‘SYSTEMIC RACIAL ISSUES’

Creative Director Flames Supreme on His Way Out the Door

“I wanted to work with supreme to change these things and instead I told I was racially charged, emotional, and using the wrong forum,” Tremaine Emory said.

The former creative director of streetwear brand Supreme says “systemic racial issues” caused him to resign from the company after just a year-and-a-half. In a string of Instagram posts on Thursday that began with an image of the book White Fragility, Tremaine Emory claimed that Supreme appropriates Black culture, doesn’t have enough Black employees to justify the appropriation, and that another Black employee left because of proposed racist designs. One of the designs, he said, depicted Black men hanging, and the other allegedly showed a Black man with whiplashes on his back. In a statement to Business of Fashion, Supreme said they “strongly disagree with Tremaine’s characterization of our company” and disputed Emory’s claim of being let go after a collaboration with American artist Arthur Jafa was canned. “Supremes [sic] statement in the [Business of Fashion] article is a lie to hide the systemic racism that lies deep within supreme and almost all white Owned corporations,” Emory wrote on Instagram. “I wanted to work with supreme to change these things and instead I told I was racially charged, emotional, and using the wrong forum by bring up systemic racism in a meeting.” Supreme’s parent company, VF Corporation, also owns the North Face and Timberland.