Call from Telfar ClemenssMass | The new yorker

During the last years of the Met Gala, where the theme was camp, Clemens dressed Ashton Sanders, an actor of Moonlight, in an overcoat in faded black jersey associated with panties, a tie and stockings of white lace. Clemens, whose hair was in a ball bun with tendrils framing his face, wore a garment that seemed split in the middle, like a unisex bathroom graphic coming to life: a suit, in white jersey and printed with the words Telfar 2020 in college-athletic police, worn with a one-shoulder black silk slip dress that had a mall hint about it. Taking those things that people are used to wearing and recontextualizing them for a new person and a new moment is what makes a lot of things in me, he says.

Radboy, a bearded little man with round, metal-framed glasses, showed me a recent photo that Gallagher had styled for Garage magazine. (Radboy and Gallagher are a couple and have a five-year-old son.) In the photographs, by Roe Ethridge, Clemens and playwright Jeremy O. Harris, a regular collaborator, pose for an official portrait in coordinated shirts and lounge. naked on white couches under the chandeliers of Belvedere, the men's seaside resort in Cherry Grove. The images looked both familiar and unfamiliar. A 1970s porn shoot of two men in love on a military base? A Life profile of a United Nations diplomat?

Many of the images and things we do relate to visualizing a different world, said Radboy. Many of the images do not seem to take place today.

But they will, said Clemens.

Not in the past or in the future, said Radboy.

But maybe tomorrow? Said Clemens. Like, after seeing it, you start acting a little like that.

Radboy continued, Literally thought sometimes, What person doesn’t exist? And then, like, a month later, on Instagram, this person exists.

In addition to working for Telfar, Radboy, the son of Iranian immigrants, is the artistic director of Bidoun, an art magazine on the Middle East and its diasporas. He is also, along with Gallagher, a founding member of the Shanzhai Biennial, a conceptual art collective that once described itself as a multinational brand presenting itself as an artistic project presenting itself as a multinational brand presenting itself as a biennial. At Telfar, Radboy has taken on functions that Clemens is happy to avoid, such as negotiating with corporate sponsors and talking about politics. Radboy is a person of high concept. That day he was thinking about how he came up with an idea for a magazine called Radical parenting could be integrated into the spring 2020 fashion show.

Is this a real magazine? Clemens asked, paying only half attention.

No, said Radboy. It is the idea that every day you reproduce your life.

Uh-huh, said Clemens. I mean … I have the idea of ​​being pregnant with you.

You're like a newspaper, explained Radboy. Every day you have the new edition, and it's the same as the last, and it repeats everything that's true about the world and your own body, even if you don't want it to be true.

Wow, said Clemens.

Like many independent fashion brands, Telfar uses marketing agreements with larger companies to help fund its fashion shows. On a laptop, Clemens and Radboy watched the first images of a collaboration with Converse. A T-shirt was printed with the image of a basketball player posing as a ballerina in a pair of Telfar shorts, an example of what Clemens calls relatively affordable T-shirts printed with people graphics wearing more expensive Telfar clothes.

Clemens often dresses his friends for performances, and his friends often work in exchange for clothes. One weekend, singer R. & B. Kelsey Lu, who was preparing to perform at Afropunk, Brooklyn's annual black music festival, passed by, carrying a large Telfar bag in firefighter red. She wore her hair in thick red braids and her eyebrows were painted electric blue. Clemens kissed her and led her to a clothes rack.

Almost everyone dresses somehow, he said, pulling out a leather jacket and pair of jeans with knitted flares of gray T-shirt. I want you to choose the things you really like.

He helped her wear an Afro-Jamaican thong dress on one shoulder. Lu stood thoughtfully, sifting through the hangers.

What is this? she asked, holding a small beige rectangle on a hanger.

It's a knee pad, said Clemens. It is a knee bag. The kneepad had its own small cargo pocket.

Radboy often talks about the difference between representation and presence between, say, a label owned by whites paying a black artist to pose in his clothes and to post the image on Instagram, and Clemens dressing his friends for a party that he films and puts online. The distinction is important at a time when the fashion industry is proclaiming new ethical standards. Clemens noticed that the press on Telfar often uses words like diversity, community and inclusiveness. I'm always included, said Clemens dryly.

Over the past three years, Telfars parades have become mini-festivals featuring a certain type of independent New York celebrity, such as singers Kelela and Dev Hynes; Harris, the playwright; and the performers Wu Tsang and boychild. I feel like Telfar is going around a lot of things I hate to say, but, black excellence, the writer, artist and chef Precious Okoyomon told me . Okoyomon recently cooked for a Telfar dinner at Mission Chinese Food, whose chef, Danny Bowien, is also a friend of Clemenss. Clemens clarified that his collaborators are not typical brand ambassadors, in the same way that Jennifer Lawrence is a face of Dior. Harris said, something they do a lot with their productions is to let everyone fall out. For the Fall / Winter 2019 collection, called Country, which was designed around the tropics of cowboys and country music, the models surfed the crowd in a mosh pit at Irving Plaza. 39 Insurance for that, said Clemens, proudly.

For Paris Fashion Week, the Telfar team decided to make one of their most ambitious projects to date, what Radboy called a multi-director film. In the film, a traveler, played by Sanders, faces a hostile security bureaucracy. Harris, the poet and d.j. Juliana Huxtable and visual artist Diamond Stingily would contribute to the scripts, as well as to filmmaker Clayton Vomero, whom Radboy had hired to direct. Worked with a group of friends I have known for over ten years, said Clemens. Their views on everything we want to do will be what we want. Their eyes are like our eyes.

A few weeks later, on the first day of filming, Clemens crammed into a white van with her makeup artists, hair stylists, a studio manager, several models, a rapper and a singer, and they headed for Staten Island. Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabellos Seorita played on vans radio. Oyinda, an Anglo-Nigerian pop singer who often models for Telfar, hummed.

I love radio, said Clemens as he scrolled his phone. I listen to each station. He's trying to catch the daily roundup of new music on Hot 97 at two o'clock. I'm listening 105.1. I listen to Z100 early in the morning, he said.