 10" tshirt store which was open -- i bought amy this amazing levis type 1 jacket.. which i love and had but never wore.. but now i live vicariouslly as she wears hers.. oh she's so cute in it and yes she does double denim well.. which is hard to do... ok.. after that we rode to home depot so that i can buy her some paint to recolor her bike..she picked an electric blue and moca brownthen went home, and to another chinese mira mesa staple to eat.. mandarin gardens..which is located across from willy's workshop in my old home town mira mesa mall.
after dinner we went to my home, then she gave me this letter which was in a journal for my clothing sketches and inside the journal was eight random coupons to use later... from sushi dinners to swap meets to massages and movies... later that week we went to an australian restaurant called Bondi - in the Gaslamp and that was great as around 20 or so friends came by to eat dinner and say hello; including both my brother and sister.. yay..
anyhow, here was her God inspired letter to me: - hope she doesn't mind..
and with his strength/there was healing in time/cleansing my body/renewing my mind/and there was this point that I was awakened to you/someone I’d known/but never thought to pursue/and then was the moment where you entered my heart/it was quite subtle/at least from the start/after all that travel/down those multiple paths/God brought me to the one intended/the one that would last/he brought me to someone that would light my soul/that would encourage my passions/and force me to grow/that would love me despite the steps I had taken/and there were no pieces to pick up this time/this misshapen heart had healed just fine/and allowed it a chance to love not jaded/to love supernaturally/love that was fated/
And I want to Thank You for all that was given/without expectation/without reservation/that you can love me with wholeness/and voice/with beauty/and passion/all in a choice/and the blessing from God/a reminder from him/that I am worth the deletion of all of my sins/and this message is also spoken to you/that you are loved despite what you do/and God holds you close/protecting his treasure/this love that we have goes beyond measure/and do not be deceived/for challenges are a part of this imperfect state/mistakes and confusion are part of the race/and I need you to know how special you are/I need you to know so that we can go far/and I pray that your efforts will find you some fruit/I pray that you live not like others do/and that path you have chosen/I will walk too/it is where these steps have led me/directly to you.
officially engaged.
well it's official- after nine (other) weddings, and 408 days of dating, courting, whatever you want to call it. Amy and I are now engaged to be married sometime in october.. The third of october would make it a solid seven month engagement, however working with venues and chef's and all that can be a bit tricky.
Anyhow, since it didn't quite happen on our one year anniversary picnic on the cliffs over looking la jolla beach and God's sky scrapper paintings -- with cheese, crackers, and the ninja squirrel and my first draft engagement sweater that we used as a blanket...
and it didn't work the week prior with our mammoth mountain trip with fifteen of her friends and a few days of snowboarding.. that was actually her birthday weekend in which i thought the greatest gift to give her was the gift of becoming a wife.. it's kind of neat to think that I am the only one in a position to give her that gift... instead i gave her some new DC boots, burton bindings and a wool sweater.. along with other nick nacks like long arm glove warmers and a handful of my favorite shirts... from mickey made in Japan (printed live on my first outreach in tokyo), to maps of the world (in which i want to travel - bought at uniqlo), to vintage church graphics.. bought at my great friend taku's vintage clothing store in which i helped him open.
all this to say that i gave her all those gifts then said in the enormous hallmark card that i had twenty nine more gifts waiting at home.
So we got home monday night.. then tuesday we had cancelled our bible study and went to the Chris Tomlin concert together at the Rock Church in Point Loma. We had about eight people from our bible study go and another dozen or so friends sitting all with us in the same section..
Originally i had some graphics that were going to go up on the screen however the tour manager had their guys do the audio visual for the concert and my friends couldn't pull those stings.. needless to say after a night of worship i thought.. what can be more romantic than worshipping God together.. that's really the first benefit i felt from having her in my life as my girlfriend.. in fact it was so cool to stand next to one another and sing to God in unison at our church's chapter and verse weekly study..
After singing the medley started with Amazing Grace i realized just how amazing God's grace is.. to spare each of us from our past lifestyles and put us together as broken individuals only to find a completed heart between the three of us.. God, Amy, and I...
then we sang this song singing "i love you Lord, and i lift my voice, to worship you, Oh my soul- rejoice.. take joy my King in what you hear... may it be a sweet sweet song in your ear..." and then it goes "i love you Lord and i lift my hands..).. and as she lifted her right hand I was holding down her left and as we held hands singing to our king; I slipped her last 29 gifts on her finger... twenty eight diamonds which made up the ring represented the 28 years of my life without her and the 29th diamond represented the last year of my life with her..
so that's our story in a nutshell. hope you enjoy and i look forward to sharing more stories from a dual perspective.. peace + Godspeed.
seek first the Kingdom of God and He will give you the desires of your Heart.
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