10 of the Best Supreme T-Shirts of All Time
From box logos to logo flips, a look back at the tees that helped transform Supreme from NYC secret to global icon.
With the exception of the box logo hoodie, there’s no single garment as quintessentially Supreme as the graphic T-shirt—a garment that’s remained the primary means of expression for the brand since it was founded in 1994 by James Jebbia.
Taking notes from Shawn Stussy and his visionary namesake brand, Jebbia imbued the style with the era’s most influential subcultural references, including hip-hop, punk and skateboarding. The idea was profound in its simplicity, soon transforming the silhouette from streetwear staple to fashion icon.
Before widespread internet adoption and decades prior to the advent of social media, wearing T-shirts featuring the likeness of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle or the Supreme name written in Arabic signaled you were part of a rarified tribe. Adding to the product’s allure was a sense of scarcity. Owning a Supreme tee meant you were in the know, up on the cosmic shift taking place on the streets of New York City.
Nearly 30 years later, Supreme T-shirts remain an iconic marker of global style, a position reinforced seasonally through weekly drops, one-off collaborations and retro releases. With hundreds of T-shirts released in nearly three decades of business, here are 10 of the best in chronological order.
1. Taxi Driver Tee (1994)
Released as one of Supreme’s first three T-shirts alongside the original box logo and Afro Skater, the still of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle showcased Supreme’s anti-establishment attitude from the start. The M-65 military jacket, aviators and mohawk captured Robert De Niro’s antihero in all his quiet subversion. Supreme famously brought back the design for its 20th anniversary in 2014, while an M-65 jacket found a way into the brand’s FW18 collection through a collaboration with John Woo’s The Killer.
2. Arabic Tee (1997)
Supreme’s name written in Arabic was among the first modifications for its Barbara Kruger-inspired box logo. The design helped illustrate the brand’s unusual methods, pulling inspiration from around the world and distilling it into a kind of visual language discernible to only a select few. Arabic lettering has shown up in numerous collections since, however, the 1997 original remains an all-time classic, a precursor to the brand’s global domination.
3. Sopranos Box Logo Tee (1999)
This subtle twist on the box logo took a page from The Sopranos, replacing the “r” in “Supreme” with a handgun. The design spoke louder than the sum of its parts, simultaneously paying homage to the acclaimed HBO series and laying claim to its own irreverent ethos. Undoubtedly, the flip was equally rooted in the compelling stories of East Coast underworlds, a geographical brotherhood between Supreme and The Sopranos separated only by the Hudson River.
4. Ali vs. Superman Tee (2000)
Supreme has released several Muhammad Ali T-shirts over the years but none more expressive than the comic book-inspired graphic from 2000 pitting Ali against Superman. The image was sourced from DC Comics’ cover for the 1978 celebrity comic book Superman vs. Muhammad Ali in which the two team up to fight off alien invaders. And because the tee released so early on in the brand’s history, Supreme avoided any legal attention from DC—a feat unimaginable today.
5. 9/11 Box Logo Tee (2001)
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in its hometown of New York City, Supreme outfitted its box logo with an American flag. The design served as a memorial for the victims and survivors, with the text “Home of the Bravest” on the back. Over the years, Supreme has continued to release tees to raise funds for tragedies and disasters around the world, including a T-shirt made in collaboration with Takashi Murakami at the onset of COVID-19 in 2020.
6. Raekwon Photo Tee (2005)
Raekwon and his bodyguard were the first people to appear on Supreme’s self-referential photo T-shirts, which feature musicians, actors, artists and models wearing Supreme tees. Joining the two in the portrait shot by Kenneth Cappello were an overall-wearing Tickle Me Elmo and a machine gun, an odd mix of levity and menace as two of New York City’s finest joined forces. The tee spearheaded one of Supreme’s most coveted designs, a motif that’s since become nearly as recognizable as its box logo.
7. Dipset Photo Tee (2006)
A year after its collaboration with Raekwon, Supreme turned to Dipset for its second photo tee. Juelz Santana and Jim Jones helped drive even more awareness of Supreme within hip-hop circles, while Supreme helped cement the hip-hop group’s status as New York City’s most respected MCs. Reflecting on the tee a decade later, Jones shared, “I didn’t know how impactful the T-shirt was and how impactful Supreme was at the time for the underworld market they ruled over.”
8. Morton Salt Tee (2010)
Supreme’s history of logo riffs could fill a book on its own. There’s something particularly irreverent, however, about Supreme’s take on the classic Morton Salt logo. Joining the whimsical graphic is the text “born alone die alone” printed in script, an even more sorrowful message replacing Morton’s somber “When It Rains It Pours” tagline. In its totality, the design speaks to Supreme’s unrivaled ability to clown global corporations and inject its own point of view, tongue firmly in cheek.
9. Red Cross Box Logo Tee (2011)
As a fundraiser for the Japanese Red Cross Society after the tsunami of 2011, Supreme transformed its box logo with the country’s historic Rising Sun Flag. On the reverse side, the tee included the words “United We Stand,” a direct message from Supreme to the people of Japan. The style quickly became one of the brand’s most coveted box logos of all time, respected for its purpose-driven message and a nod to its numerous outposts in the island nation.
10. Kate Moss Tee (2012)
The relationship between Supreme and Kate Moss dates back to 2004 when the New York brand plastered her image across T-shirts for the first time. In 2006, Supreme released the sensual Kate Kiss tee and followed it up in 2008 in collaboration with KAWS’ Original Fake brand to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Daikanyama store. In 2012, the two made their partnership official with Moss posing for photographer Alasdair McLellan while wearing a box logo tee. The style remains an important footnote in Supreme’s long history of T-shirts, memorable for Moss’ chilly cold stare, leopard-print coat and burning cigarette.
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