As the marketplace for current culture, StockX finds itself in the center of one of the year’s largest music events as festival season gets underway. For the very first time, StockX has come together with Coachella to pair the festival’s performers with some of today’s most exciting brands to produce special-edition merch commemorating the best of Coachella 2022. One of these partnerships comes in the form of a StockX-coordinated collaborative merch collection between the Los Angeles-based collective, Supervsn, and East Atlanta Rapper, J.I.D.
Gavin Mathieu, the founder of Supervsn was born and raised in Los Angeles near the Leimert Park neighborhood. Prior to starting Supervsn, Mathieu opened a retail store at the age of 23 on Fairfax. He called the store YOUth and set it up as a place where young, like-minded creatives could showcase their talents. Using Photoshop and Illustrator, programs that he had previously taught himself as a teenager, Mathieu designed the whole store himself and proved that he was capable of bringing life into anything he set out to create. Through this process, Mathieu was able not only to become a part of the already booming Los Angeles creative community but also became a key player in shaping and fostering what that community would look like in the future, “I love design, but I really care more about impacting and connecting with people. And so everything I create is just sort of a manifestation of my passion.”
As Mathieu began utilizing these design skills and living his passion, the foundation for Supervsn was laid. The brand is founded upon the idea that it is an “energy company”. To Mathieu, “What I mean by Supervsn as an energy company is that the work, the passion, the experiences, the love amongst our team, amongst our community, everything that we put into that, it’s a transfer of energy.” He goes on to explain what that process looks like and how the energy transcends the physical items that he creates, “I believe that when a person receives a product and they walk down the street and somebody says, “I love that shirt.” They feel good about themselves that day. And the person who touched the shirt, they’re like, oh man, this is so cool. It’s so detailed and puff print. And I believe that people receive that.”
Naturally, it is the energy that J.I.D puts into his music that resonates with Mathieu and led to the creation of the pairing’s Coachella collection. “For me, being a product guy, I like to think that my products are like ‘merch for life’,” says Mathieu explaining why he and J.I.D are a good match for each other. Additionally, Mathieu’s philosophy on the nature of energy enabled the project to develop with relative ease as J.I.D had provided him with everything he needed to successfully create the collection. In Mathieu’s own words: “The music just made it a lot easier for me to create products that represented what [J.I.D] already created. He’s still the same guy, but he’s gone through some new things and he wants everybody to see kind of what he’s learned now.”
Through Mathieu’s creative process he was able to easily transfer J.I.D’s message into pieces he created, “When we collaborate with an artist for their merch, I try to take a backseat because my mission is to platform artists.” And so for the Supervsn x J.I.D x Coachella collection, which is composed of three pieces: one hoodie, and two t-shirts, Mathieu utilizes design elements that are featured in the artwork for J.I.D’s upcoming album, The Forever Story, including a bold red gothic-inspired script, and the motif of a third eye graphic that Mathieu explains, “The third eye is like the spiritual aura. It represents enlightenment.” One of the t-shirts also hosts iconography of an ouroboros, which to Mathieu, elaborates on this theme of spiritualism, “The snake symbolizes a rebirth.” With The Forever Story being J.I.D’s third solo studio album, Mathieu sees the ouroboros as a representation of the process that the artist has gone through, “When you do something so dynamic as an entire album, you really are kind of showing the world your new self. It is very spiritual and that snake symbol was already a part of his artwork for his album. And I just felt it makes so much sense because he’s putting out a new project in hopes that people receive him how he wants to be.”
Click here to shop the DropX™ Exclusive Supervsn x J.I.D x Coachella collaboration on StockX.
