Telfar (Q2050)
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Genderless fashion label
- TELFAR
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Telfar |
Genderless fashion label |
|
Statements
Nobody really knew quite what to expect from Telfar TV at fashion week. The details on the invite were characteristically esoteric: Was the designer planning a runway presentation? A movie screening? The location itself—a studio space at the South Street Seaport—remained a mystery disclosed only a few hours before the event. After a relatively subdued week of shows, this seemed poised to be the wow moment we’d all been craving. Surely New York’s most elusive fashion rebel would have a few tricks up his sleeve.Wrapping your mind around exactly what Telfar TV is isn’t easy, partly because it’s like nothing that’s existed before. Easily the brand’s most ambitious project to date, it launched last September with the help of the Ummah Chroma Collective as an experimental 24-hour linear TV channel or content platform that operates beyond the hyper corporate realm of social media. “When we started this project it really came from a deeper need to connect with our community," said Telfar Clemens, who was all smiles backstage. “This is the place where we can experiment, where we can talk to people directly without having to censor ourselves, without having to talk through an audience of mainstream media or whiteness. It’s not about how many people are watching it, or how many more bags we can sell, it’s literally about freedom.”Somewhere between a fashion show, public-access TV, and performance art, last night’s event was a full-on 90 minute immersion into the freewheeling creative world of Telfar; call it Clemens’s answer to Warhol’s infamous Factory. The evening kicked off with a video introducing the key Telfar TV hosts, all longtime friends and collaborators, including artist Aya Brown, model Gitoo Cuchifrito, and singer Ian Isiah who played the cheeky master of ceremonies. User-generated content was peppered throughout the screening, including a clip of an adorable little girl tuning into Telfar TV from her living room. Some of the most comedic moments included a spoof of The Wheel of Fortune. (The viewer who zoomed in for the show exploded with glee after spinning the wheel landed her a brand new chocolate brown shopper).Clemens and his crew were also seen live chatting with a Telfar fan dressed in a Zentai suit. Shayne Oliver made a cameo too, dressed in his new Anonymous Club merch.
Then, just as you thought the live broadcast was going into commercial break, the video screen was swiftly slid aside (cue, more Zentai suits!) to reveal a vast runway set and exactly what we’d all been waiting for: an epic fashion show.
16 February 2022
Last night Telfar Clemens threw a vast supper. About 30 guests sat around a large round table with a recessed center. From the looks of the table—which was left untidied to serve as the opening part of this evening’s show’s runway—it was a great night. The bottle-littered tablecloth was splashed with more red stuff than your average murder scene. There were mounds of squished butter, piles of picked pomegranates, mandarins and grapes, heaps of roughly torn and bitten flatbreads, and right in front of my seat the spit-roasted-then-torn-at carcass of a white-toothed little lamb.The Florentine context of a magnificent marbled hall in the Palazzo Corsini only added to the post-debauch tablescape: We were looking at a reconstructed Renaissance painting. Next to me sat one of last night’s guests, Terence Nance (Random Acts of Flyness), who said he was an “admirer and friend” of Clemens’s. He pointed out the microphones strewn here and there and said the dinner guests (who included Solange Knowles across the way) had sung and caroused until 1 a.m. before hitting a club. Alongside him was Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., the photographer, who confessed that he had eaten a silver candle at the party. As we contemplated the lamb, I asked Nance what he felt Telfar’s emblematic raised-emblem bags, aka “Bushwick Birkins,” served to signify for all those who carry them. “It’s a signifier that you are affirmative; queer affirmative, black affirmative, life affirmative…freak affirmative!”Following its first Paris show last season, this Pitti installment was further evidence that the Telfar affirmation is breaking borders and spreading fast. Once served, the show was a visual pleasure soundtracked by Gio Escobar’s band Standing on the Corner (they were sitting in the recess of the table). Halfway through it Carrie Stacks paused her progress around the table (in a slim black knit skirt and cotton pink skirt hybrid) to join them with piano and vocals. As she did so, another model, Boychild, stopped to dance a juddering ecstasy in his quilted moto jacket and piumino gaitered jeans. At the end Hawa, a new performer, won whoops.The feelgood at this show was inevitable, but there were many good looks too. Those raised-emblem pleather bags that have become such street catnip in the U.S. were joined by some handsome logo-uppered TC cut-out boots and Vibram-soled slippers. These you could easily imagine selling wildly.
9 January 2020
Telfar Clemens, the New York designer who was creating fashion experiences before they became a thing—think: a runway show with a side of White Castle sliders, or last season’s Irving Plaza concert at which Clemens crowd-surfed—has brought his act to Paris. There was a buzzy scene outside the venue—there always is at Clemens’s shows. And inside a feeling of curiosity: How would Telfar—“a black-owned, nongendered fashion project established in 2005 in NYC, a long time before such a thing was possible,” as his collection statement put it—disrupt Paris Fashion Week?Taking over the 18th arrondissement theater La Cigale, Clemens screenedThe World Isn’t Everything, a short film he collaborated on with friends such asMoonlight’s Ashton Sanders, Kelsey Lu, Petra Collins, andSlave Playplaywright Jeremy O. Harris, who was in the audience in top-to-toe Telfar: yellow blouse, running shorts, and fishnets. The video played on the theater’s back wall; as a character appeared onscreen, the actor or a model emerged in the same look, creating a neat doubling effect.Clemens makes everyday sportswear, easy but with elements of the unexpected. His most recognizable design is a tank top with askew straps; it looks like if you stuck your head out of one of the armholes by mistake, said f--- it, and went about your day. His new collection, the statement explained, took inspiration from “the customs/security lines at any airport at any given time, anywhere in the world.” These are places of anticipation and frustration for all of us, and—as the short made vivid—a real risk for people of color.Dressed for comfort and style, Clemens’s travelers wore cargo pants and utility jackets with T-shirts dyed earthy colors, or they sported modified tracksuits whose pants boasted between-the-stripes side vents or thigh cutouts. Clemens is a hybridizer; he splices jean shorts with cargos and “exposes” boxers—really T-shirt jersey—above the saggy waistbands of chinos. He’s also an ace at branding. The interlockingTandChave moved beyond his successful line of bags to a small offering of jewelry, as well as to novelty tees and athleisure. A group of Jamaican string vest-inspired pieces were the show’s standouts.After the models took their finale lap, they formed a circle and started dancing. The point was to join them.
Harris, who wrote the film and in it quotes Whitman and Shakespeare, was up on his feet in an instant, but the Paris crowd was reluctant at first, unused to such enthusiastic displays of feeling and maybe also a little bit unaccustomed to a designer who mixes his politics with paneled denim. But in the end they danced. Clemens’s message of community and inclusivity is hard to resist. It was a super-energizing start to the week.
23 September 2019
To say that the Telfar show at Irving Plaza was packed to the rafters would be an understatement; it was heaving. Designer Telfar Clemens has talked often of his affinity with musicians, and this season he took the fashion-show-as-concert format to its ultimate conclusion. For hundreds of excited fans who made it into the venue last night, there was no front row to be found, only a mosh pit.But let’s back up a bit, to the moment Clemens conceived of his latest extravaganza. It turns out the idea was sparked not by a song but rather a piece of theater. “I sawSlave Playlast November and was totally blown away,” said Clemens of Jeremy O. Harris’s provocative Off-Broadway production. “He confronts all the difficult questions about race and the history of this country that we’ve all been thinking about.” The handsome 6-foot-5 actor and playwright played master of ceremonies last night, swaying over the audience in a cool blue corduroy suit and aTelfar ascot-tie shirtto give Alexander Hamilton a run for his money. He set the tone of the proceedings with a rousing, politically charged message. “Our story is they, them, their,” said Harris, swaying between the frayed edges of the enormous American flag that framed the stage. “In this sweet land of impunity, there is no California or New York, this land is your land. This is our country: Telfar Country.”One by one, Telfar’s “country men” came marching out into the spotlight, dressed in boot-cut pants and jackets with detachable button-off sleeves in a range of earthy ’70s-inspired shades. After the chopped and screwed Budweiser logos of Spring, Clemens seemed to be moving his fascination with Americana deeper into Western territory. His popular high-waisted jeans were fastened with flashy Western-style belt buckles and spliced with vegan leather panels that gave the illusion of chaps. More subtle variations on the theme came through in the knits—the fringed crewneck sweaters were a standout, as were the jersey dresses collaged with images of African-American cowboys. Oyinda, the beautiful British-Nigerian singer, looked particularly gorgeous, appearing on the scene for her performance dressed in leather pants and cowboy boots like she’d just rode in on a horse.Country music is often touted as the soundtrack of a certain kind of American experience, one that tends to lean on conservative, right-wing values.
Lest we forget, country singer Lee Greenwood was one of the few who agreed to perform at Trump’s inauguration, belting out a rendition of “God Bless the USA.” In that sense, the sight of a black woman in a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots read like an act of resistance in the same way that Harris’s performance was an elegant rebuke of the president’s divisive State of the Union address. And that’s not lost on Clemens. “I feel like we’ve somehow come to zero in this country, but I still want to believe that good things can come from here,” he said, “and I want to represent that as an anchor American whose parents were not born here.”Moments before the punk band Ho99o9 began to play the show’s closing set, Clemens appeared on the stage, wearing the brand’s newBlack Lives Matter tee, for which all proceeds will go to the nonprofit organization. Instead of taking a bow, the designer turned and fell backward into the crowd, arms spread wide, crowd-surfing the wave of outstretched hands across the room.At a time when the ties that bind us as a nation are worn thin and the center cannot hold, this act of blind trust felt symbolic. With almost 15 years in the business, Telfar has weathered the storm where other young brands have failed, and that’s largely thanks to the support of his community. Where others talk of building walls, Clemens is opening up the conversation around race, gender, and class. In that newly reclaimed safe space, a truly inclusive and forward-thinking identity for American fashion is taking shape.
8 February 2019
Since winning the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund a year ago, designer Telfar Clemens has been on a world tour of sorts. Between the intimate performance he staged at the Serpentine Gallery in London with South African artists Faka, and the musical extravaganza at New York’s Spring Studios last season, Clemens has turned the traditional idea of a runway show into an immersive audio-visual experience. “We collaborate with artists to make original compositions each time. In fact, I’d say the music has become just as important as the fashion,” said Clemens, who called upon the likes of Ian Isiah, Selah Marley, and Moses Sumney to give voice to his new collection. “If I wasn’t a designer, I’d probably be working in music.”Fans descended on Blade Lounge East, a helicopter pad perched on the very edge of the East River, to witness the latest Telfar spectacular show this evening. The excitement of the crowd, who sheltered from the wind and the rain under a plastic tarp, was irrepressible. Cheers reverberated along the banks of the river as jazz musician Austin Williamson kicked things off with a rousing drum solo.Clemens has always marched to the beat of his own drum. This season, he made it his mission to remix the idea of Americana, sampling all the nation’s most archetypal iconography from the last five or so decades. The results were a collage of cleverly twisted basics: 1950s-style polo knits were flipped back to front, a nod to the cool uniform of jazz legends such as Miles Davis. Naturally, denim figured large in the collection too, with a decidedly 1970s silhouette. Bell-bottomed and patchworked with the Budweiser logo, his flared jeans were a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of the flower children of Haight-Ashbury, what he called “hippie commercialism.” They came cinched at the waist with flashy Telfar logo buckle belts.Clemens’s fascination with mass consumerism is well documented, and mining the sweet spot between high and low culture is what he does best—his genius uniform project for White Castle is a perfect example. He took the opportunity to reconfigure America’s most important logo, the star-spangled banner, splicing it with other recognizable American symbols—eagles, galloping horses, and more of those retro beer graphics—across asymmetric tops and baseball jerseys. The most impressive use of the flag was printed on the back of a pair of boxer shorts that were built into the top of jeans.
The distinctive saggy look was first made popular by hip-hop videos in the 1990s and is now worn by streetwise teenage boys all over the world.America’s legacy as a nation of immigrants has been rapidly eroded since Trump came into office, a fact that isn’t lost on Clemens, a Liberian American. He’s been flying the flag of inclusivity and community at every level—be it race, gender, or class—long before it was a priority on the fashion agenda. Brands like his are giving the notion of an American classic a bright new future.
10 September 2018
Telfar Clemens, winner of the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund award (and its healthy cash prize), was in a celebratory mood for Fall. He presented his new collection on a merry and motley crew of singers and musicians, all friends of the label, who took part in a kind of intimate musical medley. They each belted out lyrics to the aptly titled “Grateful,” adapted and led by Ian Isiah, a heavily gold-chained-and-grilled recording artist of a nonbinary sort (and former brand ambassador for Hood By Air). Telfar, too, took the stage for a vocal solo, crooning, “I’m so grateful to my faithful customers” to a whooping, good-vibeing audience of mostly that.Telfar indicated beforehand that this would be a different kind of show. “We wanted to take the wordrockand make it our own,” he said. “It’s such a ubiquitous and generic term that can be applied to anything, so we did. We staged a mini rock concert.” In terms of clothing, with his newfound resources, he’s been incorporating more quality fabrics and focusing on fully realized looks, though still through a democratic, inclusive, genderless, self-determinative design language. “You just won’t find leather and denim jeans like ours, or a leather jacket that detaches into a vest,” said the designer. Or, for that matter, a silk tank that transforms into a duster or a jeans-sweatpants hybrid with the wordcustomerstamped on the rear. “It’s our tightest, most detailed collection yet,” he added. “The Fashion Fund has allowed us to finally make the kind of collection we’ve dreamed of.”The label is adored as much for its principled idealism as it is for its punchy sense of humor. So it makes perfectly ironic sense that, beginning in a few days, Telfar will install a pop-up studio within “the final resting place of fashion,” he simpered, the discount department store Century 21 in lower Manhattan. Fans of the brand, and there are many, will be able to vote through social media on what exactly they want made there. This information will give the team an idea of demand and let them follow up directly with customers. Cleverly disruptive, it may very well be the future of retail, or at least part of the solution for an industry in perilous flux.
10 February 2018
Throughout the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund process, and particularly since being named a finalist two months ago, Telfar Clemens has been doing a lot of big-picture thinking. The Queens native, who still lives in the home where he grew up—and gladly, thankyouverymuch—has been taking a deeper look at the line he started when he was 15 as a DIY means of dressing himself and his friends. On his mind precisely: How will a larger audience view his work, in which he rather fiercely deconstructs notions of class, aspiration, gender, and identity? So, at the intimate showing of his new collection over dinner, his models and friends of the house sauntered in, one by one, took their seat and introduced themselves to the editors, stylists, and other invited guests across the table. Thus Clemens did what he’s always done: fostered dialogue, broke barriers, and bridged the divide between the observer and the observed.For Spring, Clemens took the opportunity to visit his archives, recreating some of his more vanguard ideas. Namely, unisex dressing. “I was doing unisex back in 2002,” he said, marveling at the way it’s been adopted by the mainstream in recent years. His models, many of them gender-unspecified, had on all manner of seemingly everyday items which had been recut and repurposed in artful, elevated ways. Tank tops became dresses, polo shirts had backward-facing collars, jean jackets came with detachable sleeves, dress shirts were backless, and his logo had been punched with holes so that the models’ skin created the actual logo. The first look, a sleeveless tunic that morphed into a sun visor, neatly summed up the hybrid, anti-fashion message—or “decoy clothing,” as he calls it.“I don’t believe in appropriation, or mixing high and low,” he continued. “I see fashion as horizontal.” To that end, dinner tonight was dressed up in White Castle packaging, a nod to a most unusual partnership. The hamburger chain commissioned Telfar to make the uniforms for all its employees nationwide, which makes sense, given that he’s lived his entire life a stone’s throw from the Queens location and has many a fond memory of late-night binges. The uniforms are available to the public, too, slightly modified according to zip code, where customers will have to travel for pickup. “I want people to aspire to wear the same thing that the person serving them is wearing,” he said, ”and to actually meet them.”
10 September 2017
“I can’t help but be political. I’m being political by being cool,” said Telfar Clemens, neatly crystallizing the essence of his fiercely unisex Telfar line, launched long before the chain of events beginning January 20, and well before gender-neutral became a commodity. In fact, Clemens has always rejected rules and labels—leading to his own phraseology, i.e., anti-identitarian, trend-agnostic, aesthetic consensus—while embracing the marginalized in a way that’s both integrated and elevated.Not that Clemens is dismissive of current events, he gets the urgency. He’s just doubling down on his long-standing battle against banality. And he’s doing so by aggressively blending in, creating a magpie street uniform that’s every bit as original as it is culled from his surroundings. In a backstage walk-through, he elaborated on the cobbled reconstructions: jeans that are denim on top, but flared knit below; a puffer jacket that morphs into a sweatshirt; large cargo pockets grafted out of his TC logo; and the preponderance of white seams that are not seams at all, but strips of delicate stitchery. Berets and flight caps, seemingly patched together from bits of fabric, took on a scrappy militaristic vibe.“It’s a little bit Puma, a little bit Levi’s, a little bit Patagonia,” he noted, in reference to major brands from which he pulls but so far has not collaborated. And actually, collaboration seems anathema to his ethos. Although one brand that’s taken a shine to Telfar, the mini-burger chain White Castle, has kicked up its ongoing partnership with him, commissioning uniforms for its stores nationwide. Tonight there’ll be a party to celebrate that, and it promises to live up to Telfar’s reputation for memorable after-parties.As he likes to say, “Telfar is not for you; it’s for everyone,” in a kind of reverse co-option of mainstream dressing. Maybe the words spoken over the show’s soundtrack by Clemens’s friend artist Ryan Trecartin said it best: “And the award for most time-travel-friendly, culturally adaptable, contextually annoyed, unisex specific, panic-onomical, worn equally by both offense and defense, goes to Telfar.”
11 February 2017
Telfar Clemens—of the semi-eponymous label,Telfar—is onto something. It’s not that his metier has changed; he’s known for producing androgynous basics with twists. It’s just that, after tonight’s show, his particular approach feels excitingly galvanizing. Clemens has this raptor-like focus that’s grounded in the realest of realities, and that beams, forgive the verbiage, through excess and bullshit with laser precision. Or as he puts it: “This isn’t men’s, it’s not women’s, it’s not just sport, it’s not just streetwear, it’s not just casualwear. It’sclothing.” Others are doing runway versions of democratic, everyman’s garb, but there are undeniable gimmicks apparent. Somehow, this designer does them too, but gimmick-free.For Spring, those clothes were super simple yet they tampered with convention, and came in a palette of what Clemens called “Old Navy” and “Martha Stewart” colors (mid-grade blue, tangerine, lime) derived from paint chips nicked from Home Depot. It started with a polo shirt, which Clemens either reversed to create a boat-necked front, or from which he surgically removed the back and added bra-straps. Said the designer: “The polo shirt comes from all different walks of life—the really, really low end to the high. From golf, to, you know, almost refugee. It’s universal.”They were excellent. As were fake cardigans, with deep buttoned Vs that met at the navel and not quite the hem. “A faux pas!” Clemens exclaimed, happily. As were track pants with varsity stripes or slices at the knee. The only branding was Telfar’s own semi-industrial logo (it looks a bit like the old tennis brand Sergio Tacchini’s), which was at times allover embroidered to mimic the way, say,Ralph Laurenmight render a corduroy with mallards or whales or what have you. A one-piece swimsuit/bodysuit, worn by a man, took the contextual remove to a racier but just as interesting level. What Clemens is suggesting is that the fundamentality of clothing—and its inversions, desexualization, and ultimate directness—is the future, totally stripped of pre-assigned notion. In a way, that attitude is almost anti-fashion—but it’s a breath, or even a blast, of fresh air. Telfar doesn’t sell a hype-branded hoodie or tee. It sells the belief that the elemental still has room to be shifted, and that promise feels extremely modern.Worth noting, too: Clemens tapped the Olympians Tori Bowie (track and field) and Miles Chamley-Watson (fencing) to walk in the show.
“You saw them on TV, and now they’re doing this. It’s unexpected,” he said. He even altered the way audiences generally respond—that is, via applause. His show closed with a choreographed clapping squad, which led to a loud roar from the crowd. Case in ultimate point: Clemens takes the everyday and remasters it. That’s his mission. He put it best: “We see what’s available to everyone, and make it special.”
9 September 2016
“Nothing is as it seems with me,” proclaimed the fashion contrarian Telfar Clemens before his men’s show tonight, nearly a week after the other New York men’s collections had wrapped up. Going against the grain is par for the course for the Queens native and resident, who seems to revel in his outer-borough outsiderness and antiestablishment instincts.Which is why, when he said this would be his most formal collection to date, one couldn’t help but wonder if he was being coy, dressing up his DIY street style in arch terminology. But no, Clemens has always played with notions of normal to create a new formal—and vice versa. By way of example, he tugged on a horizontal stripe on a model’s shirt to show that it doubled as a pocket. Functional equals formal in Clemens’s world. Similarly, slacks were made from three layers of simple cotton jersey (T-shirt material), their raw edges exposed at the seams to reveal their three colors—black, white, and brown, the only colors in the collection. Jersey was also transformed into overcoats and tracksuits. But most strikingly, Clemens knitted strands of it into bulky sweaters, their sleeves taking on giant lobster-claw proportions, as well as brimmed hats and leg warmers.As the models walked, a woman’s exaggeratedly posh voice itemized each look, like they used to do at fashion shows when they were more formal affairs. Without music to give hints to the designer’s mood, it felt artificial and generic, not unlike fast-food uniforms—with good reason. Clemens was asked to design the uniforms for White Castle, in celebration of the budget burger chain’s 95th anniversary. Keeping it simple, naturally, he came up with a polo and jeans, which he put on the runway tonight. The Berlin Biennale has called, too, requesting uniforms for their curators and staff.It’s an interesting approach, embracing extreme banality. But if Clemens’s refusal to indulge in flamboyance or excessive flourish seems false or calculated, consider his charming and very genuine editing process. “If my mom and my aunt agree it’s a nice shirt,” he said, earnestly, “then I believe it’s a nice shirt and it stays in.”
17 February 2016
Telfarranks among that rarefied group of men’s labels on the utilitarian unisex front, where the question of gender hangs in the air but doesn’t actually come into question. In fact, said designerTelfar Clemensbefore the show, and without a moment’s hesitation, “I kind of started the whole thing.” Which is to say, that particular shade of ambiguity is, at this point,besidethe point. It’s old hat, by now blurred, subverted, transcended. Plus, this is the label’s 25th season, making it more of a seasoned grown-up than a scrappy young thing hell-bent on provocation.Born out of a streetwise functionality, Telfar aspires to exactly that. “Subliminal branding,” the designer asserted, “nothing frivolous.” Of course frivolity is in the eye of the beholder, and it remains to be seen what the beholder makes of off-the-shoulder tanks, dress shirts with missing sides, and halter tops whose spaghetti straps stretch over a man’s articulated shoulders to a comical, cheeky effect. That and a pair of white daisy dukes practically shrink-wrapped over bulging thighs were among the only suggestions of old-school drag. Shoes straddled the fence between ballet flats and standard-issue Vans-style sneakers. As for branding, the name Telfar brazenly scrawled down the front of shirts in a lacy mesh and a TC logo stitched into every other piece weren’t exactly subliminal, but droll insider references to logomania never go unappreciated.Clemens also indulged in a fussy obsession with the numbers six and eight, wherein details—particularly cargo pockets—appeared no fewer than six or eight times on a given sleeve, belt loop, tag, and so on. Bizarre, to be sure, but it added to the collection’s curious, enigmatic allure. To say nothing of the backdrop, a trippy animation of the designer as avatar, mixed with allusions to the sponsor, White Castle. Product placement was never like this.
15 September 2015
Telfar Clemens might be considered one of the more challenging designers on the NYFW schedule. His direction often has more to do with conceptual or performance art than with fashion. He's a serial collaborator, having in the past partnered with the New Museum and worked with artists like Ryan Trecartin to present a world that defies notions of gender, taste, and sex appeal. But compared with, say, Hood by Air's decadent world of street luxury, Clemens is on a very different mission.Backstage after that show he unabashedly admitted that this was a sales-driven collection. Sure, there were the knit tube dresses with hems short enough to give Rick Owens a run for his money. But the real story here was Clemens' commitment to developing his utilitarian wardrobe. Most of the pieces in the collection were versions of designs he's been developing for the past 10 years. This season he took a more refined tack, constructing workwear-inspired uniforms in sturdy and tonal fabrics including leather, denim, corduroy, and flannel. Tight white tees; slim, high-waisted trousers with wide leg openings; and classic, cropped zip jackets were elegant, basic, and retro, like updated versions of what off-duty servicemen might have worn in the 1950s.The sound piece, a collaboration with the musician Lizzi Bougatsos of the experimental group Gang Gang Dance, cycled through a gentle melody with what sounded like men marching, showering, and firing ballistic weapons. Models had coins attached to the soles of their sneakers, and mics on the floor picked up the sound of the Telfar army coming. Will it be the sales hit he hopes? We'll see, but what he achieved with that aspiration was worth the effort.
16 February 2015
Telfar Clemens might be considered one of the more challenging designers on the NYFW schedule. His direction often has more to do with conceptual or performance art than with fashion. He's a serial collaborator, having in the past partnered with the New Museum and worked with artists like Ryan Trecartin to present a world that defies notions of gender, taste, and sex appeal. But compared with, say, Hood by Air's decadent world of street luxury, Clemens is on a very different mission.Backstage after that show he unabashedly admitted that this was a sales-driven collection. Sure, there were the knit tube dresses with hems short enough to give Rick Owens a run for his money. But the real story here was Clemens' commitment to developing his utilitarian wardrobe. Most of the pieces in the collection were versions of designs he's been developing for the past 10 years. This season he took a more refined tack, constructing workwear-inspired uniforms in sturdy and tonal fabrics including leather, denim, corduroy, and flannel. Tight white tees; slim, high-waisted trousers with wide leg openings; and classic, cropped zip jackets were elegant, basic, and retro, like updated versions of what off-duty servicemen might have worn in the 1950s.The sound piece, a collaboration with the musician Lizzi Bougatsos of the experimental group Gang Gang Dance, cycled through a gentle melody with what sounded like men marching, showering, and firing ballistic weapons. Models had coins attached to the soles of their sneakers, and mics on the floor picked up the sound of the Telfar army coming. Will it be the sales hit he hopes? We'll see, but what he achieved with that aspiration was worth the effort.
15 February 2015
"I didn't want it to be about anything but the clothes," said Telfar Clemens after presenting his minimalist, unisex Spring '15 collection at the Swiss Institute. If that was his intention, Clemens missed the mark, because his show seemed to be about so much more than just clothes. There were no starlets in the front row, and no booming beats thumped through speakers. Rather, the show was packed with curious editors and the cult designer's devotees. Music came courtesy of Nathan Whipple, who sat at a white piano and played pop songs—sans lyrics, of course. They seemed prettier that way, somehow.Clemens' jam is embracing what's "normal," exploring it, dissecting it, and turning it on its head. During a chat this summer, he said that he wants to dress the American masses. He may be a member of New York's evolving countercultural street scene (the same cerebral, eccentric, all-inclusive community that spawned Hood by Air), but he wants to dress a guy or girl in Ohio just as much as the cool kid on Orchard Street. He wants his clothes to be accessible. So it makes sense that he looked to U.S. high street brands like American Eagle for his Spring inspiration. "I wanted to take American basics to the next level, and show people what theycanbe," he explained. Dubbed "Simplex," the show began with a model in ripped jeans and a white button-down shirt, the sleeves of which were detachable at the elbow. He was soon followed by another male model in jeans with large triangular cutouts that exposed his thighs. Other boys wore peekaboo tank tops, sweatshirt-material miniskirts, or what looked like denim pajamas. Often, a female model would follow one of the guys in an almost identical look. "I did that because it's just about what fits and what looks good," Clemens said when asked about his gender-neutral wares.Polo shirts were slashed and transformed into one-sleeved statements, sweater vests in baby blue and cotton-candy pink came chopped up and open at the sides, and there were even a few backless hoodies. Clemens riffed on preppy hipster staples like fedoras and messenger bags by deconstructing the former and slapping his logo on the latter. His TC emblem was also woven into a range of featherweight knits—not because he's vain, but because he wanted to give the tops the texture of "little girls' underwear.
" Speaking of which, Spring marked the launch of Clemens' own line of underwear, which included run-of-the-mill briefs, white skivvies with egg-shaped holes above each cheek, and stretchy, spaghetti-strap bodysuits, all of which were presented on men.Clemens' odd ensembles stemmed from the hyper-normal—the everyday. "Fashion week is so much," said Clemens between hugs from his fans. "This just wasn't that." Indeed, his clothes weren't much at all. But they provided a necessary cleansing of sorts—one that did away with fashion's perceived elitism, and invited the models and showgoers alike to justbe. On a conceptual level, it was fantastic—and refreshing. But will it sell? Not to the masses like Clemens dreams it will—Joe Sixpack isn't ready for a miniskirt just yet. However, in New York hot spots like Opening Ceremony, Oak, and VFiles, all of which already stock the designer, Telfar will do just fine.
8 September 2014