The Runway Show That Tricked Paris
SAMUEL MCKENNAYesterday, Telfar Clemens pulled a prank on the fashion industry. Less than two weeks ago, the designer invited members of the industry to an off-calendar show during Paris Fashion Week, just...
SAMUEL MCKENNA Yesterday, Telfar Clemens pulled a prank on the fashion industry. Less than two weeks ago, the designer invited members of the industry to an off-calendar show during Paris Fashion Week, just before Louis Vuitton was about to close out the week. Back Stateside, he posted a mass invitation to his Instagram audience, inviting fans to a sample sale where the brand would be streaming the Paris runway—but that’s not what ended up happening.
Here in New York, prospective shoppers began gathering outside the venue at sunrise. Hours later, lines wrapped around the block. At 11 a.m., guests began streaming into an old banking hall filled with racks and racks of samples while VIPs and a very small number of press—myself included—filed into a roped-off runway section with megawatt lighting and a photographer setup.
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That was my first clue that this was something more than a watch party. Thirty minutes in, the TVs clicked on, beginning a livestream hosted by DJ Crystal Mess. Though she stood atop a lit runway in France, she told us that this show would be happening right here in Brooklyn.
“Welcome to Paris Fashion Week!” she yelled to a screaming crowd of Clemens’s friends, family, and fans. Sam Mckenna “I’ve been lying for days, and I don’t lie,” laughed Clemens after the show. “My friends have been texting me like, ‘When are you getting to Paris?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m on my way...’” This was a very intentional choice on his part.
It’s not uncommon for a successful New York brand like Telfar to decamp to Paris Fashion Week in order to show in front of an audience of global power players. Clemens could absolutely do so—and he did, in fact, in 2019—but he’s always worked with a rather anti-establishment ethos.
And as the French luxury houses have been taking their prices higher and higher, he’s been asking himself questions about who fashion welcomes and who it excludes. His is a brand built on surprise drops and guerrilla marketing, with a business operation that has never concerned itself with whether or not the industry understood it.
“Paris is the home of fashion, at least by exclusion of all the other places,” he said. “In Paris, it’s a serious deal, so it was really fun to play with that.” Sam Mckenna
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