Supreme has recently presented the T-shirts of the Summer 2020 collection.
The collection features a series of tees that reinterpret the Supreme logo in various ways, the classic “motion logo” is back, we find slogans like “Never Mind the F*cking Bullshit”, “Politics as Usual” and other graphics representing animals like a dog and a frog.

Two of the T-shirts in Supreme’s Summer 2020 collection are a tribute to one of the most controversial, eclectic, prolific, and talented filmmakers on the Japanese film scene and beyond, Takashi Miike.

“During filming, violence means love and harmony. During the shooting of my films, no one was seriously injured. The curious thing is that the more love is great, the more violence increases. Lately, I have the doubt that violence is born out of love. In other words, they are the same thing”.

Son of a welder and a seamstress, both nikkei, in high school he dreamed of becoming a biker and was a regular pachinko player. After graduating, he enrolled at Yokohama Eiga Senmon Gakkō, the prestigious school of cinema and television in Yokohama, but it is not known if he ever graduated, the news about it is not clear; regardless of his diploma, it seems he left school very early to start working in a night club.
His experience in film began as a volunteer assistant for a television series, he worked for television for 10 years until he became an assistant director.
His first film-related work came in 1987, from then on Takashi Miike’s career was an escalation of productions, hits, controversy, and censorship.

His movies, pervaded by violence on all levels, restlessness, splatter sequences, and out-of-control sexual perversions, are disturbing and shocking. Yakuza, virile friendship, and the traditional Japanese family are the worlds in which Miike’s stories are set, lack of roots is a recurring theme (his parents were nikkei), there is never a happy ending and the protagonists tend to become outcasts of society because of their condition.

The very close relationship between violence, pain and love, the limiting Japanese traditions, the cyclicality of life, the pursuit of happiness, the non-existence of absolute good and evil are constant themes in Takashi Miike’s cinema, as well as the constant references to exploitation cinema and pop culture. The fast cuts mixed with sequence planes that precede and in some cases follow the hyper-violent scenes are a trademark, the fast, video-clip-like editing fully describes the emotional development of the Japanese director’s films.
Excessive, legendary, cult director Quentin Tarantino called him “one of the greatest living directors”, Takashi Miike is the father of mash-up cinema, samurai-western and family dramas mixed with sci-fi and yakuza films featuring vampires.
A journey of the absurd through which peace exists only in its final form.

Supreme chose to pay homage to the director by dedicating two tees from the Summer 2020 collection to the 2001 movie Ichi The Killer, based on the homonymous manga by Hideo Yamamoto.
The film in question is a punk, extreme, violent, sexually deviant, and disturbing story of a psychopathic and completely sadistic serial killer, Ichi, who will be up against pain-loving and sadomasochistic yakuza characters.
Released on DVD in 2008, it has never been shown in the cinema and is therefore uncensored.

The two tees in question are characterized, one (long sleeve) with the print of Ichi’s face, while the other is a photo-tee depicting the protector of the prostitute that the protagonist is used to frequent, cut in two vertically by Ichi himself, for the violence that the prostitute suffers.

The entire collection of Summer 2020 T-shirts will be available online and in Supreme physical stores from July 2 and in Japan from July 4.