Speaker 1: Pushkin. Over the years, the streetwear trend has moved beyond
Speaker 1: the actual streets and has been adopted by big box
Speaker 1: stores and even luxury European fashion brands. That change wasn't
Speaker 1: an accident. People like Virgil Ablo, who in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: became artistic director of Louis Vutan, and whether or not
Speaker 1: we'd like to admit it, also, people like Kanye West
Speaker 1: wore pioneers in the modern luxury streetwear crossover. But so
Speaker 1: was my guest today, Tremaine Emery Tremaine is now the
Speaker 1: creative director at Supreme, which in and of itself is
Speaker 1: a major win, but considering he's the first black man
Speaker 1: or woman to ever hold that position, it's a coup.
Speaker 1: Speaking with Tremaine was eye opening the way his parents
Speaker 1: raised him to explore and encouraged his passions and education,
Speaker 1: while also imbuing him with a strong sense that having
Speaker 1: fun was still important. I mean, I imagine that's the kind
Speaker 1: of balanced approach to life that's allowed to Remaine to
Speaker 1: flourish in a field as precarious as fashion. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's also helped to navigate his recent hardships, like the
Speaker 1: loss of his best friend Virtual autload of cancer and
Speaker 1: Tremain's own recent health scare that he's still recovering from.
Speaker 1: This is starting from the bottom harder and success stories
Speaker 1: from people like us. What's your day to day like
Speaker 1: these days?
Speaker 2: Man, just chilling. I'm recovering. So I had out of aneurism,
Speaker 2: out of lower aortic aneurism, and I'm recovering. You know,
Speaker 2: eight out of ten people passed from having it, so
Speaker 2: I was fortunate enough to survive it when in the
Speaker 2: hospital in octell and in of December, right before New
Speaker 2: Year's got out. So I've been spending most of my
Speaker 2: time recovering doing physical therapy because the aneurysm, the lower
Speaker 2: aortic aneurysm, really it messed up my legs. So I'm
Speaker 2: just building up muscle on my legs and waiting on
Speaker 2: some nerves to wake up. So yeah, but my health
Speaker 2: is great. I'm actually healthier than probably I've been in
Speaker 2: a long time. I had a lot of had and
Speaker 2: have a lot of support from people in my life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 1: I mean I imagine this sort of slowed down like this
Speaker 1: sort of taking you know, sort of recovery time. It's
Speaker 1: probably the first time in a while that you really
Speaker 1: slowed down, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, definitely. It's been interesting because it's like also
Speaker 2: since I'm in New York, so I hadn't lived in
Speaker 2: New York in thirteen years. I've been on you know.
Speaker 2: I was living in London since twenty ten for seven years,
Speaker 2: and then moved to la and then moved to New
Speaker 2: York in twenty twenty two February. My first day at
Speaker 2: Supreme was out Valentine's Day, February fourteen. It's been the
Speaker 2: first time I've just been like not on the airplane
Speaker 2: every week or like on a train, you know, trains, planes, automobiles,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's been good. A lot of it.
Speaker 2: Part of it was just like when I was in
Speaker 2: the hospital, my focus was just getting out the hospital, surviving,
Speaker 2: doing what I could to listen to the doctors. And
Speaker 2: it's interesting when you get that sick, when you're like
Speaker 2: on the verge of death, which was like a couple
Speaker 2: of times whilst I was in the hospital, it's you know,
Speaker 2: will power. Definitely, you gotta want to be here. That
Speaker 2: plays a part of it. So I want to I wanted,
Speaker 2: I wanted to be here, so not just being grateful
Speaker 2: for surviving because in the end we all die. So
Speaker 2: you survived something, but it's only extending, you know. So
Speaker 2: my it's my focus has been on the five w's,
Speaker 2: So who, what, when, where, and why? You know, It's like,
Speaker 2: well why, you know, why what do I want to do?
Speaker 2: But again, before I got sick, I always kind of
Speaker 2: lived my life like that because that's how my parents
Speaker 2: raised me. So this life is finite. So we gotta
Speaker 2: have fun. We gotta be good to each other, we
Speaker 2: gotta love each other, we gotta have fun. My dads
Speaker 2: they have fun, you know, and do the things you
Speaker 2: want to do. So I always always been on that wave.
Speaker 2: I got maybe perspective on far as things is like
Speaker 2: myself having a family. I don't have one yet, I
Speaker 2: don't have any kids, and stuff on that more even
Speaker 2: but even that, I had that perspective of wanting that
Speaker 2: and wanting to find the right person to build a
Speaker 2: family with. But far as like living it to the limit,
Speaker 2: I did that already, you know, maybe to maybe to
Speaker 2: my detriment, maybe too much.
Speaker 1: Maybe too much, I mean, just even thinking too like
Speaker 1: with that happening so close to you know, what happened
Speaker 1: with Virgil and I guess maybe you probably knew about
Speaker 1: that for a while. I mean, I don't know. Man
Speaker 1: would have been like for me, really hard to process,
Speaker 1: you know, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I felt. It was definitely something I thought about,
Speaker 2: even I remember thinking about it in the ambulance, like
Speaker 2: I thought about V. And you know, like me and V,
Speaker 2: both young black men, creatives breaking into a world that
Speaker 2: didn't want us. There necessarily ones that used to having
Speaker 2: people that look like us there. Who were you know,
Speaker 2: a rogue squadron trying to take down the empire, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know, to lose a comrade. That's the first
Speaker 2: time I lost a comrade. And you know, just like
Speaker 2: even stuff with the Supreme thing, like I got the letter,
Speaker 2: I got my offer to take the position the same
Speaker 2: week he died. And the last time I seen him,
Speaker 2: the last thing he said to me, he's like, what
Speaker 2: you're going to do with the Supreme You're going to
Speaker 2: take the Supreme job. I remember we were both staying
Speaker 2: at the Mercer and he was staying on the sixth floor.
Speaker 2: I was staying on the fourth. So I got off
Speaker 2: the elevator first. That's the last time I seen him
Speaker 2: getting off the elevator and then he was you know,
Speaker 2: he was gone a month later. So it's like even
Speaker 2: just not even to get to tell him, even though
Speaker 2: in this grand scheme of thing, it don't even matter.
Speaker 2: It's just a job. It's kind of arbitrary, but you know,
Speaker 2: all we fought for, you know, just like Cats, our crew,
Speaker 2: things we talked about late night way back. I'm talking
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, before Off White, before did Them Tears,
Speaker 2: before No Vacancy n Cats was just like DJing making
Speaker 2: getting two hundred dollars to DJ, just trying to make
Speaker 2: it happen, and we had a lot of ideas and
Speaker 2: just yeah, just like your comrade to go be able
Speaker 2: to build with them or call them and talk to
Speaker 2: about the emotions and the you know, the highs and
Speaker 2: the lows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sucks basically a side
Speaker 2: and v I basically studied under them. They friends, slash mentors,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It's like.
Speaker 1: Luke.
Speaker 2: I'm not comparing myself saying I'm Luke Skywalk the character,
Speaker 2: but just like when Obi Wan went out, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, it's like, fuck, the mission continues, but damn,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Yeah, and it's like it's
Speaker 2: like that with Virgil on a side, because those are
Speaker 2: the two.
Speaker 1: Guys, yeah, man, a side, the DJ who was a
Speaker 1: collaborator in some of your early ventures before Supreme and Virgil,
Speaker 1: but also your parents too, man. They seemed like they
Speaker 1: were super ambitious people to come from middle of nowhere Georgia, Yeah,
Speaker 1: George and Georgia.
Speaker 2: To fifth when they lived there, fifteen hundred, two thousand people,
Speaker 2: one red light town, you know, one red light most
Speaker 2: people went and worked worked, you know, bricklayers or worked
Speaker 2: at the pe Cam factory or nah. My parents are radicals.
Speaker 2: They they got they got up out of there and
Speaker 2: they were curious and that curiosity got passed to me,
Speaker 2: that curiosity about the world and not being afraid of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because to move from Harlem, Georgia to New York City,
Speaker 1: like that's a huge no.
Speaker 2: My mom, My mom and dad are deep. Like I remember, like,
Speaker 2: you know, we're going to see Pavaratti at Central Park.
Speaker 2: Who's Pavaratti. He's an opera singer. He's got the Harlem
Speaker 2: Boys choir or singing with him. And it was a
Speaker 2: free concert at Central Park. I heard opera. I'm a
Speaker 2: young I'm a young black kid that live in Jamaica. Queens.
Speaker 1: They used to make a Queens to Central Park is
Speaker 1: not a It's not a short trip exactly.
Speaker 2: And I'm we're going to take you to see this
Speaker 2: confluence of culture. Halem boys choir singing with this Italian
Speaker 2: opera singer. So even so it's not even this take
Speaker 2: me to opera. They take me to opera. But then
Speaker 2: on stage of opera there's some people that look like me.
Speaker 2: My parents are very conscious of these things, and so
Speaker 2: that mix I had, and I think that's a big
Speaker 2: part of my creative output is living in the hood.
Speaker 2: It was great, it was an adventure. It was like
Speaker 2: I tell people, my childhood was like Sandlot meets boys
Speaker 2: in the hood, you know what I mean, Because it
Speaker 2: was like that. It was like we played basketball, football
Speaker 2: all the time. We having fun, but then there was
Speaker 2: the dark side of shit that would go down too.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm privilege with the type of family I had,
Speaker 2: not perfect, but privileged the type of family and the
Speaker 2: stuff they taught me, and that, you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of my shield and armor against the bullshit of the world,
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of bullshit out there. You know,
Speaker 2: but my parents prepared me for it. The best micro
Speaker 2: for macro story. I could tell you my dad when
Speaker 2: he was in the army for six years and he
Speaker 2: learned how to become a motion picture photographer, so you know,
Speaker 2: shoot film. He became great at it. And then when
Speaker 2: he got out, he started working for a TV station
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, and then then he got the job at
Speaker 2: CBS in New York. I think in the second ever
Speaker 2: black TV news cameraman at CBS in New York. And
Speaker 2: then we moved. Oh yeah, we moved. We moved when
Speaker 2: I was three months old, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: One, second only the second black cameraman in CBS New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad's Emmy Award winning TV news cameraman. He
Speaker 2: has like two Emmy Awards. He's been nominated maybe I
Speaker 2: think ten times. He has two Emmys. But he needed,
Speaker 2: you know, he needed a frontive action to get his job,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. That's how that's how he
Speaker 2: got his job. He couldn't just all those anti in
Speaker 2: front of action people. My dad an Emmy Award winning
Speaker 2: TV news camera and he needed a firm of action
Speaker 2: to get his job, you know what I mean. They
Speaker 2: would not give him that job if it wasn't for
Speaker 2: government intervention. But that's a that's another podcast.
Speaker 1: Well, we're we're at a point now where people are
Speaker 1: really again looking at like again, how we have to
Speaker 1: fight this battle again in front of action, like.
Speaker 2: Yo, bro, look at look at me and Van and
Speaker 2: Maximilian Max you know over at Ferragamo. You know, now
Speaker 2: you got Pat Louis. But fashions existed a while now.
Speaker 2: How many black carave directors have there been in the
Speaker 2: history of fashion? The history counted on your hand, Joe Hayford,
Speaker 2: he's the first, i think black careve director for Javanci
Speaker 2: in the eighties or nineties. And then you know he
Speaker 2: was the first and he was European, he's British. Virgil
Speaker 2: was the first African American at a French fashion house ever.
Speaker 2: And that's twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's forty years later, thirty years later for thirty five.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like the same reaction you had
Speaker 2: about my dad being the second chieving news camera man
Speaker 2: at CBS in nineteen one. Shit ain't really change if
Speaker 2: v was, you know, the second black crave director at
Speaker 2: the French fashion house in the first African American. You know,
Speaker 2: Supreme is an American fashion house, skate brand, but they
Speaker 2: make fashion right to where I'm a crave director. I mean,
Speaker 2: how many black crave directors have there been at American brands?
Speaker 2: Not a lot, not even relegated to black? What about Asian?
Speaker 2: What about Hispanic? You know what I mean? You keep going,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, It's just.
Speaker 1: How do you contend with that? Because I mean, you
Speaker 1: are in an industry that it feels like to the outsider,
Speaker 1: the outside eyes, has only really recently embraced black people. Man,
Speaker 1: you know, did you feel that then? Have you felt
Speaker 1: that throughout your career? Do you still feel that now
Speaker 1: every once in a while, or.
Speaker 2: Like example, you know, I worked at Jay Crewe and
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, I was working at Jay Crewe.
Speaker 2: I was a sales associate and I had long braids
Speaker 2: or I'll either rock bridge or fro like your hear
Speaker 2: just like yours. And they and they said to me,
Speaker 2: this is see, this is funny. It's before the acceptance
Speaker 2: of black people and culture and in the fashion world.
Speaker 2: They were like the CEO came in and you know,
Speaker 2: he said, you basically, your hair is not the standard.
Speaker 2: If you look at the if you look at our catalog,
Speaker 2: no one has hair like that. And they wrote me up.
Speaker 2: So who I am. There was this bookstore called Revolution Books,
Speaker 2: not far from the job, and I went to Revolution
Speaker 2: Books and I bought the book about in New York
Speaker 2: employee rights. That's me. And I went through the book
Speaker 2: and I read. I called up the j crew line
Speaker 2: and I read, I read it out the complaint line.
Speaker 2: I said, New York State, you cannot discriminate against someone
Speaker 2: with immutable characteristics. My hair is an immutable characteristic. Next day, oh, Tremaine,
Speaker 2: there was some gray area in that discussion. We're sorry,
Speaker 2: d D. I got up out of there, but I
Speaker 2: didn't let that deterred me from working in fashion, work
Speaker 2: in retail. I didn't let that stop me. Imagine if
Speaker 2: I would have let the motherfuckers stop me if I said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, and guess what. Mark Jacobs wasn't like that.
Speaker 2: Down from Mark to Robert Duffy to everyone I worked
Speaker 2: with that people of all colors and genders working on
Speaker 2: all levels of the company at that time. You know,
Speaker 2: for myself, I became a start off as a stot guy,
Speaker 2: ended up as an assistant manager, and up until you know,
Speaker 2: with Mark and Robert running it, you know they treat
Speaker 2: everyone the same. Everyone got the same clothing allowance. Security
Speaker 2: dudes got the same clothing allowance as the store manager. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it wasn't perfect. But what I'm saying is I didn't
Speaker 2: let how Jaku treated me on some racist shit because
Speaker 2: it was straight racist bullshit. I didn't let that deter me.
Speaker 2: So that's my thing is just yeah, I can't let
Speaker 2: I can't. I can't, I can't. I can't let nothing
Speaker 2: deter me. It's obstacles. My aneurysm is an obstacle or
Speaker 2: a dude telling me thinking I'm homeless and kicking me
Speaker 2: out a cafe the first week I moved back to
Speaker 2: New York. It's Crave director of Supreme. That happened. Yeah,
Speaker 2: straight up, you know what I mean. And you know,
Speaker 2: dude kicked me out. I said, you gotta get out
Speaker 2: of here. I told you before not to come in here.
Speaker 2: He thought I was homeless. So but again that's his problem.
Speaker 2: But I'm also gonna press him. I'm gonna press him.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call and press that place, and then I'm
Speaker 2: gonna move on. You know what I mean, and.
Speaker 1: Not let it become your problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well it is my problem, but I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna let it stop me.
Speaker 1: After the break, Tremaine talks about what it was about
Speaker 1: style that made him fall in love with it. For me,
Speaker 1: it's funny, like I grew up skating on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: like in the nineties, and so for me, fashion was
Speaker 1: always wasn't something I deeply cared about in terms of
Speaker 1: brands with things. I just knew like, okay, how do
Speaker 1: I express myself? And it was like I'm skating. There's
Speaker 1: like a few companies Vans or whatever right from out here.
Speaker 1: But I would get magazines and I would see things
Speaker 1: coming out of New York like Zoo York or Supreme.
Speaker 1: It was for someone like me on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: it was very intimidating to see the styles and the
Speaker 1: trends coming out of New York. Having grown up in
Speaker 1: it in hip hop in New York eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: when did you first fall in love with it? And
Speaker 1: how was that viewing the evolution of it?
Speaker 2: Fall in love with like style, like yeah, clothing, yes, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I mean I always been obsessed with style, and I'm
Speaker 2: conveying emotion through the way you dress and conveying texture,
Speaker 2: color on proportion. I think it started with my parents,
Speaker 2: just like how my parents dressed and what they were into,
Speaker 2: and then their style, and then going to school. And
Speaker 2: then also I used to spend my summers in Harlem, Georgia,
Speaker 2: so every summer I go there, and just like you know,
Speaker 2: like my uncle Ray, he was definitely a style icon
Speaker 2: in my eyes. My uncle Ray, like his nickname was Sharper,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like the way he would
Speaker 2: just break off his hat, whether he had on a
Speaker 2: dressy style hat or like a truck a hat. He
Speaker 2: always he always said, I gotta break your hat off, right.
Speaker 2: Style was incredible. And then yeah, just movies. I think
Speaker 2: movies is a big part of it. My parents owned
Speaker 2: a video store, just us Videos and Elmhurst Queens and yeah,
Speaker 2: and East Elmhurst and the Hood. They owned a video
Speaker 2: store in the eighties. So just watching films, and you know,
Speaker 2: obviously every every film has a stylist, has someone that
Speaker 2: does the wardrobe, you know, whether it's taxi driver or
Speaker 2: do the right thing, you know what I mean, or
Speaker 2: John go Art film you know what I mean, contempt,
Speaker 2: So it's like films. It's where you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of picked up a lot of style from that and.
Speaker 1: Then when you saw it, because like for me, I
Speaker 1: would see those same films and see the styles be
Speaker 1: very impressed. But you must have had some kind of
Speaker 1: eye to not to see it and be able to
Speaker 1: incorporate that into your day to day, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. It's just always, you know, always
Speaker 2: been on it, man, Like I always tell his story
Speaker 2: and interviews. But Yo, when I was six years old,
Speaker 2: my parents took me to get a cat, and they're like, yo,
Speaker 2: you gotta name the cat. And the cat was a
Speaker 2: Calico cat. So Calico's got stripes, spots, gold gray, black spots.
Speaker 2: Whatever I named the fashion, I named the cat fashion.
Speaker 2: I feel like she reminded me of like one of
Speaker 2: my mom's dresses or something like that, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. And like so I kind of just always
Speaker 2: been into it, man. And then like once I hit
Speaker 2: jumped off the porch, you know, we'd be on Colisseum
Speaker 2: every day, going to the coliseum, going to Jamaica, app
Speaker 2: going in the stores. Then I start hopping on the train,
Speaker 2: go downtown, going in the stores. That's how I first
Speaker 2: learned the James Jevier Like me and James Jeba have
Speaker 2: been in each other's six degrees radius probably since the
Speaker 2: year nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, because I discovered the
Speaker 2: store he owned called Union, and the Union was a
Speaker 2: shop that had all kinds of brands. They sold Stucie.
Speaker 2: I think there was the first store to sell Stuscie
Speaker 2: in New York. And I used to just hang out there.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like a Union rat. I remember
Speaker 2: my first thing I bought from the Union was this
Speaker 2: black Jesus sweatshirt during by this brand called Sir, which
Speaker 2: was a streetwear brand of the time, and it was
Speaker 2: ran by this guy named Russ and he did this
Speaker 2: thing where he had a you could buy the sweatshirt
Speaker 2: or the M sixty five with the black Jesus or
Speaker 2: the Jesus, you know what I mean. You could choose
Speaker 2: which one you want. And to me, I was like, damn,
Speaker 2: this is deeper than just clothing, Like you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm like, And then I bought it. I
Speaker 2: used to wear it. I remember the reaction I used
Speaker 2: to wear when I got that sweatshirt was like crazy,
Speaker 2: people stop you, like that's my Savior. People be like laughing,
Speaker 2: that's black. Jesus ain't black. Oh watch ill, is you
Speaker 2: a light? Cats stopping you in the street, like yo,
Speaker 2: let me let me give you the knowledge though they yeah,
Speaker 2: is your a white? Cats? In front of the Jamaica's
Speaker 2: Jamaica the Jamaica AD train station, they see me with
Speaker 2: the black Jesus sweatshirt. They're like, yo, come me to God,
Speaker 2: put you on. I'm like, nah, I'm good. You guys
Speaker 2: are racist, you know, like you guys are racist. I
Speaker 2: don't fuck with y'all, but in respect to Israelites, but
Speaker 2: I don't really rock that doctrine. But anyway, you know,
Speaker 2: I remember, like I grew up with cats that would
Speaker 2: say stuff to me like yo, while you be hanging
Speaker 2: out downtown, they don't want to stand there. The gay
Speaker 2: people there. It's more expensive there, And I'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't got no problem with gay people to y'all
Speaker 2: go to the Red Lobster. Y'all go to bbq's. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna spend the same amount of money at Lovely Day
Speaker 2: and maybe the food's better than or not. I just
Speaker 2: want to have this food too. Y'all still do Bbq's
Speaker 2: I still do Red to this day. I still do
Speaker 2: Red Lobster. So cats saying they scared or they don't
Speaker 2: want to go hang out downtown. I knew there was
Speaker 2: something down there for me, and yeah, I had to
Speaker 2: deal with some bullshit down there, but there's bullshit in
Speaker 2: the hood too, we dodging bullets, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So it's like I'm getting knowledge from the hood and
Speaker 2: so much. I learned so much from guys and girls
Speaker 2: and people there, you know what I mean, about life,
Speaker 2: the human condition and more morals and being a stand
Speaker 2: up person and so many things. I've learned loads of
Speaker 2: stuff from hanging out downtown too, and hanging out in
Speaker 2: the city and being around other walks of life. So
Speaker 2: I can't let the powers that be stop me from
Speaker 2: being where I want to be. Yeah, So then I
Speaker 2: was hanging out there, and then my man Wilkins took
Speaker 2: over as a manager, and I met him and I
Speaker 2: used to hang it. So I started hanging out there
Speaker 2: like every day, and all the cats that worked there
Speaker 2: allowed me just to hang out. I was broke, dude,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. And they give me T
Speaker 2: shirts on the low and then so to see this
Speaker 2: a store that had these brands that were local that
Speaker 2: were small runs of T shirts, and they were flipping
Speaker 2: ideas and flipping iconography and flipping logos from popular culture
Speaker 2: and from things we knew of, you know. So even
Speaker 2: just just seeing that communication through T shirts and sweatshirts
Speaker 2: and clothing, and I'm looking at the shot a shirt
Speaker 2: and Wilkins goes, you like that T shirt? I'm like yeah,
Speaker 2: And then he took it and put it in a
Speaker 2: bag and gave it to me and he's like, Yo,
Speaker 2: that's for you. Just make sure you come back and
Speaker 2: kick it with me, you know what I mean? Like that,
Speaker 2: like real g shit, Like Yo. It was ill like
Speaker 2: Union was it was. It was dope. It was just
Speaker 2: like it was start provoking, you know, the T shirts
Speaker 2: and the sweatshirts and the stuff, and there it was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just fodder. It was something behind it. And
Speaker 2: I was to hang out. And so it's kind of
Speaker 2: why I start working in Soho to be near Union.
Speaker 2: So I got a job at Kate Spade back in
Speaker 2: like two thousand and two, after I was working at a
Speaker 2: liquor store in the hood, and then I got a
Speaker 2: job at kse Spade and then after Kate Spade got
Speaker 2: the Mark Jacobs job. But Union is where I learned it.
Speaker 1: Learned it after the break, Tremaine and I get into
Speaker 1: what it takes to be a great creative director for
Speaker 1: those those of us were uninitiated. What are the skills
Speaker 1: it takes to be a creative director of a company,
Speaker 1: fashion brand.
Speaker 2: Done Dune Dune? To be a creative director is it's
Speaker 2: It's not about sitting there and designing every garment or
Speaker 2: this senator. It's about being a leader and guiding a
Speaker 2: team with a vision and feeling for what each season
Speaker 2: is going to be and what's the story. What's the feeling?
Speaker 2: Who are the muses, who are the people we're designing for?
Speaker 2: What are the references? When the team goes out and
Speaker 2: looks for references? What are we looking for? You know,
Speaker 2: it's this season? What's the edge? What's the mean? Like,
Speaker 2: what's the meaning? What are we trying to say? Were
Speaker 2: trying to say something about New York? We trying to
Speaker 2: say something about society? What are we speaking about? What
Speaker 2: are the things we pull in from? What errors are
Speaker 2: we pulling from? You're the coach, You're the director, You're
Speaker 2: Martin Scorsese, Mark Scorsese, you don't edit the film. He's
Speaker 2: not the cinematographer, you know, like Spike Lee Crookland author
Speaker 2: Jafa is the cinematographer. Spike Lee's the director. He's the
Speaker 2: crave director of the film. And you put together the
Speaker 2: team and work with the team to create the film,
Speaker 2: the clothing, the food, the restaurant, the bookstore, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: That's what the crave director does.
Speaker 1: You know, you're kind of like the general, like you're
Speaker 1: marshaling in every resource available to accomplish something. So like
Speaker 1: all the disparate positions and talents, breaking them together and
Speaker 1: figuring out the vision, giving them the vision for how
Speaker 1: to move forward and what to do and how to
Speaker 1: do the best work and all that.
Speaker 2: And you know, also listening career director ain't just telling
Speaker 2: your team what to do. Is listening to your team?
Speaker 2: Career director has the final say but doesn't mean to say.
Speaker 2: Is what you believe. It's you guiding and listening to
Speaker 2: your team, listening to what's going on in the world
Speaker 2: the customer. But you know, you're nothing without the team,
Speaker 2: you know, and the team needs you too. And the
Speaker 2: more that people understand that, the more the better you
Speaker 2: can work. And that's why I was like, I don't
Speaker 2: get you wrapped up in the title.
Speaker 1: But it is an accomplishment. I mean, it's a real
Speaker 1: I mean it is an honor in a lot of ways. Still,
Speaker 1: even though you say you don't put much on the title,
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure it's like you understand,
Speaker 1: like it is. It's a real honor to that position.
Speaker 2: It's a great honor, especially to work for a brand
Speaker 2: like Supreme specifically and what Supreme stands for and what
Speaker 2: James Jeb stands for and what Aaron and the people
Speaker 2: that have been there for a long time, and it's
Speaker 2: an absolute it's an absolute honor, just like it was an
Speaker 2: honor to be do art direction at Stucy beforehand and
Speaker 2: all the stuff, all of it's been an honor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: every you know, definitely.
Speaker 1: If I'm like a sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year
Speaker 1: old and I wanted to aspire to be like you
Speaker 1: become a creative director of like a beloved brand, what
Speaker 1: are steps you could take to do that? Like? How
Speaker 1: do you work your way to that?
Speaker 2: Kind of a.
Speaker 1: And obvious there's some magic involved, there's some luck, involved,
Speaker 1: of course, but.
Speaker 2: I would say I would say focus on spending a
Speaker 2: much time within reason around people you love and share
Speaker 2: the same vision as you, and care about the things
Speaker 2: you care about, and see where that will lead you. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I didn't start hanging out with a side and other
Speaker 2: friends and you know, like, yo, me and this guy
Speaker 2: going to start a brand one day. He's this cool
Speaker 2: dude that I learned a lot from a great person
Speaker 2: and hilarious vis cool dude, hilarious and grew to love
Speaker 2: these guys Wilkins at Union. You know, I hung out
Speaker 2: there because I love these guys and we have fun.
Speaker 2: I didn't know I would learn stuff there that would
Speaker 2: use the rest of my life. And what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say moral of the story is I love style,
Speaker 2: I love art. I stayed my black ass up in
Speaker 2: the museum. I stayed in my black ass up in
Speaker 2: a bookstore. I stayed my black ass window shopping. I
Speaker 2: stayed my black ass on the internet. I stayed my
Speaker 2: black ass up in the books. You know, like, I
Speaker 2: just hung around things I love and then if you're
Speaker 2: really lucky, something will happen. But there's no guarantee. There's
Speaker 2: no deserves in this life? Who would write down that
Speaker 2: When I finally achieve and become a creative director of Supreme,
Speaker 2: six months later I get aneurism and almost die, and
Speaker 2: now in the fight of my life trying to get
Speaker 2: my legs back and take care of my health. There's
Speaker 2: no deserves. So my thing is, I got no regrets
Speaker 2: if I would have died, I got no regrets because
Speaker 2: I spent as much. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: with people I love and doing the things I love,
Speaker 2: and it led me to great heights, which considered success.
Speaker 2: But when I was in the bed and literally at
Speaker 2: points my deathbed, fighting for my life, what mattered most
Speaker 2: was the people coming to visit me, and my friends
Speaker 2: and my girl, and you know who showed up a
Speaker 2: sad cactus. You know, Andy changed Yebia, you know, and
Speaker 2: he started off as my boss, but now I value
Speaker 2: his friendship more than anything. If I never worked another
Speaker 2: day with him. So I don't know how to tell
Speaker 2: you how to be a crave director. I know how
Speaker 2: to tell you how to be a full human being.
Speaker 2: And being a complete human being will protect you and
Speaker 2: get you where you need to go. It might not
Speaker 2: make you creative director, it might not help you survive aneurism,
Speaker 2: but if you do become a crave director, you're going
Speaker 2: to have friends that keep you down on earth, and
Speaker 2: friends I get to give you advice and not actually
Speaker 2: care about that title and just care about that you
Speaker 2: haven't changed much, or that you've become becoming a better
Speaker 2: person and a more compassionate and kind of person. And
Speaker 2: so then back to the creative director thing, if you
Speaker 2: foster these real friendships with people that are into art,
Speaker 2: maybe that will help you grow your skills, get a recommendation,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. But it's got to come from a
Speaker 2: real place. For me, there's people that do it different ways,
Speaker 2: some people who are the straight climbers, like yo, da
Speaker 2: da da. I'm gonna hang out with this person because
Speaker 2: it can get me here, and I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna work ten thousand hours. The shit ain't all
Speaker 2: about working titles. And you know, yeah, you need health
Speaker 2: insurance and you got your dreams, and but what I've
Speaker 2: done on my own and with a side is just
Speaker 2: as valid what I've done with Supreme. So if I
Speaker 2: never got to Supreme job, I'm still me. I'm still
Speaker 2: tremain and I'm still have the same ideas did them.
Speaker 2: Tears still exist, No vacancy in still exist. I'm not
Speaker 2: more because of supreme that I think that mentality for
Speaker 2: me is which we'll get you there? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you're the rarety? Do you feel
Speaker 1: like you're the exception to the rule on this case,
Speaker 1: like it feels like in your industry? Would you say
Speaker 1: that that's a rare, a rare way to move in
Speaker 1: your industry?
Speaker 2: MM, I don't know. You'd have to do a control
Speaker 2: and you talk to all them. You have to ground
Speaker 2: up all the creative directors and ask them. I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: I can only speak for me. I don't want to
Speaker 2: speak for anyone else, you know, artist. Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: hung around the stuff I love and start making things
Speaker 2: and did my best at it and support the community
Speaker 2: that supported me. And then this stuff happened. But I
Speaker 2: didn't plan it out. I was just trying to impress
Speaker 2: a side, you know what I mean, trying to impress Virgil,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, like doing things to impress
Speaker 2: my friends. That's it. And I just wanted to hear
Speaker 2: the music. MC talked my shit on the mic, let
Speaker 2: people know a side is the best DJ. We'd start
Speaker 2: doing that. We used to split one hundred bucks our
Speaker 2: first gig, we split a hundred bucks. We used to
Speaker 2: split one hundred bucks every Friday night, midnight in the narrows.
Speaker 2: You know. We split one hundred pighs. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was the host and A Side was DJing. And then
Speaker 2: we started getting little, bigger gigs, you know, two hundred bucks,
Speaker 2: five hundred bucks. Then we start traveling the world to
Speaker 2: do it and getting big checks to do it. You know.
Speaker 2: But I'm not saying we hippies or like straight like
Speaker 2: we don't care about money. But what it came from love.
Speaker 2: A side studies, a master studies the music thing. You know.
Speaker 2: He owned over ten thousand records, you know. And me,
Speaker 2: I'd love for just toasting the crowd and creating an
Speaker 2: environment and finding a venue that with a good sound
Speaker 2: and this that and the third where the party could
Speaker 2: work and things happened grow out a night life, you know,
Speaker 2: and we loved it and we did it, you know.
Speaker 2: That's how we kind of linked up. That's how I
Speaker 2: linked up with v over some night some night life shit,
Speaker 2: you know, and that led to other things That's the
Speaker 2: thing I saw. I can't give kids the blueprint because
Speaker 2: my life is I grew up. When I grew up,
Speaker 2: I moved to London. I couldn't predict Robert Duffy was
Speaker 2: gonna move me to London. So how can I tell
Speaker 2: a kid how to become a craveve director?
Speaker 1: Right, Jacobs? You didn't know that was going to take
Speaker 1: you from New York to London?
Speaker 2: Yeah, even like you know how I met and worked
Speaker 2: with Frank, who has become a great friend, is like.
Speaker 1: How did you meet Frank Ocean?
Speaker 2: How did that through V? Because we first night hung
Speaker 2: out with V and me a sign V, hanging out
Speaker 2: at the spot that I was I was working for
Speaker 2: Serge Becker. I was a social director for Labodega Nigra.
Speaker 2: So I'm in there hosting, putting stuff together, a size,
Speaker 2: DJing up and there. And then one night my man
Speaker 2: Kyle Demers, who works as Supreme, he's in town and
Speaker 2: he's like, Yo, I'm with V. Have you guys ever met?
Speaker 2: I'm like, not really met. Once He's like, you want
Speaker 2: to come have a drink with us? We go down there,
Speaker 2: we have a drink, playing music, listening to music, and
Speaker 2: then V was like, Yo, can my friend come by?
Speaker 2: I was like sure, and this is the genius of V.
Speaker 2: Like he was so demure and then not dropping no
Speaker 2: names or nothing. So to open the door, and it's Frank.
Speaker 2: And I remember you had this dope, dope jacket. It
Speaker 2: was sublimated trumpel oil, so it was like a bubble coat,
Speaker 2: but it looked like a leather coat and a jean jacket.
Speaker 2: So that's the first thing. I'm like, Yo, it's jacket's fire.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, it's not Frank. And then we met
Speaker 2: and then we just became cool, you know, like but
Speaker 2: very casual. There was no you know, exchange of email,
Speaker 2: a couple of emails here and there, what's up. And
Speaker 2: then over years we got cool and then we started
Speaker 2: working together and you know, I did did what I
Speaker 2: did with him, and it's just like I can't tell
Speaker 2: a kid how to do that. It came from friendship,
Speaker 2: me and Kyle being friends and then Kyle being like,
Speaker 2: let's have a drink, everyone being calm and chill, and
Speaker 2: then that's it. And then if something you can do
Speaker 2: workwise comes out of that cool, but that's not the intention.
Speaker 2: And intention is to hang out.
Speaker 1: What did come out of your relationship with Frank?
Speaker 2: In terms of work, I was a six foot two
Speaker 2: fly on the wall whilst he created Blonde and Boys
Speaker 2: Don't Crime Magazine. I'm listed as a contributor on Boys
Speaker 2: Don't Crime Magazine. You could call creative with consultant, I
Speaker 2: say creative assistant and we just talk and sometimes ideas
Speaker 2: would come out of that. Again, he had a team,
Speaker 2: a small team of people he worked with. He's the
Speaker 2: leader Crave director, his own Crave director, his own visionary.
Speaker 2: You know, he's Frank, writer, producer, singer and artists, photographer.
Speaker 2: He does a lot jewelry. You know, he designs jewelry
Speaker 2: now as Julie Brand Homer. And yeah, I was like
Speaker 2: a fly on a wall that would get asked questions
Speaker 2: sometimes and I would offer my opinion or sometimes suggests
Speaker 2: maybe suggest something or connected connected dot. So you know,
Speaker 2: how do you become a Crave director? How do you
Speaker 2: make it at Carnegie Hall? Right? Well, it's the joke.
Speaker 2: How do you make it to car How do you
Speaker 2: get in the cab? Which way? How do you get
Speaker 2: to Carnegie Hall? Hard work? You know what I mean,
Speaker 2: like hardworking luck, But maybe you want to be a
Speaker 2: crave director and you end up somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Well, thank you so much for your time
Speaker 1: for man. Man, it's just beautiful here when you speak likewise,
Speaker 1: was doing great talking to you, man, beautiful conversation. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much.
Speaker 2: I'm around all right, man, Thank you, bro be easy,
Speaker 2: all right, piece shall.
Speaker 1: I really want to thank Tremaine for taking the time
Speaker 1: to share his story with us. Obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: people are taking times out of the busy schedule, time
Speaker 1: away from work to appear on the show. But in
Speaker 1: Tremayne's case, he's not just taking time away from work.
Speaker 1: He's also taking time away from his own physical recovery.
Speaker 1: Real pleasure talking to this guy. And I can't think
Speaker 1: of a group of people who've had a bigger outsized
Speaker 1: impact on a single industry than Tremaine and his cohort.
Speaker 1: Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jah, edited
Speaker 1: by keyshow Williams, engineered by Benlliday, booked by Laura Morgan
Speaker 1: with production help from Lea Rose. The show is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the
Speaker 1: videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Bent Holliday
Speaker 1: and David Jaw featuring Anthony Yaggs and Savannah Joe Lack.
Speaker 1: Listen to Started from the Bottom. Wherever you get your
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