Image Via : Mouv.fr

Before the world could even get excited about a Samsung x Supreme collaboration, it was all over before it begun. Samsung China announced their unusual collab with the street fashion brand Supreme at a launch for Samsung’s Galaxy A8 which was live streaming through Weibo.

At some point during the video the Samsung and Supreme logos started flashing on the screens behind the speakers as a Samsung representative started to announce how they were going to introduce Supreme into the Chinese market. Furthermore, two alleged CEO’s of Supreme join the stage and discuss plans for not only a runway show in Shanghai next year at the Mercedes-Benz area but also the concept of a large flagship store.

It didn’t take long before viewers started commenting on the live stream, denouncing the Supreme CEO’s as fakes and claiming Samsung must have been lured in by fraudsters. Not long after, Supreme also issued their own statement of defence, confirming they were not working with Samsung, opening any kind of flagship store in China, or planning a runway show at the Mercedes Benz Arena. They went on to say “these claims are blatantly false and propagated by a counterfeit organization.”

Image Via : Huffpost.com

There has been speculation that the so called “fraudsters” are in fact from a company called Supreme Italia, a similarly named brand that Supreme proper has had issues with in the past. According to the law, there is a separate jurisdiction for trademarks in each country and while what we know of as the real Supreme has a trademarked name in the USA, it doesn’t in Italy. Furthermore, Supreme Italia has been quickly purchasing trademarks in countries where Supreme proper had not, resulting in a legal battle as Supreme proper has been attempting to shut them down. It sounds simple enough however this mistaken identity issue has brought to light the issues Supreme Proper has in trademarking it’s name and the dubious reasons why.

Founded in a small downtown store in Manhattan New York, James Jebbia opened Supreme in 1994. It quickly rose to fame as the place to go for skaters, artists, musicians and even photographers and creative a like. A large list of celebrity endorsement followed and eventually helped the brand to have the cult like following it has today including Supreme taking more than just inspiration from its endorsers. It all started with their logo, that iconic red box logo is actually a quote from artist Barbara Krugers’s proganda posters but having your brand logo be a tribute to another artist and copying another artist’s work is a fine line. Kruger was not happy and ultimately attempted to sue Supreme. Because of this and the lack of legal terms, supreme has trouble trademarking its name. Enter Supreme Italia. Based in the town of Barletta, a company decided to make some money off the point that Supreme could not trademark it’s own label. Their logos are almost identical with Supreme Italia using a larger red box but still with white, bold text. This is the same company who equally brilliantly created a legally fake version of Pyrex Vision called Pyrex Original, this company is no stranger to finding legal loops!

Supreme Italia Garment      Image Via : amazon.fr             

                            Supreme Proper Garment Image Via : Amazon.com

As far as the products go, they are also very similar upon first appearance. Skater styles of hoodies, caps and t-shirts all emblazoned with the Supreme logo. The unfortunate part is that Supreme Italia really has nothing to do with Supreme proper, they don’t share the same back story and didn’t put in the hard work Jebbia did in order to create the following. Part of the problem is of course that stores continue to stock Supreme Italia products, knowing full well their customers will presume they’re buying original Supreme. It’s greedy on the part of the store, deceitful too but technically Supreme Italia isn’t doing anything illegal and stores want their inventory to sell.

Image Via : Hypebeast.com

It’s not the first time Supreme have suffered from copyright issues. A few years ago, the brand Married To The Mob used a similar box logo branded slogan for some t-shirts to create “Supreme Bitch.” Supreme wasn’t soft with the owner Leah McSweeney either, dragging her straight to court. Some would argue this is rather rich coming from a brand who’s logo is ripped off in the first place while others claim the call for legal action was actually nothing but a clever advertising move for both parties. The fact that Supreme haven’t attacked upon Supreme Italia backs this theory up, allowing the case to simply disappear without drawing more attention towards Supreme Italia.

After longer than we could all stand to put this issue to bed, Samsung eventually issued a statement saying that it was Supreme Italia they announced they would be working with but have since been re-evaluating the collab and apologized for any inconvenience caused. It’s hard to say from this statement whether Samsung knew it wasn’t Supreme proper or not but I think its safe to say the fact that they “deeply regret the inconvenience caused” means they aren’t certain the public will be happy with an inferior Supreme brand. Nonetheless, last week the parent company of Supreme Italia announced the collaboration would go ahead including the fashion show.