Catching Up With KidSuper
From reworking iconic PUMA silhouettes to a dreamlike collaboration with Louis Vuitton, an in-depth conversation with the NYC-based creative.
KidSuper isn’t like other streetwear brands. There’s no disaffected cool, no subtle tweaking of the same concepts drop after drop. Sometimes it doesn’t look like a clothing brand at all. In fact, it’s easy to forget KidSuper is a business. The name says it all.
Colm Dillane founded the label selling T-shirts to his friends in the Brooklyn Tech High School cafeteria as a teenager. “I was 15 [or] 14,” Dillane reflected.
“I had gone to Supreme, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m from New York City, this is what everyone is talking about, let’s go see what the hype’s about,'” said Dillane, who studied mathematics at NYU. “So, I go there and I’m 14 but I look like I was 9, and they treated me like complete assholes. You don’t have to be an asshole or this exclusive to be cool.”
He started his then-T-shirt line soon after, based around an ethos of inclusivity, openness and an anything-is-possible mentality. Since then, it’s become a launchpad for wild, strange, and endlessly fun dreams merging Dillane’s New York streetwear vision and aesthetic with childlike energy. Think: a fashion show in a circus in Paris with brightly colored, statement apparel tailored by Dapper Dan’s Big L, a breakdancing bullfighter, and Dillane’s own parents as models. A Williamsburg studio doubling as a recording and visual arts studio, with team members living in the building and artists like Young Thug and Mahershala Ali dropping in for collaborations. Projects—say, a ski goggle collab with A$AP TyY that leads to a music video and a spontaneous helicopter ski trip—are expansive and creative.
In 2020, Dillane released a project that was his most ambitious to date: a KidSuper x Puma collaboration dropped in two seasons with five unique shoes and 20 articles of clothing in each.
You don’t have to be an asshole or exclusive to be cool.
Colm Dillane