Designer TELFAR on NYFW

TELFAR is super cool. I am so thrilled that I had the opportunity to catch up with the artist right after his very own NYFW runway show held at the one and only Milk Studios.
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Model Ethan James @ Ford Models NY/photo by Dario Castillo

TELFAR is super cool.

I am so thrilled that I had the opportunity to catch up with the artist right after his very own NYFW runway show held at the one and only Milk Studios. TELFAR is a true tuned in innovator on multidimensional platforms. TELFAR has been in the game for a while now but really I think he's just getting started. TELFAR loves color on color and is super excited because this is the first collection where he put his signature logo on the precious pieces. This visionary is all about terms like cut in, tech, distressing, shifting functionality, branding, keeping up with the theme and fashion and function.

TELFAR knows all about smart and hard work. This Liberian-American is focused, driven, disciplined and gives special gratitude to his team. This season he found CULTURE SPORT TV on instagram and invited them to help create with the music and animation for the show. Stay aware yes indeed as they have other forward projects in the line up. Absolutely art on art on art on art to the max.

Androgynous runway models swaggering the new line while watching a colorful animation show and dreaming about eating White Castle at the after party post show. Speaking of models TELFAR brought on photographer Dario Castillo to assist in casting. Castillo came on with three full weekends of castings, fittings and rehearsals. It was a fun process Castillo says, "looking for new faces, seeking out the kids with energy, less sex more platonic" was the importance of hiring in this SS16 collection. It was all about the "fit and uniform" for male and female. They love street culture, the cool kid and the underdog. Some friends and guests who were at the show include Dev Hynes, Venus X GHE20G0TH1K and Ian Isiah who's the brand ambassador for Hood By Air.

Exclusive photos from the runway and backstage

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Courtesy of Made at Milk, Photo by Andrew Boyle

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Courtesy of Made at Milk, Photo by Andrew Boyle

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Courtesy of Made at Milk, Photo by Andrew Boyle

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Courtesy of Made at Milk, Photo by Christine Hahn

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Courtesy of Made at Milk, Photo by Andrew Boyle

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Courtesy of Made at Milk, Photo by Andrew Boyle

Information on the new line

TELFAR
S/S 2016
"SIGNATURE"

With each season, Liberian-American unisex prodigy TELFAR has built a design vocabulary and a brand which is if nothing else -- strikingly original. His basic ambivalence towards trends and methodical disruption of what separates high from low, men from women, novel from normal and art from commerce makes TELFAR almost a world unto itself.

Apropos to that theme -- for S/S16 TELFAR will be the first designer in history not only to debut his entire collection in CGI -- but in a parallel universe.

SHOW CONCEPT

Alongside the runway show will be a video installation live-streaming its simultaneous debut in the world of CULTURESPORT. Developed in secret by retired tech-entrepreneur, CULTURESPORT is a sprawling anime epic being produced and released as if it were a torrent file: starting everywhere, ending nowhere, spreading like wildfire. Its narrative is so vast it constitutes an alternate reality -- and just like our reality -- it's all for sale.

In collaboration with White Castle restaurants, TELFAR and the burger franchise become the first brands to participate in CULTURESPORT's innovative (read meta-critical) product-placement program, becoming respectively the only clothes and the only food available in the world.

The runway presentation and online video release are the first public appearance of CULTURESPORT and also a teaser for the full length release of CULTURESPORT, Episode 1: "TELFAR" -- debuting this fall as the collection hits stores.

COLLECTION CONCEPT

For SS16 unisex designer TELFAR continues to refine and expand his core practice of taking what is most utterly normal in American style -- and doubling down. The result is a speculative wardrobe for the future-present: a style-fi uncanny precisely because it's so familiar.

The collection is rooted in its simplest underpinnings: t shirts, tank-tops and halters designed around a logic of subtle manipulation.

TELFAR picks up on transitional language of DIY style that comes directly from the 'streets' (of social networks and hook-up sites), where the most basic of basics undergo a process of queering through simple deconstruction: requiring no more than a pair of scissors... or just putting your head through the wrong hole.

TELFAR makes these mistakes and mods concrete, through carefully tailored patterns: so something as simple as a strap slipping off your shoulder becomes a new, fully engineered garment. What appears to be a basic-tanktop veers to one side forcing the head to exit with an arm and displacing the neck-hole to the opposite shoulder -- resulting in garments that can only be worn the wrong way.

Worn over these are minimalist, cargo-inspired layers in cotton, denim and twill. Consisting of an almost modular ensemble of trenches, tailored coats, slacks and a growing grammar of dress shirts, they are distinguished most often through what they are missing: sleeves, sides, backs, bottoms, etc. Together they form a sun-bleached uniform for a desk-bound military of drone-pilots and data-farmers; hued in khaki, army, white, mauve and a shade of black coined 'intellectual'.

Not only punctuating, but literally puncturing the entire collection is the Telfar logo and signature: built-into or cut-out-of the construction of the garments, so as to turn branding into a material, a fabric and also a form of ventilation. Most notable are appliqué logos, partially torn off to form half-moon pockets placed at the breast, hip, or rear, and also a fabric made entirely from tiny embroidered logos reading like a surprisingly masculine take on lace.

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