Last week, Supreme dropped a BTS interview with Tyler, the Creator, where he donned a green box logo T-shirt and filled 2016 Supreme heads with hypey nostalgia. Fast-forward a couple of days, and that initial photo teased around London and New York is now Supreme’s latest photo tee.
Yeah, Supreme fly posting in trendy parts of trendy cities is nothing new, but something about its latest campaign just feels a bit different. When you actually deep it, Supreme working with Tyler is a full circle moment and the product of an authentic relationship with the brand. He got a whole generation of us hooked on Supreme, thanks to his involvement with Odd Future, the alt hip-hop group that made Fairfax their playground from 2007-2015.
Tyler turning back the clocks
In the Supreme video, Tyler is interviewed by fellow Odd Future alum and Supreme LA family member Lucas Vercetti, who chats with T about his intro to the brand, his first pieces, and all-time grails. He revealed his “first item that [he] got was the peach and mint T-shirt” from the 2009 Malcolm Mclaren collaboration in 2009 and shared what Supreme meant to him when he was a Fairfax kid carving out a new underground scene in LA. “Supreme was our Louis Vuitton” (he designed a capsule collection for LV, too). It was “top of the line,” he shared. Odd Future’s alternative hip-hop soundtracked Fairfax and helped mould its subcultural style presence, putting Supreme on a pedestal as the hottest brand on the block.
Tyler got tight with Supreme to the point where he was gifted two unique pink and red box logo hoodies by Supreme founder James Jebbia and Angelo Baque, who was Brand Director at the time. Tyler continued to sport the label in music videos, like the 2011 banger “Yonkers,” and on stage, boosting the box logo to legendary status. Doing so helped to re-write how rappers dressed, introducing a more relaxed, skate rat-esque wardrobe to a genre previously defined by luxury labels, oversized sportswear, and workwear pieces. Supreme and its “Fuck You We Do What We Want” mindset perfectly matched Odd Future’s Fairfax antics, where comedy merged with an effortless West Coast cool, as one LA music group turned style tribe helped set Supreme apart from the pack.
Fit pics from the past
A few years later, a teenage Luka Sabbat took the internet by storm, cobbling Supreme and Raf Simons together like a fashion veteran. As a self-described hypebeast, Sabbat was sporting Supreme at a time when everything from crowbars to caps proved an instant hit, selling out instantly. If you documented yourself wearing these pieces and hanging around with the buzziest crowd in town, you were on the right track to becoming one of the coolest kids in the Big Apple.
Sabbat graduated from wearing sought-after Supreme pieces on the internet to launching the 2010s hottest art collective, Hot Mess, with his photographer pal Noah Dillon. The duo would go on to work with brands including Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton before calling it quits in 2021. Sabbat launched his clothing line, Marking Distance, with James Pierce last year. And while he hasn’t been pictured donning Supreme for some time, he did grab a fit pic in front of a wall of Tyler for Supreme fly posters in NYC. The picture felt like a nostalgic nod to the 2010s, to the golden age of the internet IT kid, when streetwear was the coolest thing in the world. Sure, Luka fit piccing next to some fly posters isn’t a full-blown 2016 fashion renaissance, but could it be the start of Supreme’s second life and streetwear domination’s second life?
Looking back to look forward
The re-emergence of 2010s dressing goes beyond photoshoots and fit pics. Take the Spring/Summer 2025 menswear season, for example, where A$AP Rocky’s creative agency AWGE presented an off-schedule Paris Fashion Week belter to a crowd of industry big wigs and A-listers, including Michèle Lamy, Jonathan Anderson, and Rihanna.
Rocky walked us through his style influences, from his “flannel-shirted” first fashion moments to his recent menswear-to-the-max looks that he’s been pulling out with Bottega Veneta. American flags, which represent Rocky’s love-hate relationship with his home country, nodded to his LONG.LIVE.A$AP era, while oversized bombers felt like a streetwear-tinged declaration of Rocky’s love of Raf Simons (this is the rapper who featured in the A$AP Mob track “RAF” in 2017, recreating iconic Raf Simons moments in the music video).
Was A$AP Rocky schooling us in how to wear 2010s-era streetwear in a contemporary high-fashion wardrobe? Possibly. This was clothing for the type of closet where Bottega Veneta knitwear sits alongside the rarest archive Raf Simons and sickest Supreme photo tees, which have all marked distinct chapters in the rapper’s well-documented style moments. Rocky’s artful merging of these labels has developed over time, culminating in his most recent runway show, where these influences informed his artistic vision, unfolding within the context of the Parisian fashion ecosystem. It merged the nostalgic and the new to present an elevated offering where 2010’s style tropes oozed from an uber-contemporary offering.
From Tyler, the Creator’s link-up with Supreme, bringing back the streetwear nostalgia pioneered by Odd Future, to internet IT kids turned fashion designers sharing the love, fashion feels like it is flirting with the not-too-distant past. These nods to 2010s fashion moments were solidified this year during AWGE’s debut fashion presentation, logoed streetwear merged with tailored pieces during Paris Fashion Week. This begs the question, is the self-reflective return of 2010s fashion upon us?
More on Culted
See: Jawara Alleyne is Lewis Hamilton‘s latest designer flex
See: Levi’s linked up with Kiko, we made art with Slawn & more good sh*t this week
