Remember Shortypop—the brand that parodied Supreme? Well, after a five-year hiatus, it's back. Four days ago, it re-emerged on the Internet, this time on Instagram with a photo of Miss Piggy with "We're back!" in the style of Supreme's box logo over her eyes (the same image is on the homepage of its website). Since then, the brand has been posting new merchandise (hoodies, T-shirts, and crewneck sweatshirts) on the social media platform.
Shortypop, founded back in 2008 by a New York-based graphic designer, first started as a blog inspired by the popularity of NikeTalk forum member Latisha Embrey. After a falling out between Embrey and the founder Mr. Easley, the latter decided to take Shortypop a step further and launch a brand with the same name. "I wanted to take it and become a brand," he told The Couch Sessions in an early interview. "And I was like, 'What do people sell?' and it was streetwear, which I've always been interested in."
Shortypop used Supreme's famous box logo—and would later find itself in trouble because of this (Supreme reportedly paid them $20,000 to buy out the brand). It was known for its half naked lookbooks and phrases like, "Keep Hoes Topless," which Easley told The Couch Sessions was the whole idea behind the brand—to "take urban culture, which is incredibly misogynistic, and juxtaposing that against Barbar Kruger, who is the most prolific female artist in the last 40 years." According to him, that's why Shortypop catered mostly to women despite also designing men's clothing. "I have all of these half-naked girls, so I figured that I would make clothes for them, that other women would wear," he told The Couch Sessions.
The brand would go onto Internet fame before eventually shutting down in 2010. "Much like the music industry, it got 'shelved,' put away to be brought out at the right time," claimed a representative from Shortypop that would only identify himself as "Yelsae" via email. And now seems to be the right time.
"We decided to revive the brand for many reasons, but the main reason being social media," Yelsae told Complex. "More often than not we would run across people still talking about the brand five years later. All you have to do is search for 'shortypop' and you'll see people still mentioning it up not too long ago. Another reason was the ability to do so thanks to a loophole we found.
Shortypop was directly involved with NikeTalk forum. Do you think the forum culture has evolved or changed?
It has definitely evolved immensely in some aspects, in others it's still the same. The actual users from the old [NikeTalk] forum have frown and evolved, no doubt about that. They're no longer teenagers, they're adults with their own lives beyond the forum, with their own responsibilities and even their own kids and families (look at the original Shortypop a.k.a babystilo). Also, the technology has changed, forums were the old version of social media. Obviously we have now gone beyond message boards/forums into more elaborate and complex platforms like Facebook. Even the way we access such platforms have changed. iPhones were just coming out in 2007, so the era of the smart phone didn't catch on until a few years after that.
Back in 2013, Supreme sued Married to the Mob for using "Supreme Bitch." What did you think about that? Was it, in some ways, similar to Shortypop's run-in with Supreme?
The only thing that I found foul about the whole situation—and again only they know the details to this situation—is that from what I read Supreme's founder was cool with MTTM using it, according to the founder of MTTM, but who knows. As far as the actual copy infringement, Stevie Wonder could point it out, so there's no surprise there. It's Supreme's right to have done so. I think a the time of Supreme's owner saying, 'It's coo,' to MTTM they didn't have the trademark locked in. They probably got it around the time of the actual case.
As far as Shortypop, there was never a "case" so no, not nearly the same.
Pre-orders for Shortypop's new collection are available online now.
