Why Did Hypebeasts Carry a Huge Supreme Cross Around NYC?

On Sunday, May 12, a pilgrimage of sorts took place in Manhattan. In an event simply dubbed Supreme Walk 2019, a handful of hypebeasts gathered at the Supreme shop at Dover Street Market New York, in Midtown, and marched nearly 40 blocks down to the Supreme store on Bowery. Invitations for the event, which was followed by a $50 five-course “Supreme omakase,” demanded that attendees “wear Supreme or get the f**k out.”

The Supreme Walk was apparently something of a performance piece, a vehicle for the artist Hochul Lee. Lee made an enormous cross covered in the Louis Vuitton x Supreme logo, and (just a few) fans carried the thing all over New York in the pouring rain, on Mother’s Day. At one point, they taped a model to the cross and hoisted her into the air—like Jesus, if he were addicted to copping jawnz. It sounds utterly ludicrous (and it is), but it does make a teeny bit of sense; Supreme’s biggest fans and resellers do treat the brand with religious fervor. And Supreme just collaborated with Jean Paul Gaultier, who loves a cross motif.

But the Supreme Walk was (unsurprisingly) roundly mocked online. As one @ask.juniper put it on Twitter, “What type of head ass s*** is this?” Upon receiving her invite to the walk, the Fashionista editor Alyssa Vingan Klein tweeted that she would “rather walk straight into oncoming traffic.”

The walk was unaffiliated with Supreme, and the brand has yet to publicly acknowledge the event’s existence. We imagine that they aren’t pleased.