Jebbia è conosciuto per essere il fondatore dei negozi e del marchio Supreme.
Primi anni
James Jebbia nacque negli Stati Uniti ma è di nazionalità britannica. All'età di un anno si trasferì a Crawley, nel West Sussex, prima di trasferirsi nuovamente negli Stati Uniti all'età di 19 anni. Suo padre, di nazionalità americana, faceva parte dello United States Air Force, mentre la madre, inglese, fu prima casalinga, poi insegnante. I genitori divorziarono quando aveva circa 10 anni.[1]
Carriera
Logo del marchio Supreme
Nel 1983, Jebbia si trasferì a New York, pagando $500 per un appartamento a Staten Island. Ottenne un lavoro al Parachute, un negozio di skate e vestiti sito a SoHo. [2]
Aprì nel 1989 il suo primo negozio, Union NYC, vendendo vari generi di marche di abbigliamento inglesi. Dal 1991 al 1994 lavorò insieme a Shawn Stussy, fondatore del marchio Stüssy.[3]
But New York held a firm grip on his imagination, so after a visit in 1983 to his father, then living in West Virginia, he moved to Staten Island, into a $500-a-month apartment. Over the next six years, he worked his way up at Parachute, the ’80s minimalist clothing store in SoHo, and sold fashionable backpacks and vintage clothes at a flea market on Spring Street.
Eventually he scraped up enough money to open his own shop, Union, on Spring Street, which specialized in British labels like the Duffer of St. George and Fred Perry, as well as Stüssy, the California skate-wear line. That led to a partnership with Shawn Stussy in the cultish Stüssy boutique on Prince Street, which could be seen as a progenitor of Supreme.
James Jebbia, the man who, in 1994, founded and to this day runs the SoHo-based company that has been making clothing and skateboards and a lot of other things that the people who love it absolutely have to have, doesn’t think of Supreme the way most people in fashion might—as a brand that started out in a small store on Lafayette Street and has since inched its way to legendary global status.
A quiet family man (he and his wife, Bianca, live in the West Village with their children, Miles, 5, and Nina, 3), he has no interest in playing the downtown celebrity himself.
