In April 1994, James Jebbia opened his first skate shop on Lafayette Street in SoHo. He called the shop “Supreme” and ever since his clothing and accessories are some of the most coveted in the whole fashion industry. Originally from London, Jebbia, a passionate skater, moved to New York when he was only 19. So how did an average British skater kid create a brand that has people waiting in line for days just to buy a skater gear?

In the store’s first few years of operation, shopping at Supreme was rather difficult. Stories have been told about there being scoldings for touching the shirts or skateboards before purchasing and that if you weren’t a skater, you didn’t belong in the store. Supreme’s main way of making people want to spend hundreds of dollars on streetwear is that they make everything very limited and as a result, the exclusivity is extremely coveted. They still do this now and there are Supreme pieces that sell out on their website instantly.

Supreme gets lots of attention by doing collaborations with other companies. Some of the companies they collaborate with include Nike and North Face.This past summer they did a collaboration with Louis Vuitton which had sweatshirts that retailed for about $1200 and resold for over $5000.

There are entire stores and websites built around reselling Supreme. Unique Hype is a store in Chinatown that exclusively sells Supreme and often buys Supreme from anyone who is willing to sell to them and they resell the pieces for a profit. Supremecommunity.com is a website that analyzes every aspect of Supreme’s three websites: US, Europe, andJapan. They have a section that tells you everything that has yet to drop this season, a section for all the weekly drops so far, and a section that tells you how quickly everything sells out online.

Supreme has created an entire culture around street/skate wear and they’ve influence countless amounts of people with their pieces appearing in pop culture and on celebrities.