Jamie Reid x Supreme Spring 2021 Collaboration

Shortly after officially unveiling its Air Max 96 release, Supreme has now highlighted its upcoming Jamie Reid collaboration. Previewed at the start of the season, the team-up celebrates the English artist and anarchist with connections to the Situationists, an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals and political theorists.

Born in 1947 and raised in Croydon, South London, Reid’s early upbringing saw him join his politically conscious and spiritually engaged parents at nuclear disarmament and anti-apartheid rallies. “My grandfather and Scottish father were Druids and that was instilled in me alongside a socialist and anarchic background,” said Reid. “It’s all part of a continuous story for me.”

During the late 1960s, Reid met Malcolm McLaren at the Croydon School of Art connecting on a shared interest in the Situationists. The duo would go on to organize student protests in London and traveled to Paris at the tail end of the Left Bank’s student uprisings. By the ’70s, Reid co-founded Suburban Press, an agitprop magazine confronting corruption and corporate development in Croydon. Unable to afford typesetting tools, Reid would cut, paste and Xerox newspaper clippings to form the early elements of his signature DIY visual style.

In early 1976, McLaren would telegram Jamie Reid about a band he was managing. Reid would head to London to create album artwork for The Sex Pistols’ first four singles, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” “God Save The Queen,” “Pretty Vacant” and “Holidays in the Sun,” along with their only studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. The iconoclastic décollage imagery defined by ransom-note style lettering, vivid colors, historical and popular cultural references created by Reid would go on to be an unwavering marker of the punk era.

Artist and gay rights activist Derek Jarman would go on to say Reid is, “The person who really set typography alight in this country.” “The way the typography is used, it’s aggressive and bright and absolutely of its time.”

Following his part in the punk movement, Jamie Reid would deepen his activism, rallying against Britain’s poll tax, Section 28, the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, and climate injustice with confrontational art and direct-action demonstration. In 2015, Reid wrote, “People could be very happy with fuck all.” “Learn from the past. Live in the present. Look to the future.”

Reid’s Spring 2021 collaboration feature a Varsity Jacket, Sweater, Shirt, Hooded Sweatshirt and T-Shirt style centered around his developed expressive style. Despite his lengthy career, Reid continues to be inspired by his Druidism and connection to the United Kingdom, living in Liverpool and usually working out of the Florence Institute, a community center.

The Jamie Reid x Supreme Spring 2021 collaboration will see a global release, available via the streetwear imprint’s website on May 6, 11 a.m. EDT in the United States and May 8, 11 a.m. JST in Japan.

For more contemporary fashion, Verdy and NIGO unveil Girls Don’t Cry x HUMAN MADE capsule.