JAMES JEBBIA

I'm not really concerned if people have this purist view of the New York Supreme thing. If they think opening our shop in Paris is going to harm our brand, then we can't really be that strong of a brand.

Our business is as good as any high-end designer. We do good because we make good things.

Ralph Lauren... Ralph is somebody that doesn't change with trends and has just kept it up and gotten better and better. That's what we aspire to, without getting boring.

We can have a leather jacket for $1,500, and if it's a good value, young people will understand that. But we also want to have the feeling that this won't be here in a month.

I've seen a lot of brands fail because they went, 'Hey, look, we're from New York, and that's what we're all about.' But wherever you go, people are proud of where they are. So even though we're from New York, what we do is a mindset: it's got to work in Japan, in Los Angeles, London, wherever.

I feel a very important factor to our longevity is that, over the years, we have managed to create our own unique identity and aesthetics.

Supreme wasn't meant to be a brand... It's a good name, but it's a difficult one to trademark.

I know what Stone Island means to a lot of people in England and Europe.

As a small brand, we do it all. We don't need an investor. We would never go anywhere or do anything where we feel it would compromise what we do.

For us, the reason that our quality has been high, and I feel that our pricing has been reasonable, is because we don't wholesale.

A big shop in Manhattan would feel like we were betraying our roots. And we're not just going to open a bunch of stores.

It really doesn't matter what you've done in the past. We just don't rest on our laurels.

I don't really care what a designer has to say.

We're not trying to be everything for everybody. We're not trying to please the masses.

The skateboarders are snobbier - their look is much cleaner than ravers'.

A lot of people dismiss what we do. They think, 'Well, it's skate, so it's got to be, like, big baggy pants, cap backwards, big chain'... They don't understand that just because skating is the culture we're working in, it doesn't mean that we can't make good things.

I don't want to dumb anything down, and I think people appreciate that. Even if it's not their cup of tea.

I came over here with $100; it was 1983 and I just ended up staying. New York at that time was very inexpensive and it was very easy to get a job. We lived on Staten Island and you could get cheap rent. It was a good time to be in New York.

We just want to make really great-looking clothes that are well-made, fit well... that you can skate in.

I don't wish for anybody to go out of business, but I think there are far too many things in New York that really shouldn't be here.

I much prefer if someone buys something from us that they plan on wearing it and not selling.

Any brand in the world wants to make desirable product. But we don't shove it down people's throats.

Ever since September 11, I've been quite conservative in what we've ordered. We've never really been supply-demand anyway.

Oftentimes you'll see pictures from fashion shows and all the models outside the show in their real clothes are wearing brands like Supreme.

We were one of the first to say, 'Let's make a really nice shirt for skaters and let's make it really well.' We don't dumb down for somebody young; we are always trying to do something new.