Designer Tremaine Emory resigned as creative director of Supreme fashion brand Thursday and accused the company of systemic racism and lack of transparency.
Emory released a statement on his Instagram account claiming that the organization failed to work with him to release an aligned notice of his departure. He said they didn’t want him to cite “systemic racism” as his reason for leaving the brand, and requested that he deny a racist incident occurred.
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Emory took the reins of the skate fashion brand in February of 2022, according to Forbes. His most recent social media post accused Supreme of mishandling a collaboration with award-winning artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa. He said the project was “secretly shutdown” and noted a lack of communication and transparency about the reason for the cancellation of the collaboration.
“So over the last few weeks after resigning I fought tooth and nail into the 25th hour with c suite of supreme to align with them on a statement to the press explaining that l left supreme because of systemic racial issues the company has,” Emory wrote to Instagram.
He continued, “from the treatment of the arthur jafa collab to the make up of the design studio that has less than 10% minorities working when the brand is largely based off black culture ask @juliencahn @kyledem and Alex detrich…they were all on the text messages,” he said.
Emory included screenshots of his texts with the organization in his social media post to demonstrate his grievances.
“And kyle was on the calls until I told him I can’t align on a statement that doesn’t cite systemic racism and was asked to tell complex a racist incident didn’t happen and if they report that we can’t put out a statement with you because that will be the story( I refused to)…” he said.
He went on to make further allegations as he described his version of their last interaction. (RELATED: Elite Fashion Agency Caves To China, Issues Groveling Apology)
“kyle said we will call you back on Tuesday night and y’all never did so it’s tragically ironic y’all three left me “hanging” @kyledem on that call you said we want you to tell your story with us “ your the best story teller I know” well y’all gonna get a story…”
Supreme has not issued public comment about the matter.