During this time, he was recovering from an October 2022 aortic aneurysm that left him in the hospital for two and a half months, and this happened around the same time he was being attacked by Ye (Kanye West) on social media. , his former employer, for daring to publicly condemn his White Lives Matter-era actions. For Mr. Emory, whose natural nature is reflective and patient, and who spent much of the 2010s pursuing creative collaborations with others, including Mr. West and Frank Ocean, while following the path he blazed as a clothing designer, Made his mark as. By his close friend Virgil Abloh, the attention has been dizzying and disorienting, though not quite destabilizing.
“It’s purification, ’cause you can’t do what you want to do as a black man in America,” he said in early March about these tug-of-wars over who takes black storytelling in fashion and where. Could. “You’re dealing with the boundary between what white culture at large wants from you, and what black culture at large expects from you.”
However, rather than shy away from difficult conversations, Mr. Emory is engaging in them. He was speaking at the still-spartan Denim Tears office on West Broadway, which is around the corner from his first permanent retail location, African Diaspora Goods, which sells his. Brand with a collection of 2,000 African art history books, which will eventually serve as a kind of non-lending research library.
Denim Tears is currently best known for the cotton wreath motif that Mr. Emory began applying to vintage Levi’s jeans in 2020 — originally as a limited release that felt more like an artistic than a sartorial intervention. More felt, and later more widely applied to jeans and caps and sweatsuits. , The goal was thoughtful, highlighting the product of slave labor and revealing it on the product itself. Particularly in the last year, the wreath has become one of the most recognizable, ubiquitous, and now widely illegal logos in streetwear.
“It means the word spreads,” Mr. Emory said.
Part of Mr. Emory’s influence and power comes from how he brings these reference points into everyday, easy-to-wear clothing like jeans, hoodies and T-shirts. “It’s a pretty utilitarian approach,” said Mr. Emory’s close friend, the fashion designer Andre Walker.