The unstoppable success of Telfar Global From the streets of Queens to the catwalks: history of the brand of the moment
Telfar in 2019 did not yet have a Wikipedia page.
After winning $ 400,000 for the CFDA Awards / Vogue Fashion Fund, everything has changed. The American brand is not the usual meteor, but a phenomenon running towards real change in the international fashion system. To date, the Telfar Bag is the new it bag of the moment, which outperforms important bags such as the Balenciaga City Bag in sales. What is the recipe for success? Transformation, community and freshness are the key words of Telfar Global, which is climbing the hierarchies of the global fashion system through clean designs that are attentive to the trend and a direct social language.
The mind behind success: Telfar Clemens
A very tenacious profile hides behind the great success of a winning idea: Telfar Clemens is a Liberian-American designer born in Queens in 1985 and active since 2005, the year when he founded Telfar Global, using the signature taught by the teacher as his logo when he was 6 years old. Today when he is in New York, he lives with his aunt, who helped him start the brand, in an apartment in LeFrak City, a large residential complex in Queens.
Clemens loves Whitney Houston and the radio; he arrives in America with his family to escape the Second Civil War in Liberia. After a childhood in Queens he moved to Maryland. Then enrolled in 2004 at Pace University in New York, he knows the vintage and second-hand realities of the Century 21 and Funky Lala fashion stores and begins to produce his first collection of T-shirts between one lesson on campus and the other. Telfar defines himself as an "extrovert loner": during photoshoots he usually talks with his partner Radboy about the developments of whitewashing and about phenomena of cultural appropriation towards the black community. As a black, emigrant and poor neighborhood designer, Telfar belongs to more than a minority, including the queer minority. Telfar sells the first creations on the street, like at the markets, and only thanks to the support of the artistic community of New York and its friends is it where it is today.
The "Bushwick Birkin"
The Telfar bag has earned this nickname thanks to the make-up artist Xya Rachel, who says "it is for those who do not have exactly the budget for a Hèrmes". Daughter of an urban and consumerist inspiration, the it-bag of the moment came to life in the minds of Telfar and Radboy at the exit of the Bloomingdale's department store - the undisputed theater of extreme shopping - who wondered if it was not possible to create a unisex version of those paper bags, so comfortable and useful. In vegan leather and now available in 3 sizes and different colors, the bag is positioned in a medium-low price range, which does not exceed $ 300, and is therefore accessible to all aficionados of a certain type of style that does not they may or may not want to buy a bag that identifies them with a status symbol that is not their own. The Telfar Bag, thanks to its limited cost and the creativity of a black-owned brand, has created around it a common thread that brings together a slice of the population, enough to go sold out in 15 seconds to the last drop of the online site and therefore be very difficult to find. A perfect mix of rarity, price and quality, which make the bag much more relevant to young and creative consumers than a $ 300,000 Birkin.
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The now famous Telfar Bag is perfect in all its colors and shapes: the large size can be used to carry documents and laptops comfortably, but also changes for a weekend out of town. The bags are also inserted inside like a matrioshka: Telfar Clemens himself used a Medium Brown inside a Large Forest Green to contain everything needed for his first fashion show in Paris last year. Not only bags, the apparel is also the protagonist: like the t-shirts with logo or cowboy prints with Native-American vibes to which the designer is very fond. The sleeveless polo shirt with zip and silver logo is instead an echo of the 70s American tennis style.
