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Cortez Smith doesn\u2019t play about his clothes. The man behind Nuck, the cunning and savvy leader of the 63rd Street Mob on the longrunning hit Showtime series \u201cThe Chi,\u201d is also a fashion savant. Inspired by the fashions of his uncle, mother and grandmother back in the day, Smith showed up to <\/span>The TRiiBE<\/span><\/i> Studio with a garment bag full of pieces from his new clothing line, Eros Christian.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s, like, half fashion mixed with streetwear. I love denim and I love leather, and I collage the two worlds together. That\u2019s what creates my brand,\u201d Smith told <\/span>The TRiiBE<\/span><\/i> about Eros Christian, which he launched in May. Sometimes, Smith said, he prefers to wear his own clothes on set, a piece of himself which shines through his portrayal of Nuck on screen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have a crocodile skin jacket \u2014 one of my favorites. It took a long time to perfect it because the hide of a crocodile is dried out a little bit, so it takes a lot of processing to get it to shape how you want it,\u201d Smith said about the jacket he\u2019s rocking in our cover photo. \u201cThe lining of the jacket is red, to have that pop in the mix with that black, man, it gives it an electrifying feel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Smith is reminiscing about his time on \u201cThe Chi,\u201d a gritty drama based and set in Chicago that centers love, loyalty, and life on the city\u2019s South and West sides. Now in its 8th and final season, which premiered on May 22, the show will conclude with its final episode airing on Paramount + on July 24.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAfter \u2018The Chi\u2019 wraps up, there\u2019s gonna be, like, a hole in the universe of television. It\u2019s gonna leave a hole,\u201d Smith said about the ending of a show that strived to capture the essence of being Black in Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Authenticity is one of the biggest throughlines of \u201cThe Chi.\u201d A good chunk of the cast and crew hail from the city. Smith, a West Side native, made his debut as \u201cNuck\u201d in season 3, which aired in 2019 \u2014 just before the 2020 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike left him discouraged and out of work. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Cortez Smith doesn\u2019t play about his clothes. The man behind Nuck, the cunning and savvy leader of the 63rd Street<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.thetriibe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/09135442\/Cortez-Smith-_selects-8234-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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