A mini Friday edition of IISTLLT on the Supreme creative director’s resignation.
Yesterday, Tremaine Emory gave up one of fashion’s most covetable seats as the first creative director of Supreme citing systemic racism present at the brand and its parent company VF.
Honestly, I’m not a BOF premium subscriber type guy so I wasn’t familiar with Emory as a designer outside of his brand Denim Tears—which as a floral-and-patchwork guy I am very familiar with. Speaking as a fashion civilian, it seemed like Emory was a good fit for a post-VF acquisition Supreme. The FW23 lookbook that dropped a few weeks ago had his fingerprints all over it and was met with near-universal plaudits from all the usual suspects, including some of the harder to please streetwear hardos. (Although if I catch you with the Supreme x Technics SL-1200 there will be words exchanged.) It nailed nostalgia and progress in equal parts, a current trend I’ll probably write about at length in an upcoming installment.
The story of Emory’s resignation is more complex than I can cover in a few hundred words, but the TL;DR is that there were creative differences (like actual differences, not euphemistic ones) between Emory and a Black designer at Supreme over whether imagery from an upcoming collab with the filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa was appropriate. Specifically, there was a disagreement about a marketing campaign using “the depiction of Black men being hung and the freed slave Gordon pictured with his whip lashes on his back.” Here’s the post from Emory explaining what happened, along with a concerning 110 unread messages bubble (“James” is James Jebbia, Supreme’s founder):
What I find especially interesting in this caption is that Emory wasn’t arguing whether his decision was right or wrong, but that he and the Black designer (who resigned under similar circumstances) were not given the latitude to have these discussions and have them lead to outcomes. Instead, it was the brand’s corporate leadership who said “ok guys, that’s enough for now we’ll take it from here” and make the decision unilaterally. It’s a conclusion that feels both pedestrian—we’ve all been reminded of how little power we have in corporate arenas at some point—and, I imagine, systematically infantilizing for someone who should have control of a brand’s creative direction.
Supreme itself occupies an odd bit of real estate in fashion. It cuts across both generational and cultural intersections to the point where wearing Supreme signals something solely to other Supreme wearers, similar to Issey Miyake’s pleats or, until the TikTok kids discovered it, Rick Owen’s gossamer gothic draping. John Mayer rocks Supreme, but so do Vince Staples and Lady Gaga and Neil Young.
It’s not that no other streetwear brand has that broad a span, but over the course of 30 years Supreme has had the good fortune to be a handmaiden to dominant cultural trends. That courtship would, presumably, come with a thoughtful dialogue between community and brand. Supreme has done that better than any other streetwear brand in memory, yet there are times when it feels like conditional communication and the brand operates as a certain cold remove from the people that so desperately want to be part of it. Some of that was a deft play on scarcity, but Supreme retired that move when VF paid a couple billion to buy them.
The dominant conversation Supreme is having right now is with the Black community of artists, celebrities, and customers that are providing the brand with its cultural buoyancy. Bringing Emory onboard was an ostensible affirmation of that support. Here was an artist and designer who was having a direct dialogue with the tortured history Black people in America; asking him to drive the brand forward when it was floundering for direction made sense. And he made good on the promise with his most recent collection.
I’m not qualified to speak on whether or not Arthur Jafa’s work was appropriate or not for a Supreme collection, though I will say that when you choose to collaborate with an artist as undiluted as Jafa you need to be prepared for something challenging. Also for half a dozen reasons I’m not going to talk about the allegations of systemic racism, though fashion is, uh, pretty racist so that sounds about right from Emory!
The rub for me is that Emory was seemingly given a false sense of control over the narrative of a brand he was brought in to recast. That there was a debate about the merit of a project is the sign of a healthy design and creative practice; that it was dismissed by corporate flaks is a red flag. Thus is life as the center of art and commerce. One side will always win and it’s not people like Emory.