Telfar NYFW FW19
Represented by Gia Kuan.
On Sunday, September 9, Telfar Clemens presented the TELFAR Spring/Summer 2019 collection at BLADE Lounge East in New York City. This collection is dedicated to America: nice landscape, good arable land and plenty of shelter to go around.
TELFAR
Become a queer, Liberian-American eighteen year old, travel back to 2004 and establish a 100% unisex fashion line in New York City. Try to make clothes that do not exist on the market — just as you don’t exist in the world. Try to make pure garments without the ornament of gender, race, class; high and low; male or female. Don’t have any money. Find your inspiration from not just the best clothes but the most clothes: the material reality of clothes, as a flow of communication, as a form of pollution; be as inspired by Old Navy as Helmut Lang. Persist for a decade despite being ignored. If the road is closed to you — cut a new one. If you can’t get into stores, get into museums. Design the uniforms for 10,000 employees of White Castle. Win the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Keep your family close, ignore the bullsh*t. Good luck — lot’s of love.
Telfar: NYFW FW19
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SS—19 COLLECTION
“NUTBUSH TENNESSEE”
TELFAR SS — 2019 is dedicated to America: nice landscape, good arable land and plenty of shelter to go around.
Casual dress shirts in an immigrant palette are slashed at the armpits and the elbows; can button up like turtlenecks or wrap at the waist without a need for buttons. Embroidered chains run across them like stripes under jackets and coats in three lengths with detachable shawl sleeves in a poly twill.
Inside-out, reversible T-shirts lay images from last season’s look-book over American flags, eagles, horses, and beer graphics: vintage Americana; layered, slashed and multiplied across the collection as panels and cut-in’s for a range of fugue 50’s silhouettes.
A modular denim section allows pattern pieces to be switched out to make a flare, a capri or a cut-out. Whole denim segments are replaced with other categories of garment: bell bottoms of high-street appliqué T-shirt; pant tops of Middle-American sweat-pant — or the gesture of a printed boxer short held in perpetual sag.
The collection is 100% unisex.
SS—19 PERFORMANCE
Dedicated to Therese Patricia Okoumou
Music like style is a human capacity — not a commodity. This season we have collaborated with the South African performance artists FAKA — to create an original vocal collage starring:
Ian Isiah
Austin Williamson
Butch Dawson
Hirakish
Selah Marley
Moses Sumney
Oyinda
BOFFO BUILDING FASHION
Our SS—19 runway is a collaboration with the architecture SO-IL as the 13th iteration of the BOFFO Building Fashion initiative — fostering collaborations between architects and fashion designers through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
A site specific project — our structure is built upon the BLADE Lounge East Helicopter pad — which was the setting of an iconic portrait of Biggie Smalls, Lil Kim and Junior Mafia and overlooks the Queensboro bridge which Telfar crossed daily on his trip from Manhattan to his home in Queens.
So-Il has transformed this space through a design inspired by mobile safari cars in which the question of who is on display and who is walking free becomes ambiguous. This liberating ambiguity is brought to our runway, interupting the divisions between performers and spectators, subjects and objects. Rather than elevate the performers to create visibility for the viewers — the design choreographed the body’s of the audience — shaping them into a long ring through the use of simple rented fencing and construction supplies and creating a show in which everyone essentially is front row. A series of interiors and exteriors are created, a material disruption of the line of site through fencing, but also an aspect of participation through the choreography of the audience’s bodies.
Guests included Joey Bada$$, Clermont Twins, Miss J Alexander, Venus X, Rich The Kid, Salem Mitchell, Jamie Richardson (White Castle), Arthur Jafa, Wolfgang Tillmans, Ashland Mines, Misha Kahn, K8 Hardy, Lil Miquela, Ryan Destiny, Susie Lau, Asian Doll, Lady Fag, Calu Rivera, Aleali May, Vashie Kola, Zuri Marley, Junglepussy, Karen van Godtsenhoven (The Met), Pinky Girl, Bonang Matheba, Ebonee Davis, Leo Fitzpatrick, Chrissie Miller, Alton Mason, Ari Marcopoulos, Kara Walker, Roe Ethridge, Bonang Matheba, FAKA, Venus X, Dev Hynes, Ana Kras, Claude Adjil (Serpentine Galleries), Jenny Schlenzka (Performance Space), Pati Hertling (Curator), Ruth Gruca (CALA), Simon Castets (Swiss Institute), Torraine Futurum, Joseph ‘Gitoo’ Wright, Haley Wollens, Camilla Venturini, and more.
SHOW CREDITS:
Styling: Avena Gallagher
Casting: MIDLAND
Production Design: And/Or Forever
Production: HARBINGER
Lighting Consultant: Chris Bisagni
Audi: Marshall Hansen
Hair: Shingo Shibata
Makeup: Deanna Melluso
Nails: Eda Levensen
Special Thanks: Lizzie Bougatsos, Felix Burrichter, June Canedo, Simon Castets, Zoe Champion, Akinola Davies Jr., Lauren Devine, Jefferson Hack, Paul Haslhofer, Raheem Hercule, Greg Krelenstein, Finn Mactaggart, Molly McIver, Greg Miller, Jamie Richardson, Alex Rose, Sophie Secaf, Smith Dawson & Wells Stellberger, Pat Wagner, Kendall Werts, Barnett Zitron.
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About BOFFO
BOFFO is a nonprofit organization that presents innovative and experimental art, architecture, and design. TELFAR x SO – IL is the thirteenth collaboration in the BOFFO Building Fashion series, an initiative since 2010 that explores the intersection of architecture and fashion through integrated public art, retail experimentation, installation & exhibition design.
About SO-IL
SO–IL is an internationally recognized architecture and design firm based in New York. SO-IL creates structures that establish new cultures, institutions, and relationships. In an increasingly digitized world, the SO-IL architecture incorporates innovative physical materials that follow the unique scale and conceptual grounding of each project. SO-IL creates urban spaces, buildings for culture, residences, and workplaces on a variety of scales. SO-IL’s practice is forward-looking, ensuring that new architecture will be adaptable to a dynamic future.
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With love,
FWO
