Awich

The designer is renowned for her inspired use of upcycled and repurposed vintage fabrics for her menswear brand Bode, o en worn by the likes of Harry Styles (pictured). The Atlanta native was the first female menswear designer to show at New York Men’s Fashion Week and won the CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award two years in a row. During her first Paris show in 2019, Bode Aujla showed a pair of striped trousers made from ribbons originally used in the 1970s to make equestrian sports awards. is is typical of her approach; a thri y yet quirkily posh re-imagining of menswear.

Hailing from Punjab, artistic duo Jiten ukral and Sumir Tagra’s practice reflects on a fast-changing and dynamic India with bold, joyful paintings, sculpture, installations, graphic design and videos. One of their most famous series, 2013’s Windows of Opportunity explores the socio-political issues behind the Punjabi diaspora – for example, the doctors and accountants who migrate to the West and what happens to the country and people they leave behind.

At once dreamily Surreal and Pop-Art-bold, the series questions the meaning of success and contemporary consumerism in modern-day India. You can also find work by the duo at Soho House Mumbai.

Ader Error

Fashion designers, South Korea

Nominated by Disney

Stephanie Hsu is one of Hollywood’s fastest rising stars, known for roles which represent the Asian American experience. She was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her dual role as Joy Wang and villain Jobu Tupaki in Everything EverywhereAll AtOnce Hsu was born in California and began her career performing in school musicals before studying drama at the prestigious Tisch School for Arts at NYU. Next, Hsu will appear in comedy film Joy Ride directed by Crazy Rich Asians screenwriter Adele Lim, and new Disney+ series American Born Chinese alongside Michelle Yeoh.

Amie Dicke is best known for manipulating images of fashion models found in magazines and newspapers. Her most famous works involve nails smashed into a magazine cover and also images of models that have been cut into with a surgeon’s scalpel, so that they no longer evoke glamour but unsettle.

Dicke trained at the Willem de Kooning Academy of Fine Arts in Ro erdam and is based in Amsterdam, where her art can be found at the city’s Soho House, and also at Soho House Rome. Dicke also hosted a workshop at the first Soho Summit at Soho Farmhouse in April.

Back in 2014, an anonymous group of South Korean creatives gathered together to create Ader Error: a brand that aimed to channel art and culture through fashion. The name stands for “but near missed things”, reflecting the designers’ approach to their cra which takes inspiration from everyday moments – ones that are o en missed. Today, the brand delivers season a er season of playful, gender-neutral clothing, o en featuring voluminous shapes and rich colour. As a result, Ader Error has gradually accrued an ardent following of Instagram followers and real-life customers.

Danielle Dean’s multimedia art practice, which includes video, painting, installation and performance, reveals the hidden nightmare behind the American dream as expressed in advertising – you will find examples of her work at Holloway House and Soho House West Hollywood in Los Angeles. Her contribution to 2022’s Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It’s Kept looked at the Ford Motor company and founder Henry Ford’s fascination with popular cartoon characters. In her critique, Ford’s dream of the open road is in fact a neocolonialist nightmare of oppression and exclusion.

Klaxon alert: there’s a new queen bee in town and her name is Awich – short for “Asian wish child”, which is the translation of her birth name, Akiko Ursaki. Awich hails from Okinawa, Japan, and fell in love with hip hop a er discovering it in the record shops, clubs and bars that surrounded the nearby US Army base where she grew up.

In 2022, she made her major label debut with Queendom, which tells the story of her journey from Okinawa to Atlanta, the imprisonment and murder of her husband in the US and becoming a single mother. Rapped in both Japanese and English, it’s a statement of triumph over adversity, and a celebration of a queen who now rules over everything she surveys.

Ursaki learnt to rap in English thanks to her idol, Tupac Shakur, and his album All Eyez On Me In his music and message she found an a inity with the political struggles of Okinawa, which is a colony of Japan in a similar way that Hawaii is to the US. The lyrics of her first song featured a play on the Okinawan word for “what’s up” (cha-yaga) – at the time, the language was banned from being spoken in schools on the island. Ursaki gave her first live performance aged 14 and quickly signed to a Tokyo record label, but quit when her music didn’t fit in with its pop-rap approach.

Aged 19, she moved to Atlanta to study business and marketing at the University of Indianapolis. During this period, she met and married an American man and gave birth to their daughter. A er her husband was incarcerated and subsequently killed, Awich returned to Japan with her daughter. What shines through from this period is her determination. She went on to set up the marketing and production company Cipher City, which works to market Okinawa’s location, art and people internationally.

In 2017, she won an award for the short film Aimer, which she wrote and directed. rough the independent hip hop label Yentown, she released two albums, 8 and Peacock followed by Partition – her first EP via Universal Music. e critical acclaim of thoseprojects led to Queendom, her major debut with the label. Following Queendom’s release, Awich fulfilled a long-held dream of headlining the famous Nippon Budokan stadium in Tokyo. In 2023, her hot run continues. Most recently, she released the single Yeah with ai rapper OG Bobby. And you know what? It rules. Long live the queen.

JULIAN KLINCEWICZ

Artist, filmmaker and photographer e Chicago-born, San Diego-raised multidisciplinary artist is known for his experimental approach to storytelling. “When I was 19, I went to Paris for the first time and saw an Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vui on,” he says. “I le with a clear aspiration: to one day show my work there. And that’s what happened in 2021. I shot a series of portraits on VHS – the first video camera I ever owned – and seeing them blown up to about 15 feet tall and shown at an institution of that calibre was a literal dream come true.”

A selection of our LA-based Soho Future 100 talents, nominated by Disney, soak up the rays at Holloway House in Los Angeles

By James Conrad Williams

Photography by Juan Veloz

Designer Kimmiski Adams

Kimmiski Adams

Designer (pictured, previous spread)

“When feel inspired, I’m most likely listening to music,” says Adams, a graduate of adidas’ School for Experiential Education in Design (S.E.E.D.) programme, who is now a colour materials designer for the sportswear brand. “I try to find new places I have not been to and I keep my notebook and iPad on me. My creative heroes are Pharrell Williams, Nicki Giovanni, James Baldwin, Hype Williams and Beyoncé. respect the honesty they use to create new realities that so many people connect with.”

Reginald Armstrong

Artist

Armstrong is a Los Angeles-based artist who specialises in painting and sculpture. “I’m grateful that when I’m in my art studio, the spark always happens and I know my fire will never die out,” he says. “I feel proudest of my largest painting to date, which is currently up on the wall in my studio. It’s about 10x11 feet and demands that the viewer looks at it as soon as they step in the room. My goal is to make works that fit the walls of a museum, or something of that level.”

Leeann Huang

Fashion designer

Huang’s designs blend traditional cra techniques with inventive materials to create colourful, almost fantastical pieces. “I created this tailored coat that, when you open it, it reveals an entire dinner se ing and feast,” she says. “Embroidered with lobsters, fish, oysters and all kinds of accoutrements, it was one of those pieces that just came together really fast and e ortlessly one night. It’s part of the FIT Museum’s upcoming Food & Fashion exhibition.”

Coline Creuzot

Singer and songwriter

A proud Houstonian, Creuzot has worked with some of the city’s biggest names, such as Paul Wall, Slim ug, Z-Ro and Lil Keke. “Every song I write and sing is a reflection of who I am and where I am in that moment. I’m honestly proud of every piece of work I create. But must say, I’m super proud to be designing and creating a one-of-a-kind jacket for Disney’s Create 100. It’s exciting to make something that combines my love for music and my favourite Disney Princess, Tiana.”

Taofeek

Leung Chi Wo Artist, Hong Kong Member, Soho House Hong Kong

Ras Baun Bartram Stylist, Copenhagen

Chandricka Carr

Fashion designer, Philadelphia

Nominated by Disney

In 2018, when Abijako presented his debut SS19 collection for Head of State at New York Fashion Week: Men’s, he became the youngest-ever designer to show at the event. He is renowned for his ability to express social and political commentary through his work, which led to him appearing on the Forbes 30

Under 30 list and becoming a CFDA/ Vogue Fashion Fund finalist. For Disney’s Create 100, Abijako created a shirt that combined Head of State’s signature design language with Winnie the Pooh. Here, he shares what, where and who inspires him.

How do you set yourself up for a productive day at work?

I go on a long early morning walk with music before a empting anything else.

Of all the pieces you’ve designed, which are you the most proud of?

In 2022, we designed two Met Gala looks in less than 10 days [for Danai Gurira and Evan Mock]. Even though the process was tough, we created something beautiful and it gave us the belief we could take on any project.

Where do you go for inspiration?

To feel inspired, I usually spend time away from consuming art. I visit my family in upstate New York, which is much closer to nature than NYC.

I think it’s important for artists to learn to take breaks, as a big part of making art comes from being able to live.

Who are your creative heroes?

Francis Kéré is my idol – an incredible architect who’s rethinking the way infrastructures are built in a margin - alised environment. at’s the type of subject I’m interested in exploring.

Which book, film or piece of art are you inspired by?

Poetics of Relation by Édouard Glissant.

It’s hands down my favourite piece of writing. It’s helped to frame my understanding of how culture and identity evolves over time.

What’s been your strangest source of creative inspiration?

Cartoons and anime. It’s not really strange, but it brings out my inner child.

What city do you find the most inspiring and why?

Lagos, Nigeria, because I was born there.

Whose feedback do you trust the most?

My siblings’. We fight, we laugh, we cry, we do it all together. So they tend to understand me best.

What do you do to unwind or escape?

I unwind by taking long road trips across the country.

What’s your definition of creativity?

Creativity is the ultimate freedom of expression. It’s the ability to combine what each generation learns from the previous one with our aspirations for the future, in order to dictate what we do in the present.

Leung Chi Wo’s practice encompasses video, text, performance and installation, but focuses primarily on photography. His work – which can be seen at Soho House Hong Kong – explores identity in the region and its fractured relationship with mainland China. For one of his most famous works, the Colour Photo series (19992003), Leung captured the highrise buildings against the sky in both Hong Kong and New York. He helped found one of Hong Kong’s very first contemporary art destinations, Para/Site, in 1996 and now teaches at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong.

Lulu Wang

Director, Los Angeles

Member, Soho House West Hollywood

Filmmaker and producer Lulu

Wang was born in Beijing, raised in Miami and educated in Boston. You might not know that she’s a classically trained concert pianist who began learning aged four, but you probably will know her for e Farewell – the 2019 film about a Chinese-American family who decide not to tell their grandmother that she has only a short while le to live and instead schedule a family gathering. e film was based on her own life and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature. In 2022, Wang was also appointed to the Sundance Board of Trustees.

Prem Sahib

Artist, London

Member, Shoreditch House

With its disembodied hoodies suspended in the air and pu a jackets squished into stark glass frames, abstract installations by the artist Prem Sahib may at first glance appear starkly minimal and formal but are, in fact, loaded with meaning. An alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and the Royal Academy, Sahib’s work explores queer culture, intimacy, desire and community – look out for his art across our London Houses, including Shoreditch, White City, 180 and High Road House. In addition to his art practice, Sahib helps to run the queer club night Anal House Meltdown.

As a boy, Danish stylist Ras Baun Bartram was bullied at school because he preferred Barbie to G.I Joe; fashion instead of sport. He changed schools four times because his androgynous look marked him out as a “weirdo”. ank goodness for the fashion industry, where Bartram found his true calling as stylist. He was recently appointed fashion director of 032c magazine, where he works across the magazine, its ready-to-wear line and runway shows. However, it goes without saying that no matter how captivating the looks are that he styles, Bartram reserves his best work for his own gothic, futuristic look.

Carr’s career is rooted in education – she is a graduate in fashion design from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and a subsequent design program at Pensole led to her creating a trainer for Puma. She is now part of the adidas School for Experiential Education in Design (otherwise known as S.E.E.D.), which is located in Brooklyn, New York. “When need inspiration, I travel, whether it’s physically or mentally,” she says. “Even a train ride in the city where I’m living can spark inspiration for me. like to explore the di erences around me in order to open my mind to new possibilities and understanding.”

Debbie Musician, London

Member, Shoreditch House

Londoner Debbie likes to describe herself as a soul singer. Not just because that’s the kind of music she ostensibly makes but also because that’s where it comes from: deep down. Her fans include John Legend, Mahalia and Stormzy (pictured above), with whom she collaborated on his latest album. Soho House holds a lot of memories for Debbie:

“It’s a home away from home. love the familiar warmth I get in every House.” Now, she’s signed to 0207 Def Jam – she met them at Shoreditch House, of course – and her star is set to rise even further.

Benedetta Porcaroli Actor, Rome Member, Soho House Rome

Italian actor Porcaroli shot to fame playing teenage prostitute Chiara Altieri in the Ne lix drama Baby, which concluded its third and final series in 2020. e show follows the students of an elite high school in Rome who becomes disillusioned with her privileged life and is drawn into a prostitution ring. It is loosely based on the real-life “Baby Squillo” scandal from 2014. e actor, who is also a major presence on the red carpet (usually in Gucci, natch), is set to appear alongside Sydney Sweeney in upcoming American horror film Immaculate

Alva Bratt

Actor and model, Stockholm

Member, Soho House Stockholm

Bratt has carved out a niche playing teen queens in Swedish language TV. She shot to fame as influencer Felicia Kroon in the youth TV series Eagles which follows a group of teenagers in a Swedish ice hockey town as they fall in love, do ba le on the ice and compete with each other over everything. Meanwhile, in this year’s Netflix heist series Barracuda Queens, Bra is part of a group of disa ected teenage girls who, bored of their privileged lives in the a luent Stockholm suburb Djursholm, become involved in burglaries targeting their naive rich neighbours.

Actor, Texas

Member, Soho House Austin

Nominated by Disney

Lauren Ridlo is a Tony Awardnominated actor from Chicago.

A er winning Miss Deaf America in 2000, Ridloff became a teacher. Her big break came in 2018, when she was hired to tutor director Kenny Leon in American

Sign Language for his Broadway revival of the play Children of a Lesser God. Leon eventually cast her in the lead role opposite Joshua Jackson. Ridlo then found mainstream success and international recognition after roles in e Walking Dead e

Sound of Metal co-starring Riz

Ahmed, and as Marvel’s first deaf superhero in Eternals opposite Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek.

Francisco Manzano named himself AKA Priest as a reaction to his strict Catholic upbringing. Classically trained in violin and piano from the age of five, he discovered electronic music through clubbing in his teenage years. Working as a PR and casting director took him around the world, expanding his musical horizons. His main influences are now early 1990s house, hip hop and Latin rhythms. After his career in fashion, AKA Priest eventually returned to music, where he uses his classically trained ear to blend a range of musical genres, which he plays in clubs and festivals all over the world.

Nic Klein Illustrator, Munich

Nominated by Disney e singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad sings his delicate acoustic guitar ballads about love, relationships and heartbreak in both Hindi and English. He grew up in Jaipur in a household without internet and so was immersed in Indian pop and Bollywood music at a young age. As a result, Kuhad only discovered the music of Elliot Smith, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie while studying at New York University. His beautifully haunting music leans heavily into folk and his 2018 song cold/mess was featured on Barack Obama’s “Favourite Music” list in 2019, which the former president posts on social media every year.

Klein is a comic book artist and illustrator who is part of Marvel’s Stormbreakers’ Class of 2023 – a programme that highlights the best up-and-coming artists in the comic book industry. Klein is known for his previous collaboration with writer Donny Cates on the comic or Other credits include a veritable who’s-who of superheroes, namely Deadpool Captain America and Winter Soldier However, his lastest work can be seen with the revival of a classic: the new Incredible Hulk comic book series, which he created with renowned writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson – the first issue was released back in June.

Artist, Los Angeles and Massachuse s

Member, Soho Warehouse

Genevieve Gaignard works with the mediums of collage, installation, sculpture and self-portraiture to create art that explores race, status, resilience and accountability. Her ultimate aim: to help the viewer to ‘“continue the unlearning of white supremacy” – take her piece The American Dream is A Pyramid Scheme from her 2022 show Strange Fruit which questions the glorified white ideal of Black servitude. Her art can be found adorning the walls of our LA spaces, including Soho House West Hollywood and Holloway House.

There’s a pretty good chance you’ll have heard of the industry-disrupting and category-defining megabrands founded by businesswoman Emma Grede. Chief among them is Skims, the shapewear label she co-founded in 2019 with the most influential influencer of them all, Kim Kardashian. e brand has conjured up the kind of business alchemy of which most marketers can only dream. It took a moribund category – shapewear – and via a combination of exclusive collabs and hotly anticipated “drops” (rather than seasonal collections), Skims became one of the hottest and most profitable Gen Z brands on the planet. It has a valuation of $3.2 billion and was named one of TIME magazine’s most influential companies in 2022. Also, the product is exceptional, with the colours and simplicity of form hiding the data-driven engineering genius within the material.

To give you an idea of the kind of consumer frenzies these techniques can whip up: the Skims collection designed by Kim Jones – the artistic director of Dior menswear and Fendi womenswear and couture – generated more than

$3 million in sales within 10 minutes of launching. Even more inspirational is the fact that this has been achieved by sticking to the brand’s – and Grede’s – ethos of diversity and inclusivity. Who knew shapewear could be so culturally relevant and, let’s face it, so sexy?

It has been one hell of a ride for Grede, the eldest of four girls raised by a single mum in Plaistow, east London.

As a child, she used fashion as a form of escapist glamour and enrolled at the London College of Fashion aged just 16 – but dropped out a er securing an internship at Gucci. Grede believes that it was the dyslexia she was diagnosed with a few years later that prevented her from pursuing her studies, which she valued and took seriously.

After working as a producer of fashion shows and events, she founded

ITB Worldwide, a talent and influencer agency with o ices in London, New York and Los Angeles, at the age of 26. She eventually sold the company and went on to establish the first of her major brands with the Kardashian family: the denim label Good American with Khloé Kardashian, which launched in 2016. The core of the Good American brand is inclusivity, offering denim in a size range of US 00–24 photographed on diverse models. The company was forecast to generate sales of $200 million in 2022 alone. In 2017, Grede moved to Bel Air, Los Angeles, with her husband Jens and their four children. Her success is a testament to the fact that diversity and inclusivity is not a problem to be solved, but a superpower to be built upon.

Artist, London

Member, Shoreditch House

A Texan artist based in London, Wielebinski explores themes of desire, mythmaking, gender and sexuality with a head-spinning mash-up of paint, installations, textile, sculpture, gay porn and, oh, the occasional Pamela Anderson cameo. His installation at Selfridges London (until October 2023) takes the form of an old-fashioned men’s public toilet, highlighting the powerful politics behind seemingly innocuous spaces: from the transphobic “bathroom panics” created by tabloids to symbols of women’s liberation. Want to know more? Look out for his work at Brighton Beach House.

Ro erdam-based singer Naomi Sharon became the first female artist signed to Drake’s record label OVO Sound when she joined earlier this year. Drake announced the release of her debut single on the label, Another Life, on Instagram with the caption: “I been waiting for this day for too long now where the world finally gets to digest the insane amount of work you have put in since we met.” Sharon is already a star in her native Holland –her haunting vocals set over minimally lo-fi production have led to fans comparing her work to the the music of Sade, Tems and Majid Jordan.

For the New York-born, Berlin-based fashion designer Olivia Ballard, the personal is professional and vice versa. She founded the brand from her bedroom in 2020 – which remained its headquarters for two years before Ballard expanded to a studio in Kreuzberg. Her intricately cut layers of stretchy mesh fabric are a “second skin for all genders, all bodies, all ages”. Key to her work is how each piece is altered depending on the person who is wearing it, creating an intimacy between Ballard’s clothes and the wearer.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – known collectively as “the Daniels” – are the filmmakers behind the madcap multiverse drama Everything Everywhere All At Once, which triumphed at this year’s Oscars, winning 10 awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The duo started out making similarly goofy music videos, most notably DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s Turn Down for What? e Daniels recently announced that they will continue their intergalactic adventures by signing up to direct an episode of the next Star Wars series: Skeleton Crew.

Entrepreneur, Los Angeles Member, Shoreditch House

Soho House West Hollywood member Tremaine Emory is a designer with a unique brand of creativity that’s rooted in culture, history and a deep sense of community. Now at the helm of Supreme, he’s bringing these values to a global platform hen Tremaine Emory was six years old, his parents took him to buy a calico cat. He was so fascinated by its tricolour tortoiseshell coat that he named it Fashion. “It reminded me of one of my mom’s dresses, or something beautiful I’d seen in a magazine,” he tells me, si ing by a long wooden dining table in his New York apartment. Decades later, his eye for detail and design has led him to the highest ranks of the fashion industry, as both the founder of Denim Tears and the creative director of Supreme. His appointment to the la er came in 2022, two years a er the streetwear giant was acquired by VF Corp for $2.1 billion in a deal that shook its puritanical fans, who feared for the brand’s anticorporate soul. eir worries were soon allayed when Emory was confirmed as the new design lead, working closely with Supreme founder James Jebbia to imagine a bright new future for the brand. For Emory, fashion has always been a vehicle for dialogue, specifically in fighting for socio-political change for Black people in America. He didn’t study at Central Saint Martins or Parsons, nor did he have a gateway into the industry through a wealth of contacts. He was born in the state of Georgia and raised in Jamaica, Queens – a New York neighbourhood where the systemic oppression of African Americans was a constant reminder in the financial and social struggles of his community.

“My entry into the creative world was very obtuse because I didn’t come from prestigious places,” he says. “Growing up in New York is only inspiring if you’re privileged enough to have access to things. I’m from a place where most people don’t have passports. My mum died without a passport and never having left America. A lot of people here have never even le the borough they live in. New York can be a very small place when you live like that.” rough No Vacancy Inn, Emory and his co-founders have hosted parties and events attracting a who’s who of the fashion scene, from Rick Owens and Yoon Ahn of AMBUSH to Virgil Abloh and A$AP MO. “No Vacancy Inn was born out of friendship and similar interests. It was Acyde and coming together and taking our act on the road, DJing, hosting parties, making T-shirts and traveling the world to do things with our friends. Our first pop-up was with Tom Sachs, then we did two collections with Virgil [Abloh] and O -White,” he says. “Culture is a small group of people learning a new way to live. Me, Acyde and Brock, with our squads of friends, found a new way to live through making things, doing things and bringing people together.”

Emory’s experience was a little di erent to that of the friends he grew up with. His father was a broadcast journalist who’d travel the world and come home with stories of what he’d seen. It fed Emory’s imagination and birthed a desire for exploration and creativity. His father and mother, who died in 2015, would take him on trips around the five boroughs of New York, where he’d experience the magnitude of the city and its layered characteristics. “It opened up my mind,” he admits. rough the prints, designs and storytelling of his own brand Denim Tears, Emory has built a reputation for centering and celebrating Black history and the ancestral roots of the African diaspora. Since launching in 2019, the label has collaborated with the likes of Levi’s, Stüssy, Ugg and most recently Dior, in a streetwear-meets-luxury mirage rooted in culture and heritage. Then there’s the community-focused initiatives of No Vacancy Inn – his partnership with best friend Ade “Acyde” Odunlami and Brock Korsan, traversing the realms of nightlife, music, radio, and fashion.

Emory started his fashion career working in the brick-and-mortar stores of various brands. First up was a 2001 stint as a sales assistant at J Crew: “It was my first retail job, but I ended up leaving after they discriminated against me because of my hair. I had braids and an Afro, which they said didn’t match their ‘look book’, so I quit a er going to war with them about immutable characteristics.” He then went underground, so to speak, taking a stock job at Kate Spade, before landing a similar role at Marc Jacobs. “Marc Jacobs was very di erent from the retail brands had experienced. ey appreciated people’s di erences and supported and promoted people of all races, colours, sexualities and genders before it was ‘cool’ to do so,” he says. e company eventually moved Emory to London, where he was promoted to manager of a Marc Jacobs store. It was there he found his tribe, tapping into the city’s fashion and nightlife scene. “I spent a lot of time at Shoreditch House,” he says, reminiscing on his seven years in the city. “I met a lot of cool people there. I just like surrounding myself with great people.” In 2016, he was tapped by Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) to serve as a creative consultant for Yeezy. He then joined the label as brand director, working closely with Ye and Abloh. He also worked with Frank Ocean and Stüssy around this time.

Emory now finds himself among an elite group of Black creatives who, despite the barriers keeping luxury fashion and art exclusive to the white and wealthy, have amassed a level of power and influence that can spearhead tangible change. Virgil Abloh, a close friend and collaborator, showed what was possible in his role as artistic director of Louis Vui on Menswear and through his own label O -White before he passed in 2021. Emory took notes. “I care about what is happening for my community,” he says. “You can put all the representation you want into fashion companies but what’s going on in neighbourhoods of Hispanics, Blacks, poor whites and poor people in general? What is the education like there and what is the food like in grocery stores there? What’s the access that these people have to the world? ose things are really important to me.”

In 2020, before allowing the release of the Denim Tears x Converse sneaker collection, Emory challenged Converse and its parent company Nike to disclose the number of Black employees they had in leadership roles, and demanded they stop financially supporting the US Republican party under Donald Trump. While they didn’t acquiesce to his initial request, the call to action resulted in Converse making e orts to work with Emory on educating about the importance of voting in swing states ahead of the 2020 Presidential primaries. “ at [social] post was a call to arms for Converse, and myself, to do more,” he told Esquire at the time. “Do more than just donate money, but to activate people to do something immediate that can help the plight of what’s going on in America with systemic racism.” Similarly, when No Vacancy Inn released a sneaker with New Balance three years ago, he launched an essay competition for teenagers, asking them to write academic arguments around postenslavement reparations for African Americans for a chance to win a free pair. Emory is focused on giving a voice to narratives that have previously been ignored. Take Dior Tears, his collaboration with long-time friend and Dior artistic director Kim Jones. The menswear collection, which was unveiled at Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum earlier this year, explored the stories and wardrobes of Black creatives like James Brown and Miles Davis, who le Jim Crow America to seek refuge in Europe. e clothes amalgamated workwear worn by civil rights activists with preppy pieces favoured by 1960s–70s Ivy League alumni and French elegance. Each piece was styled with symbolic emblems, like Denim Tears’ signature co on wreath motif – a nod to the enslaved ancestors of African Americans who picked co on on plantations – also featured heavily. ese intricate details speak to the depth of Emory’s conscious cra and his gi for embedding history into his designs with authenticity, care and cultural relevance. “I’m not focused on trends. have to design from stories because it’s a part of who I am. at’s what I want my brand and my work to represent: the stories of African diaspora and narra- tives that don’t get told much. at’s my contribution to the creative world and it has naturally turned into commercial business.” On the question of commercialisation, Emory is unequivocal. “As a creative, don’t ever let someone make you feel bad about commercialising something,” he says. “People want their artists broke and on the corner. ey’re so quick to say things like, ‘Oh, he makes too much money, he’s not a real artist,’ but we’ve all got to eat in this world.”

Emory and I sit down for this interview on the first anniversary of his throning at Supreme: “It’s been one hell of a year.” In October 2022, eight months into his appointment as creative director, he su ered from a lower aortic aneurysm, hospitalising him for three months. While he has since taken leaps in his recovery and describes his health as better than ever, the experience was life-altering.

“Eight out of 10 people pass away from having it, so I was fortunate enough to survive it,” he shared on the podcast Started from the Bo om with Justin Richmond. “It’s interesting when you get that sick where you’re on the verge of death. Willpower definitely plays a part in it, you’ve got to want to be here.”

Emory’s outlook on life remains optimistic. “ e main thing for me is executing excellence,” he says, between sips of his Blue Bo le iced oat matcha.

“Making cool dope s**t that represents youth culture. Supreme is an amalgamation of punk and hip hop and rock in New York. My goal with the team is to keep representing those things and continuing to build on the legacy that has been going since 1994.” e toughest thing, he says, has been doing it without Abloh. “I miss my friend Virgil. Not being able to just call him up has been pre y hard.” Still, he credits the loved ones around him as his inspiration. “The reason keep going is because I have something to lose,” he says. “ e reason I made it out of Jamaica, Queens isn’t because I’m be er than or smarter or even more hard working than anyone there. It’s because I was lucky enough to have people couldn’t let down.”

This spring, Denim Tears dropped a collaboration with Our Legacy, paying homage to Tupac Shakur. Shortly a er, Emory teased a new range of Supreme durags he dubbed a “love le er to the block.” Through his work, Emory continues to serve his community and the stories within it. But the real work needed, he says, has li le to do with fashion. “I can’t lie to myself and say what my peers and I have accomplished is enough. It’s inspirational and it does mean something, but things need to change on the ground level,” he admits. “People like Stacy Abrams [former Georgia State Representative], who helped turn Georgia blue for the first time since 1992 in the 2020 elections, they’re the ones that are on to something. I don’t look to fashion or entertainment for social or political change unless it is a ached to some direct action, and that’s what I want to do.”