The American Fashion Designers Association (CFDA), known as the “Fashion Oscars,” recently held its awards ceremony online. This year’s list of winners has been hailed as the most inclusive in history, as it marks the first time a female designer has won the Women’s Wear Designer of the Year award, and also set a record for the most Black designers winning awards, with Telfar Clemens being particularly talked about.
Black designer Telfar Clemens was nominated for the “Accessory Designer of the Year” award with his eponymous brand Telfar, ultimately beating out other fashion veterans including The Row’s Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen, Coach’s creative director Stuart Vevers, designer Gabriela Hearst, and Jennifer Fisher to successfully win the award. Although many may be unfamiliar with Telfar’s name, it is actually a rising niche brand in recent years, achieving remarkable records in the fashion industry that even surpass many big brands!
// 跳脫傳統框架的設計師 ── Telfar Clemens //
Telfar Clemens, 35, grew up in the culturally diverse Queens neighborhood of New York City, and his own identity as a person of color has led him to advocate for racial, skin color, and gender equality in the world of fashion. This is why when he founded his own trendy brand “Telfar” in 2004, he boldly chose “for everyone” as the brand’s motto, signaling his intention to bring designs that transcend racial and gender differences. Perhaps some may not see the significance of this, but in a fashion industry dominated by white individuals at the time, Telfar’s positioning was definitely breaking through established fashion norms.
Telfar is seen in every aspect of design, promotion, and marketing, completely putting the brand’s founding concept into it. From the early stages of clothing creation, it has focused on a “genderless” style that is suitable for both men and women. The design inspiration for simple and comfortable sportswear comes from his daily life, but at the same time, it injects elements full of his personal style and design sense. In terms of selecting models, he does not follow the mainstream practice of only using white models, but instead prefers to use models of color, who also have relatively neutral features. He believes that this can more fully interpret his designs perfectly.
At the 2019 spring/summer show, Telfar even subverted the traditional fashion show format by presenting his work in the form of a concert. He invited models of various skin colors and black rap artists to showcase on a helicopter landing pad, demonstrating his avant-garde thinking and rebellious spirit in the mainstream fashion world.
// 成為炙手可熱的品牌 //
Telfar’s promotion of diversity has gained recognition in the fashion industry, winning the design championship of the CFDA and Vogue Fashion Fund in 2017, becoming one of the most representative emerging designer brands.
Telfar’s popularity and reputation are not built on high-priced advertising, but rather on the active endorsement of celebrities and brand fans. Celebrities known as fashion icons such as Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez, Chloe Sevigny, etc., have all carried this Shopping Bag, pushing it to the status of an It Bag. Additionally, coinciding with this year’s “Black Lives Matter” movement, Telfar, which advocates for racial equality, has also benefited; coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is seeking simple and practical bags, making this Shopping Bag perfectly align with that criteria and one of the reasons for its sudden rise in popularity.
// 將品牌發展推向高峰的關鍵 ── Shopping Bag //
Telfar has always been somewhat well-known, but it really reached its peak in the past two years, thanks to the brand’s iconic Telfar Shopping Bag. This Shopping Bag, which was born in 2014, suddenly became popular last year, flooding social media, and even being dubbed the “Bushwick Birkin,” meaning its difficulty to purchase rivals that of the Hermès Birkin. You can imagine how hot-selling it is!
The Telfar Shopping Bag, made of pure vegan leather, has a very simple and neat appearance, with no major difference from the square shape of a typical shopping bag, and is engraved with the brand’s “TC” steel logo. Its biggest feature is that it comes in three sizes – large, medium, and small – and has a variety of colors, including black, white, red, orange, yellow, blue, and more. The pricing is also very affordable, ranging from $150 to $257 USD.
The popularity of Telfar Shopping is definitely eye-opening, not only making it to the top three keywords on the fashion data platform Lyst in the first quarter of 2020, but also causing the official website to be overcrowded due to fans’ frenzy, leading to price speculation. Some sales platforms are reselling at nearly ten times the price, and people are still buying, showing its immense power. In response to this, Telfar has implemented the “Telfar Bag Security Program,” opening 24-hour pre-orders to ensure that customers who successfully pre-order can receive their bags before the end of the year. However, the demand for the Shopping Bag is so high that after 7 minutes of pre-ordering, all the pre-sale spots were gone! With Telfar now crowned with the CFDA “Accessory Designer of the Year Award,” it seems like it will take a long time to get this bag!
圖片來源： @telfarglobal , Pinterest
