Supreme unveiled its fall/winter 2016 collection Monday, and the piece that got many people talking was a brick. Yes, a brick that would be completely ordinary if not for Supreme's signature box logo embossed on it. Two fans, Nicholas Neporanny and Lawrence, a Supreme reseller who goes by his first name only or his Instagram handlesoLe_possession_, stepped forward to claim that the idea for the brick came from them and was submitted to the brand all the way back in March.
Neporanny and Lawrence both say they sent emails to Supreme via its "requests" form, asking for a brick. They say they encouraged legions of fans in Supreme groups to do the same. "We had about 100 people send in emails to Supreme, saying we'd love for you guys to do a brick and blah blah blah, so they had to have seen the idea and put it together," Lawrence tells Complex. "It can't just be coincidental where they were like, 'Let's just do a brick this year.'" Supreme did not respond to Complex's request for comment.
Whether Supreme opened or heeded any of those emails is impossible to know unless the brand's rep tells us, but Neporanny, the Kim Kardashian of Supreme receipts, has tons of screenshots people sent him as proof that they at least made the submission.
Still, it should be noted that it's also entirely possible that these were buried or mixed in with the mountains of "requests" emails Supreme may feasibly receive. Or maybe, in the ultimate Supreme move, that form on its website is really just a black hole.
That's not to say it would be totally beyond the brand to run with ideas from outside sources. Part of what people love about Supreme is sorting out the puzzle and trying to figure out the inspiration behind what the brand is doing. There's an entire Instagram account dedicated to exactly that. "With Supreme, 90% of their stuff is remakes of other brands, and they steal a lot of ideas and we just want to get it out there," Lawrence claims. "They do take other ideas into consideration, and we just want people to know where the idea specifically came from."
Neporanny noted that his idea was also inspired by an outside source, the video game Call of Duty. "They have these weird weapons in the game, like a baseball bat, crowbar, and we made a Supreme crowbar," he explains. "And we have this saying after someone said some dumb shit one time—they were like, "Yo, hit this man with a brick"—and so we kept saying it. Then I was like, 'Yo, what if they made a Supreme brick? Like, a Supreme throwing brick.'"
Talking about Supreme while playing video games isn't out of the ordinary for Neporanny, who points out one of the things he loves about Supreme is the community surrounding it. "You see someone down the street wearing Supreme, and you can talk to them for half an hour, just because you're wearing the same clothing," he said. That's a powerful thing, and Supreme just cemented another brick—intentional or not—in the tower of possible conversations you could have about the cult brand.
While both Lawrence and Neporanny haven't heard from Supreme—and don't expect to—they both said they will purchase the brick whenever it becomes available. "I owe five people bricks, because I promised if this happened I would give five bricks away," Neporanny said. Supreme bricks: being used to build a community—just as the brand intended?
