Brand: Denim Tears
Season: Spring/Summer 2023
Release: July 7, 2022
Buy: In-store and online at Dover Street Market
Editor's Notes: Denim Tears' wildly popular Levi's collaboration is back and better — or rather, sparklier — than ever.
The Tremaine Emory-helmed brand is relaunching its perpetually popular Cotton Wreath Levi's 501s, first released in 2020 and later inducted into fashion hall of fame with a spot in The Met's 2021 exhibition, In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.
Set to drop at Dover Street Market on June 28, the iconic jeans look a little different this time around. Fans will recognize Emory's iconic Cotton Wreath print, but a new addition — over 300 hand-applied rhinestones — adds extra detail to each pair.
Dover Street Market, Denim Tears' exclusive stockist henceforth, will launch additional rhinestone-accented pieces from the brand: a logo T-shirt and thermal, a Cotton Wreath polo and hoodie, and a black cap, all modeled in a lookbook starring Jmann Patton and artist Aya Brown.
Spotted on celebrities including Kanye West, Bella Hadid, and A$AP Rocky, Denim Tears' Cotton Wreath jeans are as stylish as they are meaningful. As Emory explained in an interview, the collaboration was, in part, meant to express the quintessentially American relationship between slavery and cotton (which is spun, dyed, and woven into denim).
But don't get Emory wrong — "The most common misreading [of my work] is that I'm selling Black trauma," he told Highsnobiety last year. "Really, I'm telling stories. The pain is a story, the good is a story... I'm not selling trauma, I'm using consumerism to get a story out. Very different thing."
