Big fashion says it’s fighting racism. Black streetwear designers say not hard enough. ACCOUNTABILITY
For more than a year, Los Angeles-based streetwear designer Tremaine Emory had been working with Converse on a red, green and black sneaker inspired by Jamaican political activist and Black nationalist Marcus Garvey’s Pan-African flag and artist David Hammons’ 1990 work “African-American Flag,” an original of which was acquired by the Broad museum in Los Angeles last year.
Emory’s brand, Denim Tears, tells the story of Black people in the United States starting in 1619, when the first documented enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia; according to the designer, the brand’s logo, a cotton plant, is a direct reference to slavery. That’s why the proposed packaging for his Converse sneaker collaboration depicts a coffin covered with Hammons’ flag and a cotton wreath, as a tribute to Black Americans who have died under unjust conditions. The image is based on an art installation, “A Proper Burial, Thanks America,” that Emory debuted in London last year.
However, in late May, as protests spread across the country after George Floyd’s death in police custody, Emory announced on Instagram that he and Denim Tears couldn’t go forward with the partnership until Converse’s parent company, Nike, went beyond its plan to donate $40 million over four years to support the Black community. (Michael Jordan, through his Nike subsidiary Jordan
Brand, is donating an additional $100 million over 10 years.)
Emory called the move by Beaverton, Oregon,-based Nike, which reported $37.4 billion in revenue last fiscal year, a very expensive Band-Aid. He said he wanted to use his voice to push Nike to look inward at its own record on diversity and inclusion.
“It’s accountability,” Emory said in a phone interview. “It’s about Fortune 500 companies and how they are run under the guise of white supremacy and patriarchy and how I take accountability, that I need to see the steps — and brands that I work with dispensing that — or guys won’t work with me.”
In recent months, nearly all major industries, including entertainment, journalism and sports, have been forced to confront how closely their statements opposing systemic racism align with their treatment of Black and brown employees. The fashion industry, which has frequently been criticized for cultural appropriation, instances of blackface and a lack of diversity, is no different.
According to a count by trade publication Women’s Wear Daily, Black people make up only 4% — 19 out of 477 members — of the invitation-only Council of Fashion Designers of America, whose new chairman is Tom Ford. In an email to The Times, a CFDA spokesman said, “The CFDA does not record nor require members to state their race upon application, but it is estimated that members of color make up approximately 25% of the total membership.”
In anecdotal comments, Black streetwear designers from L.A. to New York told The Times that their subset of the fashion industry is no different.
“You can’t ignore the fact that there aren’t many Black brand owners in the streetwear space,” said Scott Sasso, who founded 10.Deep in 1995 while he was a student at Vassar. “And (at) some of the biggest companies, I don’t know if they’ve even had Black employees.”
Streetwear brands such as Denim Tears and 10.Deep offer casual clothing, primarily for men, that blend the styles of various subcultures, including hip-hop (as popularized in the 1990s by brands such as FUBU, Walker Wear and Phat Farm) as well as surf and skate motifs. It’s an identity that can be found in the clothing from brands such as Supreme and Stussy. Instead of offering widely available, mass-produced products, streetwear brands tend to offer limited-edition drops for consumers who hear about companies through social media or by word of mouth.
Although Black style — from hip-hop to sneaker culture — has played a major role in shaping the fashion industry while bringing new designers and brands to prominence, Black fashion professionals and streetwear brand owners said in interviews with The Times that the clothing industry has failed to elevate and promote Black creatives in a way that reflects that influence.
Several designers also questioned the sincerity of corporations promising to invest in Black communities. They reflected on their own experiences trying to explain Black art to predominantly white company leaders.
Chicago-based designer Joe Freshgoods started selling T-shirts in high school and has been selling his designs out of Fat Tiger Workshop, the streetwear retail hub he coowns, since 2013.
“I feel like a lot of these brands are in these boardrooms having these talks about how to fix this or how to just clean up their mistakes real fast, and it’s just like, ‘Hey, let’s just fill in the blanks real quick and see if this will make them happy,’” Freshgoods said.
He said he tried to include the logo of the Black Panther Party on a design for an Oakland-themed collaboration with an apparel brand last year. The company’s legal department rejected his proposal. At the time he went along with it, but now he’d push back, he said.
“A lot of Black collaborators are the reason why a lot of brands are super successful right now, so that’s a lot of power to have,” Freshgoods said.
Emory, who has partnered with New Balance and Levi’s, called on Nike to stop supporting Republicans while President Trump is the party’s leader. He also wants the company to release more information on its record of hiring Black employees and assist in “the defunding and total reform of all the police departments across America.”
Since his initial Instagram post in June, Emory has spoken to Converse Chief Executive G. Scott Uzzell or Uzzell’s team about a half dozen times over the phone or in video-conference meetings. In those discussions, Emory said the company acknowledged it hasn’t done everything it could in terms of creating a diverse corporate structure and laid out its hiring plan, especially in its executive suite. The designer said he discussed current initiatives at Nike to invest in Black communities and to address systemic racism and police brutality. “They want to get involved in all that, and we will see,” he said.
The release date for his red, black and green Converse sneaker has been moved up from February to October, ahead of the November election. Emory said the marketing for the shoe will focus on promoting voting. The shoe will be available in North America, Europe and online for $95 to $100.
“We respect and encourage the efforts of any collaborator or athlete we work with to raise their voice against racial injustice,” a Converse spokesperson said in a statement to The Times. “We have spoken with Tremaine and look forward to working through these issues together.”
At its core, streetwear is about authenticity and the personal connection between consumers and the designers and labels they love.
The push by larger brands and corporations — specifically in the fashion industry — to meet the current moment with statements, donations and new initiatives is in direct contrast to what many Black streetwear designers have been doing since the inception of their brands. Those designers have been hiring diverse staff, speaking up about political issues and infusing their works with references to Black culture.
“Now I feel like everybody’s rushing to make some type of relevant shirt or make some relevant message on their Instagram,”
said Zac Clark, a Black designer who started his brand, FTP, while in high school in Los Angeles. “To me, a lot of this stuff right now seems very unnatural and just forced from a lot of these brands, so they won’t get ‘canceled.’”
Olivia Anthony, the designer behind the Livstreetwear brand, said the turning point for her New York-based company was her 2017 My Love Letter to Our Culture collection, which paid tribute to Black trends of the ’90s — think long nails, grills and slicked-down baby hairs — that were largely considered unfashionable until they were adopted by other races.
“It was so beautiful, but it was looked down upon,” said Anthony, adding that she wanted her brand to reflect how those Black trends, now featured in magazines including Vogue, have been “shown in a different light.”
Kacey Lynch said he created his South L.A.-based streetwear company, Bricks & Wood, after years of working at streetwear brands where he felt Black representation was missing.
“They wanted a lot from us, but they didn’t want to do the work, what it took to understand us,” Lynch said of his past employers. “Whether that’s Black culture, South-Central, minorities ... wherever the cool came from, they all wanted it but they didn’t really know how to identify with it.”
According to a count by trade publication Women’s Wear Daily, Black people make up only 4% — 19 out of 477 members — of the invitation-only Council of Fashion Designers of America, whose new chairman is Tom Ford.