NYC's Most Wanted: The Rise of Telfar Clemens

“Anna Wintour is coming,” was overheard in a crowd of antsy bodies as they packed into Irving Plaza and awaited the start of one of New York Fashion Week’s most anticipated shows. With no runway or front row in sight, the crowd fell silent right as the lights went down before a one-by-one crew of models entered the stage, and then, like a scene out of a traditional Southern Baptist church, each model’s body went limp before they descended from the stage above into the receptive arms of the crowd before “surfing” their way across the room. This is Telfar’s America.

Long before the fashion industry latched onto inclusivity for the sake of following trends, something was brewing in Queens, New York — a genuine approach to genderless clothing, nearly a decade before diversity became mainstream. What started in 2005 as a fashion-forward, unisex line of clothing, eventually evolved into one of New York City’s most talked-about brands. It’s safe to say Telfar Clemens has always been ahead of his time, and in 2019 the brand bringing forward-thinking and purpose to the otherwise underwhelming runways of New York City was started over a decade ago by a black teen in Queens.

“At age 17, I was in New York and preparing to go to college and selling my line on the street and at vintage stores like Funky Lala on the Lower East Side,” Telfar reveals with warm laughter. “On Mulberry Street, I had a little blanket and I would put some t-shirts out that I made, and sometimes people would walk by and buy some shit.”

Americana in spirit and D.I.Y in practice, Telfar Clemens started designing clothing at age 15. It was those teen years where Telfar developed his affinity for mall culture, mixing traditionally “feminine” silhouettes with deconstructed pieces he often customized using pens, before bringing them downtown to sell. “I used to reconstruct t-shirts,” he says. “The first thing I started to sell a lot of was this triple t-shirt I would make which was 3 shirts that would make a tent shape you could wear three different ways. That was the first thing I sold.”

Born in LeFrak City apartment in Queens, New York, Telfar Clemens has created an impactful namesake label of truly genderless clothing in unique silhouettes, with a design language deeply inspired by New York City’s five boroughs. Though Telfar has long created what seems like effortless fashion, the label hasn’t always received the recognition it deserves. Though active since his teen years, it wasn’t until winning the coveted CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund in 2017 that the acknowledgment of Telfar’s impact truly hit mainstream fashion. “It gave me a choice to figure out what I wanted to do,” Clemens says of winning the award. “And what type of company I wanted to be. It gave me validation in other people’s minds that didn’t fuck with me years ago because I didn’t really have that validation.”

Though traditions of denim and American heritage are nothing new, Telfar has reinvented the meaning of Americana, striking the perfect balance between inclusivity and accessibility, challenging the conventions of the industry. With a long list of collaborations with iconic brands like Budweiser, White Castle, and Black Lives Matter, Clemens has reclaimed the American identity, representing the positive in what he refers to as negative space. “[America] is becoming way more of what I thought it would be and a lot of the negativity is kind of resistance against things [that] have been accepted in the past, so I don’t really see it as negative as much as I see it as a progression.”

With a brand tagline of “It’s not for you, it’s for everybody,” Telfar’s vision of luxury fashion forever merges the importance of community. In 2017, what started as a runway sponsorship with his neighborhood favorite, White Castle, evolved into one of fashion’s most talked about collaborations, where Telfar redesigned the employee uniform at over 400 locations nationwide. From there, the brand released its own capsule of merch, sending 100% of its sale proceeds to the LIBERTY AND JUSTICE fund to pay the bail costs of minors held on Rikers Island.

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If you walk down the streets of Downtown Manhattan or even the residential neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, you’ll probably see it: a vegan leather shopper, monogrammed with the initials TC. The it-bag of 2019 — carried by the ageless group of cool girls and boys alike. Though unintentional, the “shopping bags” have become one of the most coveted accessories of past and future seasons, reflective of the inclusivity that the brand reps hard. And rightfully so, Telfar finds the 6 and 60-year-olds that can be seen in any borough wearing his clothing as the biggest inspiration for the brand.

“It begins with the kids on the street,” says Clemens of his trend watching. “The kids on fucking Canal Street to be exact. I’m influenced by the person that’s kind of like doing a day-to-day thing, looking really cool, living their life — not for Instagram.”

Nonetheless, Telfar has established a loyal fanbase and community of collaborators ranging from Solange to Dev Hynes, to Kelela and American artist Ryan Trecartin. Community remains at the forefront of everything Telfar does, especially when it comes to music. Since the beginning, each Telfar runway has been accompanied by original compositions, put together by friends of the brand.

“Over the last 2-3 seasons, we’ve had music as the centerpiece of the collection — so you get to see a show with original music that goes with the collection,” Clemens explains. “It’s important… it’s cool to be able to have that ability to make something new that sounds new at the same time.”

With his recent “COUNTRY” presentation based around reclaiming rock n’ roll, Telfar quite literally took his collection to center stage, with Western motifs intertwined in the predominantly black cast of models in cowboy hats that crowd surfed to a medley of spoken word and high energy headbanging tracks, before disappearing into a mosh pit of attendees.

“This season, being able to work with Total Freedom, Butch Dawson, Oyinda and Robert Randolph — it was super cool to actually make that happen,” he reveals. “The music that everyone has been making… I hope to have a collection of music that people can listen to because it’s like in the early 2000s when the only time you would hear a song was when it was on the runway. So it’s cool to just hear this genre of music that I intended to be genre-less in a way — it’s cool that’d we’ve gone to the country portion of that.”

Freedom runs deep in everything Telfar Clemens does. It’s refreshing to say the least, in a space that hasn’t always been receptive to black voices. And though today’s political climate has brought a lot of fear and discouragement, Telfar is embracing this era and showing love to the heritage that raised him. “[I stand for] the freedom to do whatever you want to do and look like whatever you want to look like, without any hierarchy that has to do with clothing. Or how people perceive clothing in the ‘modern’ age.”

For now, Telfar is focused on growth, still battling the typical designer stresses like budgets and time. “Growth is the biggest challenge in knowing that you should grow each season or should be growing or [deciding] how big you want to grow. I wouldn’t say it’s a problem because you have a choice and if you have a choice you can do whatever you want. No one’s telling me what I have to do. That’s actually the cool thing.”

With exciting collaborations, shows and pieces launching later this year, Telfar is focused on staying consistent and developing the Telfar name further than it’s already iconic shopping bag. Telfar is still on what he refers to as a “world tour,” bringing his community of musical performers to every major city for shows equally as moving and impactful as his “COUNTRY” presentation.

With nearly 15 years of designing under his belt, Telfar Clemens has many more years to come, continuing his brand ethos and having music and fashion guide the art he’s making.

Staying true to Telfar fashion, when asked what his dream show soundtrack would be, Clemens’ response is easy: “It’d be a 14-hour long song that has all my friends on it… like, everyone I’ve ever worked with.”