Supreme: from Tyler, The Creator to Barbara D’Urso is a short step

It was 2011 when Tyler, The Creator showed up on the stage of the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles to receive the “Best New Artist” award at the MTV Music Video Awards. Tyler's outfit made more noise than the prize: black jeans, oversized tie-dye t-shirt and cap with a leopard visor and the Supreme boxlogo. When asked what the hair meant, Tyler who wore Supreme normally replied, "It's a small club, a secret society." It was another world: before the explosion of Instagram, hype and streetwear, Supreme had not yet erupted as a global phenomenon, but had already made the leap from skate to the world of music and art, still managing to remain in the show business underground. Those who wore Supreme recognized themselves as part of the same history as skaters: real recognizes real.

Ten years after, Barbara D'Urso - queen of Italian generalist TV with Maria De Filippi- shows up on Canale 5 last Sunday for the last episode of the Domenica Live season wearing a black suit, whose cut of the jacket it allows a glimpse of a boxlogo with the background of Leonardo's cenacle. This is obviously the last boxlogo for the opening of the store in Corso Garibaldi 35 in Milan, all remarked by one of the masterful posts on his Instagram profile as a boomer who knows how to exploit other boomers on social networks (look at the hashtag and understand what I'm talking about). Leaving aside for a moment the irony of the fact that D'Urso - who recites the rosary live nationally together with Salvini - wears a t-shirt with the print of the cenacle, the correlation between two facts so distant in time and space tells us how Supreme has changed and, above all, how much the role of television, often somewhat obscured by the analysis with the subject of social media, is still fundamental for the success of fashion.

What Tyler did when he went on stage at the beginning of his career with the Supreme cap was the key - along with many other "appearances" of the brand - to make the boxlogo known to an audience that may have already seen that logo somewhere but who had no idea of the meanings behind them and above all was dying to enter the "secret society" of which Tyler spoke. The result was the explosion of Supreme's hype on a certain segment of a very young audience that would have driven the explosion of streetwear and a more general cultural change between the world of fashion and the one of entertainment.

Barbara D’Urso is not Tyler and Supreme today is a very different brand from 2011, despite the fact that the products and stores have remained more or less the same. The operation made by D'Urso  is brilliant marketing on a personal level because it exploits exactly that If you know, you know that drove the explosion of the brand. The result is that those who know Supreme and see it on Barbara D'Urso probably smile half-mouthed, since they have probably already abandoned the boxlogo in the wardrobe for some time, those who do not know Supreme but may have seen it - which more likely was a legit fake by Supreme Italia - today, thanks to Barbara D'Urso, know what it's about. From the folds of the ignorance caused by the hermeticism of the New York brand Supreme Italia was born , which was then condemned precisely for its incorrect and deceptive practice towards consumers.

These two episodes - despite the distance of 10 years - remind us how much the weight of television in contemporary culture is still relevant, at a time when social networks are shrinking more and more into large bubbles where it is difficult to intercept different audiences and because of which many are excluded from cultural updates and trends, helping to build a wall between different generations and social classes. Although a superficial analysis may blame Barbara D’Urso - like an attack on the brand, instead it is an almost informative operation that allows us to know a relevant cultural phenomenon such as Supreme.