LIVE FROM TELFAR’S NEW YORK

On Broadway, just south of Canal Street’s souvenir shops and blankets of counterfeit bags, production trucks line the block outside an unassuming Tribeca storefront. It’s late 2024, and we’re on the cusp of a new era of New York City fashion history — the eve of the grand opening of Telfar’s first retail store. Walking through its double glass doors — each adorned with a small vinyl cutout of the African continent (including Palestine) — it’s hard not to notice the colossal floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall LED-screen projecting a dizzying live video feed of what’s happening elsewhere in the store. Through a porthole door cut into the screen, the 10,000 square-foot hype hive unfolds. This evening, the space is filled with the frenetic energy of a production team hard at work preparing for tomorrow’s event, which over 2,000 people are expected to attend.

Amidst the buzz, I witness a blessing, as I watch brand founder Telfar Clemens, along with a group of close friends and family, drift by waving sticks of incense. Later, when I snag a moment with Clemens, I use the word chaos to describe the surrounding scene. “It’s not chaotic,” interjects Telfar collaborator and friend Ms. Carrie Stacks, who listens on intently. “I actually think it’s really calm.” She has a point. There’s a lot going on but the vibe is decidedly relaxed.

It’s important to get it right. This is a big moment for the Queens-native and his namesake brand, which after 20 years in business, now has a new flagship Manhattan address for their loyal, content-generating customers and creative community. Big is also how I would describe me in this moment, literally, as my side-profile looms overhead on the billboard-sized screen, captured by one of the space’s swiveling cameras. I should have worn my Telfar…

On a walk-through of the space, Telfar communications director Ashley Lee describes it as “another platform to put out content.” The store-cum-content-platform is completely “gridded,” meaning the original tin ceiling is crisscrossed by a metal rig that allows cameras, lighting, and sound to be adjusted for any type of production — from day-to-day footage to runway shows, parties, and editorial photoshoots. A blinding white cyclorama framing a colossal circular couch designed in collaboration with Katie Stout gives the impression that you are on some type of set. Elsewhere, walls have been left in varying states of completion, with wire mesh grating, drywall, and exposed brick visible. This blurring of functions, consolidating media and merchant, production and consumption, turns customers into creators and merchants into mediators. By flattening traditional hierarchies and exposing the creative process, visitors are made to feel in on the secret, transformed into the stars of the show.

This dissolution of formal boundaries and unorthodox approach to design hints at Clemens’s and artistic director Babak Radboy’s connection to New York’s 2010s avant-garde milieu, including DIS magazine’s high-concept and humorous investigations of lifestyle and culture that still bear influence on the art and fashion world today. Playful articulations of Y2K nostalgia also abound, from the 90s Newport cigarette logo-shaped bar to collaborations with fashion brands including UGG, Eastpak, and Wilsons Leather.

Telfar’s unisex clothing line is displayed on, under, and along undulating garment racks made by local fabricators to resemble bodega store awnings. A nondescript archway leads to a darkly lit “bag bar,” which runs the length of the store, yet feels tucked away and intimate — a bag speakeasy, you might say. A backlit display evoking the screens of a Chinese take-out restaurant features a menu of every color and style of Telfar’s ubiquitous shopping bag.

There is a disorienting sense of being both behind-the-scenes and in front of the camera. Small monitors, positioned at regular intervals along the heavy-duty garment racks, show CCTV feeds from other parts of the store. I noticed two conspicuous — almost campy — security cameras affixed to the back of the giant LED screen, which felt like overkill in such a hypermediated space. During my visit, everything was being captured in some way: mounted camera operators scanned the room, director Keenan MacWilliam collected documentary footage, Telfar himself donned a pair of “recording glasses,” and even I recorded audio for this piece.

I was curious about the security cameras. Were they meant to dissuade shoplifters, or perhaps the opposite? “We’re encouraging lots of stealing,” says Telfar with a hint of hyperbole. “If you steal, you have to try on the thing that you stole and wear it on the site and become a model for the rest of the time.” Clemens’s remark, though off-the-cuff, conflates shoplifter and spokesmodel in alignment with the brand’s ethos, which seeks to dissolve the borders between customer and creator, media and merchant.

As both a media company and a fashion retailer, a high-profile heist would generate content for TelfarTV, captured by the profusion of cameras. This exchange of clothing for content is a trade between brands and influencers that has increasingly worn thin. By consolidating product and platform, Telfar vertically integrates the fashion hype machine and invents new ways to sell clothes.

As customers seek to make moments out of spending money by posting their purchases online, brands simultaneously pursue organic content of the right people posing with their products. What is buying a bag if not a status update? Telfar has grown from cult status to household name by staking out this intersection of customer and creator. Telfar’s flagship store design takes this contemporary brand philosophy to the next level, a hypermediated space for the creation of content and the celebration of consumption — a space to bring together production and product, media and mortar.

As Telfar’s tagline states, “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone.” Life is on the feed now, and at Telfar, the whole house eats.