Denim Tears Stitches the Game Behind the Game (EXCLUSIVE)
What happens when the game, the season, the career is over for a Black athlete? It’s a question that sits at the heart of Tremaine Emory’s “5ᵗʰ Quarter ” collection for Denim Tears, a campaign, like usual, that speaks in layers: Personal memory, cultural commentary, historical citation. Clothing alone does not tell the whole story, but it is the vessel for one.
Denim Tears’ “5ᵗʰ Quarter ” collection isn’t really about basketball. But rather, it’s about the mythology of the Black athlete, what we inherit, what we carry, and what gets left behind.
The campaign pulls from a familiar place, something I recognize having played AAU basketball for a decade, traded SLAM magazine covers like Pokémon cards, and spent post-practice evenings trying to land And1 Mixtape moves with my cousins at the local park.
The looks and setting are intentional. They remind me of post-game fits, something I’d throw on after an AAU tournament. There’s a nonchalant mixing of the formal pre-game attire our coaches made us wear with the sporty pieces we lived in during or after the game.
Loosely tailored blazers paired with a home-game jersey, patent leather dress shoes worn with powerfully comfortable sweatpants, the kind we’d want for the long ride home on the bus.
Even through the clothes alone, “5ᵗʰ Quarter ” evokes a shared space, a shared memory, a lived experience familiar to so many Black athletes across America.
Look deeper, and you’ll see Denim Tears pulling from classic sporting styles, nylon pullovers, and zip-ups while subverting the NBA’s 2005 dress code, which specifically targeted Black expression. The Pan-African flag durag is a direct, elegant response to enforced rigidity. But even that’s just the surface.
“What happens after you stop playing ball? Whether that’s after high school, college, or even the league? There’s the game… and there’s the game behind the game. No one’s preparing you for that,” says Emory during roundtable conversation held to promote the collection.
The “5ᵗʰ Quarter ” is that unspoken, unprepared-for space. It’s where Black athletes are expected to reinvent themselves without support, often facing identity collapse, financial instability, or quiet erasure.
Black thinkers like William C. Rhoden, bell hooks, and Harry Edwards have long spoken on this. Rhoden lays bare the contradictions of Black athletic success, celebrated on the field (or court) but locked out of ownership, power, and post-game agency. This campaign touches those same wounds through the garments and the stories told around them.
Even the campaign’s setting, an overgrown field with a rusting hoop and backboard, maybe a forgotten court, brings the question full circle.
And then there’s Denim Tears’ celebration of John Thompson Jr., the first Black coach to win an NCAA championship. He’s remembered not just for mentoring legends like Allen Iverson, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and Patrick Ewing, but also for guiding the players who didn’t make it to the league, those who went on to build meaningful lives outside of sport.
Thompson’s legacy is stitched directly into the collection. Campaign staples, shorts, sweats, zip hoodies, are elevated with African mudcloth patterns, a tasteful homage to the Kente cloth uniforms Thompson introduced at Georgetown in the mid-‘90s, symbolizing West African royalty, racial pride, and cultural heritage.
Together, Denim Tear’s “5ᵗʰ Quarter” collection — available on Denim Tears' website on July 4 and the week prior at its Dover Street Market Paris installation — asks hard questions.
The best answer comes from Thompson himself, who said: “Don’t let the sum total of your existence be eight to ten pounds of air.”
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