Career
Clemens met Babak Radboy in 2004, who later joined Telfar as creative director and business partner in 2013.
In 2014, Clemens released the first iteration of the Shopping Bag, which would go on to become a major it bag.[8]
In September 2016, Clemens and Radboy worked together on an installation at the Berlin Biennale, accompanied by a video rendered by artists Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch.[9]
In May 2017, Clemens collaborated with musician Solange Knowles to design the outfits for Knowles and her dancers for "An Ode To", a no-phones-allowed interdisciplinary performance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.[10]
In September 2017, Clemens designed uniforms for 400 White Castle franchises.[11] In October, 2017, Clemens released a special capsule collection in collaboration with White Castle that year, with all proceeds from the partnership went to bail funds for teenagers imprisoned on Rikers Island.[12][13] That year, he won the 2017 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund along with a $400,000 prize, much of which he invested in the production of the Telfar Shopping Bag.[14]
In February 2019, Telfar showed his Fall Winter 2019 collection at Irving Plaza in New York City in an exclusive event celebrating black future(s) month, with 1000 guests, a mosh pit for a runway (models were crowd-surfed through the audience rather than walking down a runway), and live stage music.[15] The fashion show, co-hosted by playwright Jeremy O. Harris, featured performances by musicians Ho99o9, Na-Kel Smith, Oyinda, Butch Dawson, and the designer Clemens himself.[16][17]
In early 2020, Clemens announced a collaboration with Gap Inc. The collection was postponed indefinitely in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[18][19]
In August 2020, Telfar introduced the Bag Security Program, a one-day-only online event that would allow anyone to preorder bags for a guaranteed holiday delivery that year.[20] “I created the bag security program so that people could be able to get the thing that they wanted. We just really wanted to know like if we actually gave people the chance to get this bag, how many bags can we sell in one day?” Clemens stated.[21] Two more Bag Security Programs have since taken place, both in 2021.
In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named Telfar among the fifty heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”.[22][23] Clemens launched a line of durags in September of that year.[24][25] Shortly after, Clemens announced a collaboration with UGG to launch in fall 2021.[26]
In September 2020, Clemens was awarded the Accessories Designer of the Year at the CFDA Awards.[27]
In 2021, GUESS, a large American retailer, produced a bag consumers recognized as a look-alike of the Telfar Shopping Bag, but with a G-logo in place of the Telfar brand. Guess’s handbag licenser Signal Brands voluntarily pulled the G-logo off of shelves and released a statement that "Signal Brands does not wish to create any impediments to Telfar Global's success and, as such, has independently decided to stop selling the G-logo totes."[28]
Clemens counts Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier and Yohji Yamamoto as influences,[29] along with "life style" brands such as Calvin Klein, DKNY, and Polo Ralph Lauren.[1]
Notable designs
The Telfar Shopping Bag is made of vegan leather, branded with the signature "T" Telfar logo.[30] It has been called an "it-bag" and "the decade's most important accessory" by major fashion publications.[31][32] Originally modeled after shopping bags from Bloomingdale's, the Telfar Shopping Bag is colloquially known as the "Bushwick Birkin" due to its combination of status and accessibility.[1][33]
In 2018, singer Kelela featured the bag in her "The Story of a Thing" column for T.[34]
