The artist should be questioned just as much as the content itself.

Every Essay is being written with an album in mind, which is playing at the same time we are writing what you are reading right now, so for full experience we highly recommend going to your music provider and play “Back To Black” By Amy Winehouse as you are reading this, promise it’s worth it. Ok back to the topic now!

Often when we look at projects, creations, albums, or any creative outlet, we forget about who actually made them. their history, their evolution, and their place in their craft. We judge the work only through what came before it, the last collection or the last release, and that’s exactly where bias begins. It can skew our view in either direction, because it removes the context that should frame the work we’re looking at.
Maybe it’s because our attention span is fried, maybe it’s our mental capacity, maybe our brains are trying to save resources. But the result is the same: we don’t look back into their work from ten years ago, and that’s a major flaw. When we revisit a project, it’s like we stripped the linear progress out of it.

To best explain this idea, we can use the Corteiz and Palace back and forth that took place earlier this year over the Brazil tracksuit.
The garment in question refers to the Brazilian tracksuit from the 2002 World Cup, one of the best tracksuits to ever touch earth.
Both brands, each rooted in different aesthetics, different ethos, and different beginnings, released their own version of the tracksuit, reimagined through their lens.

At the surface level, both looked like the same design. But once we question each brand and look at their linear history, we start seeing how different they really are. This is something that only becomes clear when we question the artist behind the piece.

From the Corteiz side, Clint went to Brazil, previewed the tracksuit himself, released it intentionally, and built it into his brand football coded identity. With a community built around being reactive and territorial, his version is tied to momentum, storytelling, and lived context.

From the Palace side, Palace is referencing global football nostalgia through a different cultural lane. More European, less personal, more skate meets sportswear heritage. Their Brazil moment feels closer to trend tapping than first mover context.

Same tracksuit, different lineage.

The fact that people judged the two projects side by side without interrogating any of this is the bias. They did not ask the vital questions like what the designer relationship to the culture is, how long each brand has been building its language in that ecosystem, or even why they made it in the first place.

That is judging the content while ignoring the creator.
And without questioning Corteiz and Palace, the tracksuits look identical.
Once you examine authorship, they are not even in the same category.

This whole situation proves that the problem still exists and we cannot run away from it. It shows how easily we slip into a surface level examination, quick to judge art and quick to build a full opinion around the first version of an idea that is presented to us. Maybe it even exposes how ignorant we can be toward the work in front of us. If you never designed a collection or tried to build a track, it is harder to see the small decisions, the structure, the care that sit inside the final result.

What you do not try to understand, or choose not to understand, says as much about you as it says about the work.

If you knew that Corteiz built the brand around football from day one, the Brazil tracksuit story would make total sense and the argument would almost not be needed. It is already clear in the fact that Corteiz did not release just one tracksuit. There is Nigeria, Italy, France. There is a linear process and a continuation here. It is not a trend, it is a brand identity. The same logic applies to music, like how fast people were to slander Testing by A$AP Rocky. If we revisit it now, the sound and visual language still feel years ahead of what we have in that space, and A$AP Forever still feels untouched. Linear checking is important and should be taken into consideration in every creative project we run into.

Take the time when you look at art and projects, or even your own designs, to ask yourself why you create in the first place. Try to understand your own linear progress. Can you place a design you made today next to something you created five years ago and see the distance between them? If you can, you are already in a strong position to make something meaningful, and more importantly, you are learning who you are.

Go visit the museum you always avoided. Do the research. Try to understand the creators you respect.

You might find details about your favorites that you never knew, and those details might change your entire perspective on them and the work they put into the world.

See you in 48… Oh, happy thanksgiving too!