The stories that affected him most were when he was in Africa, traveling with Mayor David Dinkins to meet the Pope and Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and covering the Rwandan genocide.” Emory remembers watching Washington’s American football team (“back then they were called the Redskins but no longer, thankfully”) play the New York Giants from the press box. ![]() I remember at school being proud: he had the coolest job on careers day. “He was a cameraman for CBS News for years. But in Tracy, he had a father who lifted his eye to a telescope to a world beyond. For many of his neighbors, the awareness of a life outside of Queens, let alone the US, was faint. As Emory says: “It all goes back to how I was raised.”Įmory says he feels lucky. But Emory’s is a life whose recent chapters cannot be fully understood unless you dive into his earlier material. There are stories about working with Kanye, Frank Ocean, André 3000 and Virgil himself. More recently, Emory’s fashion brand Denim Tears has explored fashion’s relationship with African American history and exploitation, all while embracing high street collaborations with the likes of Levi's and UGG the brand’s American flag-embroidered look featuring Tyson Beckford was included in the Met Costume Institute’s 2021 exhibition “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion”. He came up through a buzzy array of creative projects in fashion, parties, music and art, chiefly via his multidisciplinary practice No Vacancy Inn, which he put together with one of his closest creative collaborators, Acyde. His first fashion job was on a J.Crew shop floor in the early aughts. You could, if you wanted, chart Emory’s ascent to the lead creative position at what is arguably America’s most influential streetwear brand solely via his employment history. “So I was a bit overwhelmed, in a good way.” “People seem to be really happy about it, happy for me, and happy for Supreme-just happy in general about it,” Emory says. The delight at his appointment appeared universal, evidenced in the many enthusiastic handshakes and back slaps heading his way. ![]() Amongst all these luminaries of the cultural arts universe, attention orbited around Emory, too. Inside, the milling crowd included Nigo, Jerry Lorenzo, Grace Wales Bonner, Olivier Rousteing and Ibn Jasper. Outside, the crowds were screaming for Rihanna and A$AP Rocky and Pharrell. Yet following the rawness and shock of November’s Louis Vuitton show in Miami, and then the deliberate ceremonial weight of January’s autumn/winter 2022 Paris chapter, the atmosphere at the Palais was more joyous, less laden. Abloh shows remain sorrowful: transmitters of memory, reminders of loss. We were in Paris, at Off-White’s Spaceship Earth show at the Palais Brongniart, the brand’s first to be held posthumously after Virgil Abloh’s passing last November. I last saw Tremaine Emory in the flesh in early spring, shortly after the profiling incident at the bakery. So while this bakery guy’s kicking me out and I am challenging him, with dignity, he sees me and comes up and goes, ‘Hey, Trey! What’s up! Congratulations!’” “The most ironic thing? There’s also another guy in there who works at Tom Sachs’ studios around the corner. ![]() “The reason is, no matter what I do, I’m Black with dreads and a beard…No matter what I do, what I achieve, I still have folks in SoHo shouting at me in a bakery on Lafayette Street.”Įmory’s mood lifts a little. ![]() Emory doesn’t think it was the clothes, either. A punchy look for sure, even borderline outré, but not especially radical for downtown New York-and certainly no reason for the outburst. Under that was a hoodie by the 2022 LVMH prize finalist ERL. I couldn’t even tell the color of your skin-it’s the way you are dressed.’”Įmory, for the record, was wearing a Balenciaga trench over a leopard-print Balenciaga minidress that he styles as a sweater. I thought you were this homeless person that comes in and bothers us.’ And I go, ‘And why did you think I was a homeless person: because I’m Black?’ He says, ‘No! It’s not that. I go, ‘Why are you speaking to me like this, sir?’ And he goes, ‘Oh. “This guy screaming at me, he’s a white dude. Emory is talking on a video call from the neat but impersonal-looking serviced East Village apartment that is his current home, leaning in towards the screen. “The guy in there sees me and screams, ‘GET OUT! Get out of here! I told you not to come in here-it’s for paying customers only,’” Emory says. He spotted a bakery and stepped inside – only to be served something else entirely. On a sleet-streaked Manhattan day this past February, Tremaine Emory swung out of his new workplace in SoHo in search of lunch.
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