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. 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.
“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.”
For Spring 2027, he indulged in more tailoring than usual. Models wore black and gray wool suiting manipulated into cropped jackets, slashed cutoffs, even African-style wrap shorts styled with backless silk shirts. Many garments appeared to have been turned inside out—they are made to be reversible—with interior pockets and brand tags exposed.
The collection progressed into a very Telfar take on animal print that blanketed a number of clingy, Y2K-feeling baby tees, leggings, and halter tops. Clemens and team spent six months developing different takes on snake and leopard print with his signature encircled T logo integrated into the design.
Clemens mined past collections for references, showing triple-ply denim with contrast stitching and dramatic upturned cuffs that nodded to 2010s designs. He reworked sweats to look like moto jackets and pants. Some of the most exciting offerings came toward the end via a series of tank tops with brushed metal chain straps reworked into dresses and blouses—a signature move of his, the upside-down tank reworked for today.
All of this came alongside new iterations of his modular shoes and a continuation of his Timberland collaboration. The finale procession didn’t stop at the door but continued outside, past the fans who hadn’t managed to get inside. Clemens joined them, cheering through his victory lap.
Right in the middle, the MC stopped one model to comment on an unconventional accoutrement. “Is that a fox tail?” he bellowed into the mike, at which point the model unzipped the furry contraption: “It’s a bag!”
It was a nod to the unconventional looks that Telfar’s younger customer wears to shop in the SoHo store. The collection showed off a series of new handbags including the “Scrunch” bag, a more grown-up version of its playful “plastic” bag, and a “Triangle” bag due to launch in a year.
This sample sale was the result of a warehouse cleanout, wiping the slate for what Clemens called a “new chapter.” It also kicked off his Bag Redemption initiative, in which shoppers can trade in their Telfar shoppers for a new bag or new clothing. Paired with the runway show, the actions nodded to the place the brand occupies at the moment—what he referred to as a sort of “rebirth” or “reeducation,” rewarding loyal customers with a chance to have a place in the new Telfar universe. It’s all focused on the customer over the industry.
Aside from a big 20th anniversary showing last June, the brand hasn’t held many runway presentations in the past few years. “We took a break from so much of the fashion weeks and things like that because it’s all performative,” Clemens said. “It’s not really for the people that we actually want the show to be for, the people that actually buy our clothes.” (As he likes to put it, Telfar is “not for you, for everyone.”)
This particular show may have been held in New York, but it was still streamed to an audience in Paris. “It’s really for Brooklyn, but it’s great that Paris got to see it, too,” said Clemens. “And I hope that the rest of the world got to see it at the same time.”
