Supreme wraparound cover is all over the New York Post

New York

MORNING commuters were hard-pressed to find a copy of the New York Post near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Times Square on Monday.

Hudson Booksellers on the ground floor was sold out of the tabloid. So was the basement kiosk. Another around the corner was sold out by 7:15 am.

Sheikh Ali, who works at the newsstand on 41st Street, said one young man had come by at that early hour and picked up all 50 copies he had.

"He told me he needed more," Ali, who sells the paper for US$1 on weekdays, said. "I told him 'I don't have any more!'"

The rush on The Post after a relatively quiet August weekend had nothing to do with the news and everything to do with a wraparound promotion with Supreme, the streetwear brand whose items have become something more like religious iconography to its many devotees.

The Post took advantage of that zeal and dressed its entire newsstand run in a full wraparound cover with the Supreme logo, the first time it had done so for any brand.

"We knew that this would be a collector's item," said Jesse Angelo, the paper's publisher. "Supreme is such a cool brand and we have so much affinity, to the design kinship of the logos, to being bold, and never shy, and New York-based."

And while Mr Angelo said he did not have early numbers, he said anecdotally that "the papers were flying off the shelves."

It's true. By 9:30 am, the best place to buy a copy was online. By 10:30 am, copies were selling on eBay for US$12 and on the resale fashion site Grailed for US$10.

Grailed's brand director, Lawrence Schlossman, called the partnership "historic", noting that the two companies were well aligned. "Here we have the most New York fashion brand covering the most New York paper," he said.

Supreme, which opened in 1994, has become the ne plus ultra of streetwear brands, famously selling out its new collections - or "drops" - within hours and drawing huge lines at its flagship store in New York's SoHo neighborhood. The company has satellite shops in Los Angeles, Tokyo and London, too, which attract comparable crowds.

Given its popularity, the brand has become famous almost as much for the secondhand market that blooms around it as the clothing itself. And it has also drawn attention for notable collaborations, with Fila, Nike, The North Face and Levis, and with celebrities including Kate Moss, Lou Reed, members of the Wu-Tang Clan and Kermit the Frog.

Supreme has also become known for unorthodox partnerships - like the brand-affiliated MetroCards that were released last year.

The brand "has released a brick, liquor bags, a crowbar and a fire extinguisher in the past, and fans of this brand who will line up every Thursday on release day, and then pay inexplicable resell prices for such items," said Jonathan Sawyer, a staff writer for the streetwear blog Highsnobiety. "Slap a Supreme logo on it, and it will fly off the shelves, literally no matter what it is."

On Sunday afternoon, Twitter was flowing with rumors of the coming cover with The Post, leading to the early run on the paper the next day. And as was prophesied, a look book for the company's fall collection was also released Monday.

Supreme approached The Post in late April asking for "original, never-before-seen, creative ideas." The newspaper's five-year-old in-house creative strategy agency, Post Studios, proposed the wraparound. NYTIMES