Tremaine Emory and Supreme Took Over Paris Fashion Week

This initially appeared in Present Notes, GQ staffer Samuel Hine’s vogue week publication. For extra tales prefer it, hit the hyperlink and subscribe.

Final Thursday night time, the one hotspot in Paris was a gents’s membership off the Champs Elysee. Supreme was on the town, throwing considered one of its largest events because the starting of the pandemic. Inside, David Blaine pulled playing cards out of surprised skaters’ ears as strippers sporting slashed-up field emblem T-shirts gyrated close by. It was crowded with Supreme group members from Paris, London, and New York, membership youngsters, rappers, vogue insiders, and artists like Kunle Martins. In different phrases, it was a traditional Supreme bash, thrown for the worldwide downtown. However there was one thing completely different within the air, too. For one, there was a gaggle of Thom Browne staff, decked out of their customary brief fits, ready for drinks on the bar. The group ready in line exterior was decked out in designer clothes. For the primary time within the model’s historical past, Supreme had formally landed at vogue week.

Why now? I requested Supreme’s new artistic director, Tremaine Emory, to clue me in. When Emory joined Supreme in February, it was the primary main appointment introduced since VP Corp acquired the model for $2.1 billion in 2020, and an indication that there is likely to be a shift underway because the skate label finishes out its third decade. Emory is the founding father of Denim Tears, a clothes model that’s additionally his mouthpiece for racial justice and cultural activism. Like his pal and collaborator Virgil Abloh was, Emory isn’t sure by the style business’s guidelines; his venture, as he sees it, is simply too vital for that. When he introduced a Converse collaboration in 2020, he demanded that Converse father or mother firm Nike decide to selling actual social change earlier than he would authorized the sneaker. Supreme has a wealthy historical past of political activism, but in addition embodies a way of fuck-the-world cool-guy apathy. Emory’s appointment looks as if a dedication to deepen the model’s engagement in political and cultural points, on a degree past “Fuck the President” tees.

The primary items Emory designed for the model might be launched this fall, together with his first full assortment coming subsequent spring. However his affect is already being felt. Emory arrived on the social gathering round 11:00 p.m., and in all places he went, a crowd adopted. Although he could have been employed from exterior the corporate, the Supreme youngsters had been already consuming out of his hand. Emory defined that the social gathering was within the works earlier than his first day. However each strikes—the social gathering and Emory’s new gig—really feel intimately linked: collectively, they function an acknowledgement that Supreme is as key a participant within the wider vogue system as any luxurious model on the official vogue week schedule. “It’s all linked now,” Emory defined. Don’t count on a Supreme return to the runways; they’ve been there and achieved that courtesy of Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton. However beneath Emory, it’s secure to say Supreme will embrace the style world even additional—and have a good time how a lot it has modified the business. “Each vogue model is making an attempt to do what ’Preme’s been doing for 30 years,” Emory stated. “Why not present up on the Tremendous Bowl, once we helped write the playbook that lots of people are utilizing?”

Emory wasn’t simply on the town for the Supreme social gathering. He was additionally taking showroom appointments for Denim Tears Spring 23, seeding items from his new Levi’s collab, and attending runway reveals of his pals and collaborators. (Although he missed the Louis Vuitton present after safety wouldn’t let him and Acyde in—a greater signal than any, maybe, that the revolution Abloh began isn’t wherever shut to finish.) He and Acyde additionally DJ’d GQ’s biannual Friday night time Paris social gathering at L’Avenue, a convention began in June of 2018 with Acyde and Abloh.

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