A Summer Kick-Off From Telfar, Who Celebrated 20 Years in Business With a Comeback Show

Vogue

4 hours ago

Telfar, the brand, and Telfar, the designer, have always moved at their own pace. On Saturday night, Telfar Clemens summoned friends, fans, and press—amidst which there were many intersections—to Cortlandt Alley, behind his Canal Street store, to celebrate two decades of the label he started as a teenager in Queens. His famous askew tank tops hung from clotheslines above a crowd of around 200 who gathered to see his much anticipated return to the runway after a long absence. The summer solstice was on Friday, making Saturday one of the longest days of the year with over 15 hours of daylight. Telfar used up every last bit of it—the show started over two hours late; though once it got going, no one was counting.
'If you think we're late, we're not. We're on time, bitch!' exclaimed Jorge Gitoo Wright, who cast the show, at around the hour and a half mark, adding: 'If you don't like the looks, we don't like you!'
Courtesy of Telfar
Courtesy of Telfar
Courtesy of Telfar
What was not to like? Late last year, when Clemens opened his first Telfar store, he spoke about his ambitions with ready-to-wear. 'It's like when you were walking down Broadway and you saw six people with the same coat—whatever's going on there, I want to do that,' he said. In a way, he already had: His Shopping Bag was an It-bag before it became a mass item with dupes sold a stone's throw away from the real thing. 'I'm really ready for that effect to happen with the clothes,' he added. Babak Radboy, the brand's long-time artistic director, elaborated: 'We weren't trying to see a thousand people in a sweatshirt with the Telfar logo on it. We were trying to see a thousand people in an upside-down tank top. We wanted the granny and the mechanic. That was the idea of mass, of how you change the mass. Not just how you serve them a generic idea.'
There were no generic ideas here: Clemens has always had a knack for abstracting wardrobe classics and transforming them into idiosyncratic expressions with the ineffable coolness of a true New Yorker. This weekend's show offered them in spades. The collection featured seven capsules, which will be dropping monthly between right this minute and the fall. Most impactful were the suits rendered in casual jerseys. There was a softness and nonchalance to the cut of these pieces that felt new and forward-looking—a reminder of the way Telfar's runway shows have often offered an accurate and timely read of the zeitgeist.
Courtesy of Jason Nocito
Courtesy of Jason Nocito