Calamityjane (she/her) UNGOVERNABLE

You have seen that colourful, woven chequered market bag before. Across West Africa and the diaspora, it is famously known as the ‘Ghana Must Go’ bag, and it is now the centrepiece of a new footwear project by Denim Tears and adidas. Denim Tears was founded by Tremaine Emory, an American designer who treats fashion like historical storytelling, using clothing to unpack overlooked chapters of the Black experience. For this project, Emory took two of adidas’s most recognisable shoes: the low-profile, clean-cut Stan Smith (originally built for the tennis court in the 1960s) and the Superstar (the classic basketball trainer with the rubber shell toe). Instead of their standard leather, both pairs are completely wrapped in that familiar plaid pattern. The bag’s name carries heavy history. In 1983, the Nigerian government ordered upwards of a million undocumented migrants, mostly from Ghana, to leave the country in a matter of weeks. With little time and money, people packed whatever they could carry into these cheap, durable plastic totes as they made the journey back home. By taking a pattern tied to sudden displacement and putting it onto everyday trainers, Emory turns a humble market tote into a wearable piece of history. hypebeast.com/2026/11/denim-…