The Branding of the Self

WRITTEN BY JORDAN MULA

The most notorious streetwear brand, Supreme, was born on Lafayette Street in SoHo, the pulsating heart of New York City’s fashion hub. While founding designer, James Jebbia, opened the original store with an underground ethos, the brand has since grown to a mainstream status in fashion mecca’s across the globe.

In 1990, she made her most well-known work featuring a photograph of a model’s hand holding a red box that reads, “I Shop Therefore I Am.” It’s these words that echo the chokehold that branded streetwear now has on the wallets of the younger generations who are spending an average of 60% above retail price on resale sites like StockX.

Yet streetwear has since evolved from its humble birth to encompass two main elements: t-shirts and exclusivity. In 2013, Supreme sued the clothing brand Married to the Mob for infringing on its red-and-white Futura logo. This is the logo deeply embedded in Kruger’s own stylistic vernacular. When asked to comment on the lawsuit, Kruger emailed Foster Kramer, an editor for Complex at the time, a Microsoft Word Document labeled “fools. doc.” “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” Kruger wrote, “I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”

Barbara Kruger’s solo exhibition, “THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.,” is infused with pop-art, bold typefaces, and cultural criticism: a subtle reflection of how her work has been ironically capitalized off of by Supreme. In its entirety, her work fits into a broader artistic movement of Postmodern Art which sinks deeper into identity politics and prompts the viewer to question contemporary circumstances. With stark references to popular culture over the past four decades, her exhibition features vinyl room wraps, multichannel video installations, and audio soundscapes.

The growth of American consumerism can be traced back to 1951 when private wealth substantially increased for the majority of the country. Citizens were then expected to own cars, washing machines, and televisions. These were luxuries that pre-World War II generations only dreamt of having in their homes.

This habit of buying for temporary pleasure is a faux way of constructing one’s sense of self. To breach this structure of over-consumption would be to shatter how Americans now perceive their very being. And yet brands like Supreme rely on this foundation that consumers will only be whole if they can afford a logo.

That notorious red box symbolizes class and status: the only possible way for consumers to fulfill a halfhearted utopia. The dichotomy present within the brand gives the merchandise hype while still feigning the anti-luxury ideology of the stereotypical indie “skater.” Indeed, this is precisely why consumers will file into line on Thursday mornings for $500 sweaters with nothing more than a stolen logo. As many have said before, Supreme has intellectual property theft sewn into its DNA. Though, perhaps it’s only fair to return to Suprem’s humble beginnings.

“I always really liked what was coming out of the skate world,” Jebbia told Vogue. “It was less commercial—it had more edge and more fuck-you type stuff.” And yet, isn’t “commercial” precisely what Supreme has become? Nonetheless, the allure of consumerism remains a way for consumers to transcend their initial senses of “self,” regardless of pre-circumstances of birth, gender, or race. There is something to be said of the ways in which generations nowadays view their material possessions as extensions of who they are. It is this notion that walking through one’s bedroom would reveal layers of identity hung in closets and flung into laundry baskets.