What does the appointment of Tremaine Emory as Supreme's creative director mean?

In a decidedly unexpected way, Supreme today announced the appointment of Tremaine Emory as the brand's creative director. Emory, former founder of Denim Tears, will work closely with the founder of the brand, James Jebbia, who will continue to oversee the collections but leaving Emory the creative leadership of the brand in what is certainly the most important news for Supreme since the acquisition by VF Corp in 2020. Just VF could have played a decisive role in the decision to give the brand a creative director, a role previously discovered if we exclude the supervision of Jebbia and a team of creatives, which carries on the idea of the group to make Supreme more and more a brand in the most classic meaning of the term, then untied from the drop mechanics and limited availability.

Emory, who will also continue to work on Denim Tears, will therefore have the heavy task of giving Supreme a true creative direction, a concept partly absent from the work of the brand that has alternated, between successful and less successful collabs, ripoffs of past designs and an alternation of box logos useful mainly to feed the passion of the loyal fanbase. The most difficult task for the new creative director will be to change Supreme while leaving it unchanged, to revolutionize it without changing anything in a silent transformation that could, in the future, even bring Jebbia's brand to parade in some Fashion Week. But maybe this is fantamoda. The certainty is that the choice of Tremaine Emory is probably the best possible (with the peace of mind of Louis Vuitton ... ) given not only the aesthetics of the American designer, but especially the experience accumulated over the years: in addition to having worked with Virgil Abloh and Kanye West, Emory has also scored a series of particularly successful collabo, from Levi's to Converse. A skill that will certainly be useful in his new role.

For its part, VF has been pretty clear about its ambitions with Supreme. After opening stores in Milan and Berlin, adding them to the 12 already scattered between the U.S., Europe and Japan, the group has declared by the mouth of its chief executive Steven Rendle that Supreme is destined to generate a profit of $600 million in fiscal year 2022, a possible result but that will have to pass for a return of flame between Supreme and all those fans, including yours truly, who have now lost the passion for the creation of Jebbia.