Image via Supreme x True Religion
On Sept. 18, Adidas honored pro skateboarder Tyshawn Jones with a mural in the Bronx, the neighborhood he grew up in. It was yet another milestone in the long list of achievements the 22-year-old has accomplished. The painting of Jones, which was on a brick wall, was surrounded by beautiful shrubbery and a phrase that read “Black Excellence is Dreaming Big.” It demanded attention, but streetwear fans with a keen eye took note of Jones’ outfit too—a faded purple zip-up with True Religion’s recognizable Buddha logo stamped on the chest in red. The major difference, the arched red text read “Supreme” and not “True Religion.”
Supreme collaborating with True Religion? The pairing admittedly isn’t one that immediately comes to mind, but given Supreme’s penchant for honing in on cultural touch points within New York City and hip-hop, the connection makes sense. Founded by Kym Gold and Jeff Lubell in 2002 in Vernon, California, True Religion jeans quickly became a uniform in neighborhoods like Harlem, thanks in large part to Juelz Santana and Jim Jones, who wore the brand throughout the 2000s. In years that followed, True Religion’s relationship with hip-hop would grow even stronger. The cover of 2 Chainz’s 2011 mixtape T.R.U. REALigion was styled to mimic the label’s branding and featured the rapper dressed in a full denim fit from the brand. Chief Keef would frequently rock Trues during his come up in the 2010s and even had a song titled “True Religion Fein” on his 2012 tape Back from the Dead.
As quickly as the brand rose in prominence though, it eventually fell. In 2013, the brand was sold to TowerBrook Capital for $835 million. By 2017, the brand had filed for bankruptcy. In 2019, the brand was attempting a comeback. UpscaleHype co-founder Allen Onyia was brought in as the new artistic director in hopes of connecting with the same consumers who interact with his popular online platform. As of today, Oniya appears to no longer have any affiliation with the brand. Zihaad Wells also returned in 2019 as True Religion’s creative director. He initially worked as the brand’s design director from 2006 to 2016 before exiting the company. The goal was that he could help return the brand to the place it was during the Aughts. By 2020, True Religion had once again filed for bankruptcy. Now trying to channel the energy that once made the brand so desirable and capture a new generation’s attention, that bring us to this week’s announcement.
On Sept. 27, the rumors were confirmed. Supreme took to its Instagram page to reveal the collab was official. The collection consists of denim trucker jackets, matching cargo pants, zip hoodies, caps, and beanies. True Religion’s recognizable hits like large contrast stitching and horseshoe pockets are present, but with a Supreme twist in the form of all-over camo prints or pink mineral washes. For Wells, the collab was “the perfect marriage.” Released earlier this morning through Supreme’s retail channels, the whole collection sold out in 10 minutes.
Because of the Supreme collaboration, True Religion’s name is back the news cycle. The collaboration also comes as the Y2K era of pop culture continues to firmly cement itself as the latest trend. True Religion’s contrast-stitched denim and recognizable logos were a big part of that uniform. At the same time, Wells remains committed to the future. While a project with Supreme comes with a cache that few other collabs can provide, True Religion has also been working with plenty of smaller designers such as New York DIY designer Madeline Kraemer or choreographer Kida the Great on more limited offerings that bring a youthful lens to the product. Whether True Religion is capable of getting back to the status it held in the 2000s remains to be seen, but Wells says the future is promising. He’s just happy people are talking.
“I think this is a forever brand. I really do. I haven’t seen this brand going anywhere but up, we have such a loyal following,” Wells tells Complex. “Here’s the thing, people love us and people hate us, but they have an opinion about us. And I would rather have people have an opinion about us than being a brand that doesn’t matter, a brand that people don’t care about.”
Ahead of the release of the Supreme x True Religion collaboration, we got a chance to sit down with Wells to discuss how the project came together, the brand’s loyal supporters in New York and beyond, the resurgence of Y2K fashion, and more. Check out the conversation below.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
The 2000s was when True Religion was at its peak popularity. You look at fashion now, obviously the landscape of everything is so different. I’m just curious what you see as the main difference between then and now and how has that impacted what you want to do with the brand?
I think we were definitely one of the defining brands of the early 2000s because we just did it differently. We didn’t do things like everybody else did. We were a point of difference. It was definitely bold. It was definitely an expressive brand. We didn’t try to blend in. The founder at the time just gave us carte blanche to do whatever we wanted. The bigger, the better. The bolder, the better. He didn’t care and we ran with it and it just became this huge success as a result of having that creative freedom.
I’ve been doing this for the last 25 years. Old fashion comes back at some point and you go through these moments where “maximal” is the zeitgeist and it’s all about branding and being more expressive and about being bold and color becomes important. And then depending on what happens, socioeconomically in the world, things become a little bit more subdued and people become tired of one thing. Then you go through this low and then it comes back around again. We have managed to stay relevant throughout it, maybe not be as prominent as we once were in the early parts of the 2000s, but as fashion came back round again, we never lost that loyal following.
So although there are moments in fashion where things change and we’re definitely aware of that, we spent the last 20 years building these icons, these recognizable icons. I don’t know if many denim brands can even claim that. You look at the horseshoe or the Buddha or that arch logo. I like to look at it in regards to what a lot of streetwear brands do or sneaker brands do. They have these established icons that are recognizable and True Religion has that through those three major icons. But also it’s the way we construct our jeans. It’s recognizable from a mile away. I think what happened is that a lot of kids today have this nostalgia that it was their parents who wore it, or they remember hip hop artists wearing it. It carries that kind of cultural relevance. It was significant. For a lot of millennials, it was probably the first expensive product they owned and then passed down. So what we found is there’s a lot of young kids thrifting True Religion and they’re looking for that OG look, the original fits. It just so happens that it is the perfect time for us.
Speaking specifically on this project with Supreme, how did that opportunity initially come about?
It was last October. We had a Zoom call with the guys from Supreme and they approached us. The whole thing was they like to work with brands who are original and unique. That’s what they said to us. They want to work with brands that offer a clear point of view. That’s where they get to partner. If you look at us, you look at our Super T, you the construction of our denim, our icons, it doesn’t get more original than that. Then you take that and partner with someone like Supreme who is absolutely unique in what they do and how they partner with brands and it was the perfect marriage.
Why did it make sense for you to partner with Supreme at this point in time?
I guess it’s cause I’ve been here for such a long time. We don’t consider ourselves a premium denim brand anymore. I don’t think that that term is even relevant. We like to look at ourselves as a streetwear brand. Rooted in that, denim is the foundation of everything we do. But the reality is we are a streetwear brand because we’ve been adopted by the streets. We’ve been adopted by kids. It wasn’t a decision as a brand that we went, ‘You know what, today we’re going to be a streetwear brand. We’re going to completely rework how we market ourselves.’ It just happened organically. That’s what we became. So I think for me, I mean the ultimate streetwear brand is Supreme, right? It carries the most cache in those circles and it made sense.
Are you able to speak just a little bit on specifically your role and just the overall process behind this collab with Supreme?
There were a number of conversations with Supreme beforehand, and then the designers actually came into the office here. We sat and we brainstormed. We took them through what makes us iconic. So there’s certain things, like on the jacket they did the yolks or the stitching, how we use our horseshoes. We went back to original packaging, so the OG labels and hang tags from back in 2002. We worked with them in terms of how we would best bring this to life in a way that felt authentic and original, but obviously had a Supreme spin on it. So if you look at the patch, the Buddha, and then the huge Supreme logo is in our fonts. It’s in the same dimensions as the original Super T patch. And where they placed it is a nod back to like the early days. So we worked with them on how that would be. Then we pulled out the washes and the color range. We pulled out things we felt could be great for this collaboration. They took some of it on board. They came back with some of their ideas and it was a really collaborative process the whole way through, even down to the hoodies. The hoodie is a remake of the original True Religion hoodie that had all the really big, thick stitch on it. And then again, just the look itself and the potassium spray, that vintage look, is a nod back to how we did all our sportswear in the early 2000s. So they were really looking to capitalize on that nostalgic look and put a modern spin on it.
Obviously Supreme is so known for its brand collaborations. They have a ton of experience there. What was it like to work with that, see how they work, how that comes together?
It was a full partnership the whole way through. There were weekly touch bases. We’d go through and see what’s coming down the pipeline, where are we at in approval processes? It was a great experience just to be able to have that kind of freedom, to do something different from what we do everyday. To get to use a brand that is so prominent and then spin what we did well, I don’t think there’s anybody else that they could have done something like this with, to be fair. Again, it’s because of those things like the heavy, Super T stitching, or the Buddha.
They said typically they don’t do hang tags with any of the collaborations. It’s just not what they do. But back in the day, the way people would know it was an authentic pair of True Religion jeans is they would leave the hang tag on. So you see kids walking in the street with a hang tag hanging off of it. So when we told them the story, they’re like, ‘Okay, we don’t normally do hang tags, but let’s do a hang tag for this collaboration.’ So it’s just kind of a nod back to the OG early 2000s. Even the cargo is a play on our original cargo pant. One of the surprises was the pink mineral wash. Is just on point. That came out way better than I expected from when we first presented it to them. It looks really good. I think the way that they assorted it was fantastic. It just had a really modern spin on an OG brand.
True Religion has a big brand legacy, especially within New York City. There’s other cities too, but New York really adopted True Religion in the 2000s. So it makes sense that Supreme wanted to tap you guys. Can you just speak a little bit on that aspect of True Religion and just what that meant to you to see New York adopt the brand so as their own?
To this day, New York is still the number one place where we find love for this brand. Down the list is LA, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, that’s where the brand is the most prominent in the states. London as well. London has a huge street culture. What can I say? I mean, when you talk about streetwear, California had a different vibe in the early 2000s. California was about this California cool vibe. It was about sunshine and something completely different.
When we were adopted by kids in New York, it’s just brought something different. There’s a different aspect to it. The brand became a little bit grittier, a little bit harder, in a really positive and a really good way. That’s comes back to my point where I said we were adopted by the streets. We became part of the culture. Not because we deliberately went, ‘That’s what we want to do.’ It was because they saw something in us that potentially we hadn’t even seen yet. That’s kind of what we do today, to be honest, with a lot of these collaborations we do. I don’t know if you saw the one we just did with Madeline Kraemer. She’s a New York-based artist. We worked with her to recreate what our Super T would be. She does this whole thing where she customizes denim. I’m assuming she thrifts and finds vintage pieces, and then she recreates denim, um, differently. So there’s the stack jeans with patchwork where I think it takes like three pairs of jeans to make one pair. I saw her on Instagram, actually my daughter pointed her out on Instagram. She had posted a pair of Trues that she had customized. She just looked at the brand completely differently.
New York brings something that I just love. It gives us an edge. I think for a lot of these young creators that we work with today, they look at the brands through a lens that we once did when we were fresh out the gates and they just have a completely different perspective on the world. So although Supreme is definitely relevant, it’s up today, it’s, it’s a nod to the past, we’re very much as a brand focused on what the future looks like.
I wanted to take it back for a second. Throughout the 2000s, you had a lot of rappers making True Religion jeans their uniform. 2 Chainz had the mixtape cover, Jim Jones, Chief Keef was another one that was also known for wearing True Religion. Seeing how much they embraced the brand and seeing the impact they had on their fanbases, was that sort of influencing the brand’s choices at the time at all?
I don’t think it influenced the way we approached products. I really don’t. I look at Ralph, right. Ralph was a really good example of this. Ralph just does what Ralph does. And all the kids who adopted Polo, they adopted it because Ralph did what he did. True Religion is the same. People adopted us because we just did what we did. We didn’t try to target anybody. We just had this look, we have this style, this DNA, and we were adopted as a result of that. I think had we gone the other route, people would have probably rejected us.
We get a lot of love in music. You look at Chainz and Chief Keef. You go all the way back to Black Eyed Peas. Doja Cat is a recent one. Skepta is a great one, so much love from Skepta and we’ve never partnered together. It’s definitely something I think as a brand that we look at. Going forward, how do we make sure that we partner and we give enough love to the people who’ve shown us so much love? Chainz is one of them. He recently gave us a shout out on his Instagram page. He was wearing a jacket of ours, like even 10 years later. There’s just so much love there.
So when you see that kind of unfolding organically and you see these big artists wearing this stuff all the time that you’re designing. What is your reaction to that?
I think it’s because we just do what we do and we do it so well. True Religion definitely gives you a unique point of view. If you’re wearing a True Religion jacket, you know it. If it’s a brand that kind of looks like True Religion, you’re gonna be called out for it because it’s not the real deal. As long as we keep doing what we do, you know, and we don’t lose track of our DNA, I think that’s potentially where a lot of brands go wrong. You definitely have to have one eye in the past to make sure that you don’t change who you are, you don’t try to become something else. I think it’s important to stay true to your roots while evolving and making sure that you are still culturally relevant.
Given these big names that are tied to the brand and its history, was there ever a discussion or a thought to include them within the lookbook for this Supreme collaboration or anything like that? Is there a reason that didn’t happen?
Ultimately that was Supreme’s choice. I think the final choice was fantastic by the way. I think putting it on Tyshawn Jones was great. I think it made absolute sense. I heard rumors that they were going to put it on a rapper from the past, and it didn’t transpire. I saw the lookbook a few days before you guys all saw it. They keep that all under wraps. And rightfully so. At the end of day, it’s Supreme’s name, and from a creative point of view they get final say on that sort of thing. But I think that final choice was fantastic.
The whole Y2K trend is so big right now. A lot of things are being influenced by that whole era. What are your overall thoughts on that trend within fashion being as though you were part of that initially with True Religion in the 2000s?
I fully embrace it. I think it’s great. If I look at the early parts of the 2000s, there was a sense of optimism. There really was, in terms of the way people dressed, the way kids put stuff together. I think the last few years maybe it’s been lacking somewhat. It makes perfect sense. It really does. It was the time when we looked at things differently. The last few years, I think things have cleaned up a lot. Silhouettes became more simple. We play a part in that. We did some simple stuff and obviously the brand’s still here. But what we do now is what we do so well.
Who is the brand really targeting right now as far as the consumer? Is it that person who is a little older now that has nostalgia for True Religion? Is it trying to capitalize on that teenager who likes Supreme, sees this collaboration, and becomes a True Religion customer now?
I think what’s been really interesting is you see the cross-generational nature of this brand, right? Those who bought the brand the first time around still have so much love and affinity for it, and they’re still here. The goal is to take them along for the ride, but as a brand we need to listen and pay attention to a younger customer coming up. How do they view the brand? What do they see? What do they want from us? How do we continue to bridge that generational gap in the way that we have? As a brand, we’re very much focused on the future and what that looks like. We paid attention to the fact that younger kids were thrifting our brand. What were they pulling out? How do I bring that back? How do I make sure that they don’t have to find a one-of-one? And maybe that’s what they wanted. But to a bigger audience, how do I make sure that that cargo pant is in my line? That Jimmy jacket with the Super T that they will be thrifting, how is that still in my line. I need to make sure those pieces are there, but not just that they’re a nod to the past, how do we look at them for the future?
In recent years, in 2017 and 2020, the company filed for bankruptcy and had to kind of weather that storm of things. In your personal experience, how did the company sort of shift its approach to bounce back, so to speak?
I wasn’t here in 2017 when the company had filed. I was here last year when we did, but it was really a reorganization, right. Let’s fix some of the financial issues from the past, some of the mistakes that have been made. From a product standpoint, the brand still had a loyal following. A lot of people just don’t pay attention to that, right?
But I came back at the end of 2019. And the reason I came back was that the brand understood that it had to return to the DNA. It had to go back to doing what we did really well. The bankruptcy just really gave us an opportunity to speed that entire process up. Because we had started this transformation you see today before the bankruptcy had even happened. From my understanding, it was just a way through to refinance and restructure so that the business can be healthy and it could give us creative freedom to do what we do so well.