The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 304 — Supreme just saved Tremaine Emory's career 🤦🏾♂️
And he doesn't even seem to know it.
Gooooood morning, family. Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with me. I appreciate you.
HOUSEKEEPING: KYW will be out on Monday in observance of Labor Day. I’ll be back on Friday, though. Hope you have a banging cookout to go to or, at the very least, you find some good food and enjoy a day off. You deserve it.
Let’s jump in.
Be better, Tremaine Emory
Tremaine Emory should be thanking Supreme today. The brand saved his career. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense either. No. This is me saying — quite literally — Supreme saved his career.
Emory was about to make a decision that would’ve completely derailed him and Supreme. The company stopped that. Now he’s mad about it.
What happened: Tremaine Emory claimed he resigned from Supreme because of “systematic racism.” Initially, he had lots of people championing him online for it. Yeah, Tremaine. Fuck Supreme. Way to stick it to The Man.
Then he dropped a couple of Instagram posts to fully explain himself. I looked long and hard, but I couldn’t find anything systematically racist about what happened.
Instead, all I found was another Black man trying to commodify Black trauma while calling it art so it could be sold to the masses.
Emory’s specific complaint is that Supreme nixed imagery from a planned collaboration with cinematographer Arthur Jafa.
What were those images, you ask? Two things: One was a depiction of Black men being lynched. The other was a freed slave, Gordon, with whip scars on his back.
No, you’re not misreading that. The reason this didn’t happen, it seems, was because one of the few Black employees at Supreme spoke out against it. Thank goodness for that person.
My take: Emory couldn’t have thought this through at all. It takes half a second to figure out why this would never fly.
You’re putting images of maimed slaves onto t-shirts and selling them. That’s just gross. There’s no rational explanation that could make this right.
Newsflash: Supreme doesn’t only sell clothes to Black people. I’d estimate most of its clientele is white. And once it inevitably hits the resale market? Whew, boy. We know what that space looks like.
By the way, could you imagine a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white kid rocking a tee with hanging Black men on it at SneakerCon? How about at the Trump rally? Yeah, I’m mad about it, too.
The last recorded lynching we know of was in 1981. That ain’t that long ago, y’all. Lynchings were sold as postcards. Those images contain people’s families. Those are somebody’s great-grandparents — not just portraits meant to be sold. Yet, here Emory was trying to sell them to the masses. Tell me, who is the one propagating systematic racism again?
I’m upset: You should be, too. This wasn’t planned as some one-off art piece made to provide any sort of social commentary. It was an idea meant to be sold — trauma transformed into profit. That’s unimaginable.
There were a million and one things Emory could’ve chosen to prop up Black history if that’s what he wanted to do. So many luminaries to choose from. So many inventions. It doesn’t take long to find one. Yet, he still landed on this. And I keep asking myself why.
The only reasons I could come up with were pretty sick.
The first is that he may simply be unaware of that history. If that’s the case, then he has no business attempting something like this. It’s foolish. He’s lucky he was stopped from completely embarrassing himself.
The second is more ghoulish. It’s the provocation factor — the thing that today’s streetwear culture thrives on. Fueling the outrage machine to generate sales. If this is the case, we need to thank Supreme for stopping him from doing just. And, quite frankly, we need to be done with Emory.
Let me be clear: I’m not going to sit here and act like Supreme and VF Corp are angels. When Black people say some sketchy stuff is being done behind the scenes, I choose to believe them. I believe Emory. After all, only 8% of VF Corp’s workforce is Black. Yet, here Supreme is, pedaling “the culture” as a multi-million dollar corporation every single week. Two things can be true at once.
But this right here? Nah, this ain’t “systematic racism,” as Emory claims. Trying to attach that to this is problematic. It’s dangerous, too. Because when something does happen that truly needs our attention, people won’t take it seriously. Instead, they’ll attach this foolishness to it and it’ll fall by the wayside.
The big picture: This is today’s capitalism in a nutshell. It’s low-hanging. It disguises itself as art or nostalgia, but it lacks thought. It’s just a takedown of a complex, complicated piece of history distilled into something that serves some giant corporation’s bottom line. We’ve seen it over and over and over again. Here, in Emory, we have a man who wanted to do that with Chattel slavery.
Rarely do we ever get the company that looks at that and says “Nah, we’re good.” That’s what Supreme did here. For that, I’m thankful.
Tremaine Emory should be, too.
Is…Is Tennis having a moment?
Tennis has always been a pretty cool sport if you ask me. I mean, where else are you getting a ball crew wearing authentic Ralph Lauren just to scurry around a court?
But this week we saw two of the brightest — and youngest — stars in the game getting spotlighted by a couple of sneaker brands.
A quick recap:
Nike tapped Carlos Alcaraz (20) before his US Open debut on Tuesday for the first look at the upcoming Supreme x Nike Courtposite.
New Balance did the same thing with Coco Gauff (19), giving her a look in the latest Aime Leon Dore’s latest collaboration in the T500.
Gauff’s look, in particular, was incredible. We basically got a lookbook. It was awesome.
The big picture: There’s been a big tennis push lately. The energy behind the sport is bubbling up and crossing over into sneakers again.
Aside from the two collaborations above, we also just had the resurgence of Nike’s Mac Attack, which is one of the brand’s legacy tennis sneakers. The silhouette is also getting a complete makeover with multiple collabs (Social Status, Travis Scott) and new colorways coming to the forefront.
The why:
I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the pickleball and padel excitement in this explosion. These are two of the fastest-growing sports in the world.
They’re not the same sports, obviously, but they’re very similar from the style of play to some of the rules and even some of the gear folks wear.
Bottom line: This is a fun moment for tennis as a whole and an incredibly cool moment for these young stars being tapped into. I’m excited to see more moving forward.
So about those trashed Vans
If you’re on sneaker TikTok at all, chances are you’ve seen this video from @soso_swag about all of the Vans sitting in front of a store in Philly. Here’s a quick link if you haven’t.
A quick recap:
The user recorded a pile of Vans sitting in front of a department store waiting to be trashed.
The shoes were unworn but were slashed through so people couldn't wear them.
There were dozens of pairs just piled outside of the store. The woman captured it on video and shamed the company for wasting product like this.
I love where her heart is with this. As consumers, we always need to be vigilant about brand waste.
Yes, but: There was reportedly more to this scenario, though, Complex reports. A representative from the company said the shoes were deemed “unsafe to donate” because of organic growth in them. Translation: They had mold problems.
Somehow, even with that explanation, this doesn’t feel great.
Dozens of sneakers were still allowed to turn moldy and, in turn, had to be thrown out while in Vans’ care.
Perhaps that was the only thing that could be done. It still doesn’t explain how this was allowed to happen in the first place. It’s just not a good look.
Let’s be real: This isn’t the first time this has happened. It certainly won’t be the last. But, hopefully, after seeing this reaction from the public, brands come up with better strategies to handle this sort of thing.
Another FOG x Adidas leak
I’m not sure when we’re ever going to get Jerry Lorenzo and Fear of God’s work at Adidas, but at least we know it exists!…I think.
There’s another FOG x Adidas sneaker leak out there. This one looks like some sort of luxury runner. It kind of reminds me of Adidas’ Y-3 models.
Take a look:
I’ll be honest: I hate leaks. They don’t present a sneaker the way it’s supposed to be presented. We don’t get essential information on shoes like this — we can only assume.
But, man, it’d be nice if Jerry Lorenzo and Adidas would put something out so we wouldn’t have to do this anymore. Maybe someday.
#TheKicksWeWear
First, the homie Vivid Dope came through in the Adidas Crazy Infinity 2.5. Adidas really got one with these.
Then the homie Sam popped out with the Yuto Dunks. We absolutely love to see the W. They’re beautiful.
The homie Kali came through, per usual, with an absolute classic. The Vioetch Air Max 90 never gets old. Honestly, nothing Vioetch ever gets old.
The homie Big Craw came through with the Chinese New Year AJ5 lows and these are a SLEEPER, y’all.
Then the homie Killa Kow came through and shut it down with the orange emerald SBs. How in the world do these look better than most of the SB collabs this year?!?! Sheeeeeeeeeesh dog.
Y’ALL KILLED IT. Bless your hearts. Give yourselves a round of applause. You deserve it.
Appreciate you, family! Thank you so much for reading and rocking out with me today. Y’all are the best. Hope you enjoy your holiday!
Let’s chat again next week. Until then, peace and love. Be easy, be safe, be kind. And we out.
-Sykes💯
We need to be talking about the upcoming Supreme x Carlos Alcaraz hard court tennis shoe based of an old Andre Agassi foam-phosate model.