It’s not what it once was to young people or to culture. “The brand is an important heritage brand. “I came in very pragmatic,” he said of his ambitions at Supreme. At the time, Emory seemed to be focused on the latter. Supreme and VF Corp’s failure to hit financial targets since the acquisition had been widely documented, a backstory that seemed to frame a narrative tension between corporate turnaround and an authentic desire for change. When I asked him why he thought the streetwear giant, founded in 1994 by James Jebbia, had wanted him to be creative director, he responded bluntly: “Clout.” After being acquired in 2020 by the North Face parent company VF Corp in an industry-shaking $2.1 billion deal, Supreme appointed Emory in February of 2022 to work alongside Jebbia to steer the label into a new era. It was on account of the breakout success of Denim Tears-as far as Emory understands-that Supreme had sought him out. As one recent meme put it, “Denim Tears done hit the streets harder than crack in the 80s.” Maybe I hadn’t been paying close enough attention before, or maybe 2023 was the year that Denim Tears, already enshrined in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for a remix of Ralph Lauren and collaborations with Ugg and Levi’s, was becoming a staple of global fashion. An eerie thing started to happen while I began meeting with Emory this year: I started seeing cotton wreaths everywhere. When the brand stops causing discourse, I’m gonna shut it down.”īy the looks of it, he may be a long way from shutting anything down. “I don’t agree with all the things that people say or feel about the brand, but I like that there’s discourse. “I wanna start uncomfortable conversations,” Emory explained of his aim for the label. Denim Tears vibrates with backstory, though not at the expense of irreverent and soulful surfaces. To understand the thought and research behind Denim Tears clothing requires the kind of curiosity and bookishness that Emory, who studied film at community college before dropping out, layers onto everything he releases. The cotton wreaths are easily mistaken for large flowers, and the indigo handprints that highlighted Denim Tears’ second collaboration with Levi’s were inspired by Julie Dash’s 1991 masterpiece, Daughters of the Dust, a film that touches on the indigo trade. “Because every time someone wears it, there’s another chance for conversation and discourse about the state of Black people, the state of America, the state of the world.”īut Emory’s designs at Denim Tears avoid overt messaging. “I just want to see the cotton wreath, that symbol, that form, spread as far as possible into popular culture,” Emory said of the brand’s signature design, which was inspired by a post on the artist Kara Walker’s Instagram page. In 2019, he founded the cerebral African-diaspora sportswear line Denim Tears, whose most recent release of 30,000 cotton-wreath-adorned sweatsuits sold out in 15 minutes. He’s often quick with a retort to strangers, punctuating witty comebacks with a booming staccato laugh. He remembers details about new acquaintances and, unintentionally, surprises them with this. He sprinkles conversations with vintage bars from Nas, Yasiin Bey, and Jay-Z. His voice is slightly nasal, vowels elongated by a New York childhood. In 2016, Kanye West hired him at Yeezy, where he would become brand director.Īll the while, a core component of Emory’s rise in fashion was his abiding interest in sparking conversation with people-what he often calls “locking in.” Whether it’s designing a Black Jesus sweatshirt to re-create discussions he’d had on the streets of early ’00s Queens or sharing an MF Doom lyric to spark debate at a function, Emory has long been focused on the exchange of provocative ideas, especially around Black history and culture. Ade Odunlami) and, later on, the music exec Brock Korsan, under the handle No Vacancy Inn-gatherings that attracted the likes of Frank Ocean and the late fashion trailblazer Virgil Abloh. After growing up in Jamaica, Queens, in the ’80s and ’90s, he’d worked his way up at Marc Jacobs from a retail job in downtown Manhattan to a management position in London, where he began to emcee parties with his DJ friend Acyde (a.k.a. His grassroots fashion journey had by then become the stuff of lore.
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