Tremaine Emory Shakes Up Supreme

Since acquired by North Face-owner VF Corp in a 2020 deal (valuing the label at $2.1 billion), Supreme has gone from strength to strength. Opening stores in Milan and Berlin over the last year, they've also added to 12 existing locations in the US, Europe and Japan, and on top of all this, their latest announcement detailing Emory's appointment as creative director has been received with an enormous roar; so If one thing's for sure, the streetwear scene, or Supreme specifically, is making moves, and they're making them big.

Although the news may come as a shock, Emory's been pointing out the similarities between his Denim Tears label and Supreme for some time, telling Esquire in 2020:

'Supreme has put out some really powerful garments about what Black people and other people go through in the world — but basically, Denim Tears is like African-American sportswear. You know what I mean? So like, Supreme does every couple of seasons, they'll do like a Malcolm X whatever. My whole line is that. And that's how I've come out the gate. It's just, I guess, a civic or cultural zeitgeist.'

Supreme's hand in the fashion mainstream has been stirring away for some time, and although Emory is a well-established figure among the generation of creatives who have collectively rewritten the rules of what is considered high fashion - Virgil Abloh and co - the move undeniably catapults him to the top of the streetwear scene, this is Supreme, after all.

Emory's ties to fashion's streetwear scene have always run deep, thanks to his friendship with the late great Virgil Abloh. In 2017, we invited Tremory to detail the personal and the design aspects of Abloh's hand-customised Nike trainers for OFF-White S/S 18.