At Canopus Lake, tucked into the wooded Hudson Highlands near Carmel, New York, a man in a green-and-cream varsity jacket sits on a rock, looking across water that reflects the trees along its banks. Stüssy’s familiar double-S logo appears as white cotton blossoms across his back.
No fishing rod is in sight. No tackle box, either. But this lake has a history that predates anyone’s interest in putting a $500 jacket beside it.
The photograph appears in the October 2026 Stüssy Tears lookbook, a collaboration between Stüssy and Tremaine Emory’s Denim Tears label. The man in the image is a model, but the location is personal. Emory’s father, Tracy, loved Canopus Lake, and the collection draws inspiration from trips they took together across New York, with itineraries that stretched far beyond the park’s quiet waters.
The back of the collection’s New York Fishing Tour hoodie names the Finger Lakes, St. Lawrence River, Saratoga Lake, Montauk, and Jones Beach. Those destinations cover everything from inland lakes and river fishing to Long Island’s Atlantic coastline.
It’s an impressive fishing résumé, particularly for a father raising three sons in Jamaica, Queens.
Tracy grew up in a small Georgia town near Augusta before moving to New York with his childhood sweetheart, Sheralyn. He became a CBS News cameraman whose assignments took him around the world, including South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s rise and Rwanda during the genocide.
Raising three Black boys during New York’s at that time meant protecting them from a world that could be unforgiving while making sure they understood how much more existed beyond their neighborhood.
The couple introduced their sons to museums, opera, books, and travel. Fishing became another way to explore.
Tremaine inherited that curiosity. Recalling in a GQ interview how his father believed art existed everywhere, even in something as ordinary as brushing your teeth.
As a child, Tracy’s first job was picking cotton, a detail that adds another layer to Denim Tears’ signature cotton-wreath motif and its examination of slavery and American history.
Ironically, Tracy wasn’t particularly impressed when he first saw the design.
“I did not like it,” he admitted. He still praised his son’s work, privately relieved that Tremaine’s old bedroom in Queens remained available if his fashion ambitions didn’t pan out. Like many families, a parent’s love sometimes shows up as a backup housing plan.
The latest Stüssy Tears collection, released October 16, is the brand’s fifth collaboration and draws directly from clothing worn by recreational fishermen.
There’s an orange fishing slicker jacket, matching pants, and a fishing vest with 11 functional pockets, polyester mesh, and a cotton lining. Those are practical features for someone spending hours on the water.
Related: Levi’s Went to Japan to Reinvent the Denim Jacket—and Left the Denim Behind
The rainbow-trout sequin hoodie is another matter, not just because fish have scales, but because fashion loves an excuse to use a little more sparkle.
The more meaningful pieces are simpler: a shirt bearing Tracy’s photograph and the fishing-tour hoodie commemorating his favorite destinations, as though his fishing excursions were concert dates.
Something is refreshing about a designer whose work examines sweeping chapters of American history, then turns his attention to something much smaller – more personal.
A father and a son, and a collection of memories of fishing trips across New York. And a return to Canopus Lake, where the water and the surrounding trees remain part of the story.
Fashion has a habit of borrowing the clothes of people who do things with their hands. Fishermen, mechanics, farmers and factory workers have all supplied the industry with useful ideas. This time, though, the inspiration isn’t some romantic notion of an outdoorsman.
It’s a father who took his son fishing, and a son who found a way to bring those memories home.
