Before I go into this article, I must make a disclaimer. I think Supreme is a pretty cool brand. Sometimes. Peppered in every season, there happens to be some strokes of genius. Take their collaborations with the North Face  or Wtaps or the Muppets (the freaking MUPPETS for crying out loud). Take their strong solo work on the Travis Bick tee or the Motion Parka. Pure gold. However, for each valuable nugget there happens to be mounds of fools gold waiting to be overhyped.

Take their spring/summer 2014 collection, for example. There’s things like the Riot parka, the Cubism shirt or the Blood Chit MA-1 that make me want to fly out to New York and stand in line myself. Then there’s things like the Mesh Pocket pullover. While I like a 90’s revival just as much as the next guy, I see absolutely none of Supreme’s signature streetwear edge coming through. It looks like I could have gone in a time machine, turned the knob back to 1995, and grabbed the same thing from the nearest Old Navy for less than $50. This wouldn’t be a bad thing if Supreme was known for exact replicas of 90’s clothing, but it’s not. It’s Supreme, and it left me expecting more.

This is only one instance of mediocrity out of many in the new collection. There’s countless more examples of “meh,” where it just seems that the creative team got lazy (the Pit Crew shirt, I couldn’t have ripped off anything more bland if I tried) or went for too much and came up short (the Hooded Flannel shirt, an attempt at color and pattern blocking which just results in lots of bland textiles jumbled together with a hood as an afterthought. Come on Supreme).

These examples are not to show that these problems are permanent. The opposite is true, actually. If Supreme were to only cut back on quantity and instead emphasize quality design on fewer pieces, these problems would be appeased. But hey, you got to admit there’s still undeniable money to be made churning out product and watching every brand-slave “fuccboi” lap it all up just to jump on the hype train.