SUPPLY Store x NEIGHBORHOOD Incense Chambers

Aussie streetwear giant SUPPLY Store has linked up with Japan’s NEIGHBORHOOD on exclusive incense chambers based around Ned Kelly, an Australian folk hero and bushranger from the late 1800’s. Kelly was known for wearing a bulletproof suit during his final shootout with the police.

First previewed at SUPPLY Store’s Virgil Abloh x Nike “The Ten” Sydney pop-up last month, the Ned Kelly incense chambers will be releasing in two colorways — a metallic version and a signature NEIGHBORHOOD blue-tinged white kaolin clay version. Each home collectible comes with two “Hell Awaits” short- and long-stick incense packs made in collaboration with Kuumba International.

The SUPPLY Store x NEIGHBORHOOD incense chambers will be releasing on December 16 in-store and online at SUPPLY’s web shop.

We spoke to Supply owner Shawn Yates about how the collaboration came about and some memorable stories back in the store’s early days.

Can you describe the initial design and development process when creating the 15th-anniversary incense chamber with NEIGHBORHOOD?
Making an incense chamber with NEIGHBORHOOD was really one of the first ideas we had, when we initially started talking about doing something for the Supply 15 year anniversary.

The booze incense chamber has always been an iconic NEIGHBORHOOD item. We wanted to make something unique from both our perspectives so the idea to design and build an incense chamber based on Australian folk legend Ned Kelly seemed like a good idea and a fun project to do.

Why was Ned Kelly chosen as the figure to best represent this project?
When I was young I was always fascinated with Ned Kelly — the old stories about him and that past era of Australian colonial bushrangers.

I can remember watching over and over a beat up VHS copy of the old 1970’s Ned Kelly movie that starred Mick Jagger. The poster from that movie inspired one of Supply’s earliest T-shirt graphics and we’ve kinda referenced Ned Kelly and old Australian history ever since. Shin (NEIGHBORHOOD owner) was really intrigued when we presented Ned Kelly as our idea for the chamber collaboration. He got right into the history of him. The idea and design for the chamber developed from there.

Aside from the actual chamber with NEIGHBORHOOD, there will also be collaborative incense sticks with Kuumba International, how did this all come about?
That one just made sense. We figured if we were already going to make the chamber we should work with Kuumba on a custom scent to go with it. We wanted to make something inspired by Australia and its surroundings. We sat down with Kuumba founder Mr Eiji at his studio and explained that we wanted to make a scent based on the Australian native gum leaf (eucalyptus). A month or two later, the Kuumba team sent some different samples over and from there we had the Supply “Hell Awaits” incense scent…

What is your relationship with both brands?
The relationship goes back a long time now. Supply has carried NEIGHBORHOOD and Kuumba for many years. Kuumba is actually one of the very first brands we carried when we first opened in 2002.

From the early days, we were one of a few shops around the world that was importing these and other OG Japanese brands like visvim, WTAPS, goodenough, Head Porter, etc.

We don’t do a lot of collaboration stuff generally, but when we do it’s mostly collaborations or special projects done with people we know and deal with. Supply has dealt withNEIGHBORHOOD and Kuumba for years so we thought the 15 Year anniversary was a cool way to work on a project together.

How do you feel Australia fairs on the global streetwear scene? How has it evolved over the years?
Nowadays everything is obviously a lot more global and connected. Social media and online for sure have given everyone more access and knowledge which is great.

When Supply started it was super local. No online stores, no HYPEBEAST, no social media. Few customers also! There was a set of early blogs and message boards like Beinghunted.com, Superfuture, RTHQ, Niketalk and Splay that were all pretty influential — most mainly run by fans of the brands and the developing scene at the time. Magazines were important too. Though none of us could read them, we’d pour over the images in Japanese magazines like Street Jack, Boon, Relax, Smart etc. Lodown from Germany was also a good one.

I think Supply and Australia in general has just evolved with the scene over the years. The idea of Supply and the reason we started it was always to offer a set of brands that most importantly we liked, and that were at that time hard to get hold of. Kinda like those early blogs, we were just into that world of brands and wanted to make those brands available locally. I guess the shop has just developed naturally as the market and brands have.

What Aussie designers/brands should we be on the lookout for?
I always back what Passport do. I really like local line Sports Class — total ’90s skate nostalgia.

Known far and wide for being one of the rare stockists to house Supreme gear back in the day, how did you manage to land it when many others couldn’t?
A lot of the early brands including Supreme really just came through existing relationships and friends. Berto Liechty and Luke Meier at Supreme, Eddie Cruz and Chris Gibbs from Union, Michael Kopelman from Hideout were all really helpful and supportive of Supply from day one.

We were stoked to carry Supreme for the many years we did. James was always really good to us and supported what Supply was about. Supreme was definitely important to what Supply became — it was the brand that helped link the Japan brands the store offered –- WTAPS, visvim, Neighborhood etc. with brands like Fucking Awesome, and later Palace, Bianca Chandon etc…

I’ve always seen Supply as being defined by the brands we carry in the shop. It’s never been about Supply ‘the brand’ but rather it’s the brands we carry that make Supply what it is.

Can you describe what that specific time was like for the store and how you managed to get brands like Original Fake?
Obviously pretty underground and DIY in terms of today, but I kinda feel in a weird way that it’s coming back round to how it was back then in some respects.

We carried some great brands at the time that started early on, but because the scene was relatively small, they weren’t really documented on the internet like brands nowadays. Brands like Silas, Tonite, Sarcastic, Snafu, Clarendon, Fig 8, aNYthing, Project Dragon/Subware, OriginalFake… Many of the guys behind these brands still work in the industry today. With OriginalFake we were already buying KAWS Chum and Companion items direct from Brian/KAWS in Brooklyn so when Medicom started OriginalFake we just started buying the line through them out of Tokyo.

The SUPPLY Store x NEIGHBORHOOD incense chambers will be releasing on December 16 in-store and online at SUPPLY’s web shop.