Supreme Announces Collection with NYC Artist Rammellzee

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This week’s Supreme drop includes a collection featuring the works of the late New York street artist Rammellzee. Rammellzee was the first artist to collaborate with the streetwear brand, making hand-painted trucker hats at Supreme’s first store in 1994. The two maintained a relationship until Rammellzee’s passing in 2010.

Rammellzee began writing graffiti on the A train during the 1970s. Stemming from his Gothic Futurist philosophy, Rammellzee developed his signature spiky lettering as a way to weaponize the alphabet so that it might become liberated from standardization and control. To Rammellzee, graffiti writing’s subversion of language was about resisting domination and destabilizing a restrictive society.

In the 1980s, Rammellzee’s work broadened beyond tunnels and train yards. He made neon-splattered paintings and complex assemblages crafted from New York City’s detritus. He also appeared in Charlie Ahearn’s seminal film Wild Style and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, collaborated with K-Rob on the Jean Michel Basquiat-produced epic hip-hop single “Beat Bop,” wrote an opera, and even tried to get a comic book and board game off the ground.

By the 90s, Rammellzee mostly remained within the Battle Station, his sprawling Tribeca studio of over 20 years. Inside this resin-encrusted fortress, he engineered some of his most ambitious and distinctive works: the Garbage Gods – hulking trash warriors with unique identities (among them Vain the Insane, Chaser the Eraser and Igniter the Master Alphabiter).

Rammellzee with and without Garbage God costume.

A graphic of one of those Garbage Gods wearing a BOGO tee is featured on one of the two tees in this collection. The other features a Supreme graffiti tag written by Rammellzee in his “wildstyle” handwriting. The other pieces — the Hooded Sweatshirt, Sweatpant, GORE-TEX Anorak, GORE-TEX Pant, GORE-TEX Camp Cap and De Martini Messenger Bag — all come covered in the artist’s splatter print.

As Supreme stores are temporarily closed in response to the coronavirus crisis, the Rammellzee x Supreme Spring 2020 collection will release exclusively online on March 19th (10AM CST). The GORE-TEX Anorak is available now. Check out the complete collection below.

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