It was last November at fashion’s equivalent of the Oscars, the Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards, that the brand Telfar was officiated into New York’s establishment. But, this has never been a natural fit for the design house that’s waggled a finger since 2005 at everything that the elitist fashion week circuit has held dear. And, at the label’s autumn winter 2018 show this morning it continued to break the rules, but this time everyone is listening.
Telfar called on the vocal and musical styling of Dev Hynes, Ian Isiah, Selah Marley, Kelela, Kelsey Lu, Angel and the LeFrak Vocal Choir to present and model their AW18 clothes. Inclusive and experimental, it showed how the pieces moved, how they performed, not just how they could walk down a runway. Consider the smoke and mirrors gone.
’We are not alone in questioning the show and season systems -- so we are using fashion week to start to define something that can break free from it and be suited specifically to our vision. For us, this means working collaboratively with musicians and artists -- not in the sense of “endorsement” and celebrity BS, but in a truly creative way to start figuring out a different cultural platform. Suddenly we are establishing what it means for us to be a company -- and I think we are basically trying to be as impious in how we do business as we are in the rest of what we do’, Clemens told i-D about his AW18 showcase.
But, what about the clothes? In keeping with the brand’s vision of ‘horizontal, democratic, universal’ design the collection was an expression of the possibilities of unisex design. There were denim and leather chaps, flares that kicked out at the knee, torn scarlet blouses, a-symmetric knee-length knitwear, flares and crop-tops in a star palette of scarlet, black and white. Like the showcase, the clothes were a performance that explored purpose and design as well as gender identity and expression. These are ideas so easily over analysed, but in Clemens hands it looked easy.
Telfar Clemens, the Liberian-American creative mind behind the label, has always been ten steps ahead of his peers. He founded the nongendered label in the early Noughties when Ladettes was still an acceptable expression. He introduced the see-now-buy-now model in 2011 with pop-up shows during NYFW where anyone - press, stylists, Joe Bloggs on the street - could buy the collection on there and then. And, in 2015 Telfar shied away from the trad presentation model, esquwing it for a party at White Castle to launch a castle collection of unisex-uniforms for the fast food joint. These were then rolled out to all 10,000 team members before going on sale to the public with all profits donated to the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Liberty and Justice fund to pay bail for minors held on Rikers Island.
It may have taken for too long for the industry to take note of Telfar and duly reward it, but they are 100 per cent listening.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.