Last week, a fiery end to Tremaine Emory’s tenure at Supreme put the brand on blast. Elsewhere, Meta mulls letting E.U. customers pay to avoid ads, and Kering’s Françoise-Henri Pinault nears a deal to acquire CAA. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Glossy Podcast for interviews with fashion industry leaders and Week in Review episodes, and the Glossy Beauty Podcast for interviews from the beauty industry. –Danny Parisi, sr. fashion reporter
Tremaine Emory publicly resigned from Supreme
James Jebbia, founder of the uber-popular streetwear label Supreme, rarely gives interviews and prefers to stay behind the scenes. But Jebbia was dragged into the spotlight last week after Supreme’s creative director, Tremaine Emory, publicly resigned from the brand.
Emory, in an Instagram post on Thursday, revealed the news by screenshotting a DM from Complex magazine asking to confirm if he had left the company. Emory said he had been working with Supreme leadership on a public statement to the press but they refused to agree on a statement that included his stated reasoning for leaving the brand: systemic racism within the company. A later post included screenshots of texts between Emory and Jebbia discussing the matter.
Emory alleges that the company, which he said employs fewer than 10% people of color, fostered a culture that valued the voices of white employees over those of non-white employees. Emory himself was overruled when Jebbia removed a product depicting images of a lynching without consulting Emory, he said.
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He later told the Washington Post that he felt “like a mascot” for the brand, rather than a creative leader.
Emory’s resignation is both bad press for Supreme and bad news for its parent company, VF Corp, which spent $2 billion on the brand in 2020. Supreme’s revenue has dropped since the acquisition, falling 7% from 2022 to 2023.
Meta considers offering an ad-free option in Europe
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Nabil Aliffi, chief brand officer at Neiman Marcus, recently told me that marketers should focus on the things they can control. That way, when major disruptions like iOS updates upend established marketing plans, brands can still maintain some semblance of control.
But a potential change to how Meta operates in the European Union will certainly throw a wrench into many marketers’ plans. According to the New York Times, Meta is considering offering users in the E.U. an option to pay a subscription fee to avoid ads altogether. The move is an attempt to fend off E.U. regulators who have heavily scrutinized Meta for its data collection practices.
While potentially appeasing regulators, the option would certainly cut into Meta’s revenue, 10% of which is made up by advertising spend in the E.U. Digital ad costs have increased across over 90% of industries in the last year.
Pinault’s CAA deal likely won’t affect Kering
François-Henri Pinault, the French billionaire and owner of Kering, is reportedly nearing a deal to purchase Creative Arts Agency, one of the largest talent agencies in the world.
But the move will likely have little impact, at least immediately, on Pinault’s fashion empire. The deal is being completed outside of Kering through the Pinault family’s holding company Artemis. According to WWD, the goal is not necessarily to involve CAA with Pinault’s Kering business, but rather to have CAA continue to operate as it already does. CAA clients won’t be expected to only sign deals with Kering brands. CAA has a fashion division focused on representing designers and models, but that too will remain unaltered by the deal, WWD reported.
