An Ode To Jazz

The Dior Tears capsule collection chronicles the journey of jazz, the African American diaspora of its players, and the cultural harmonies between New York and Paris.

- Charmaine Tan & Manfred Lu

Fashion reveals who you are. It is a bold statement, yet easily made unremarkable by the noise polluted by day-to-day trends that impairs any sense of self. There was a moment when clothes held the same value and intentions as books, unravelling through the last century as necessary to convey people’s stories. Whether it was to tell your life’s story, surrealist tales imagined out of wildest dreams or as tributes to the people who have inspired you — fashion was all one would need to express how you would feel in a moment and designers used to go a long way to make sure we feel it too. But such occurrences have become rare and the days where designers employ dress to express a narrative beyond just clothes are now long gone, or so we thought.

Tremaine Emory — who founded Denim Tears in 2019 — renders fashion just as if it were poetic performance art. His most famous piece — a reworked trucker jacket hand-painted with cotton wreaths endorsed by Playboi Carti — was enamelled with all the nibs a young adult in their early twenties would desire today. Except, those wreaths were not aesthetic decorations drawn from Pinterest boards, nor was it meant to be hung in a multi-label store for a sneaker-head to contemplate its purchase. Instead, his creations illustrate the diaspora of African Americans through his afflictions. They are often stark — sometimes traversing on the themes of terror and murky history — but always intentionally executed on an item in an unsuspecting manner.