Telfar Clemens is a Liberian-American fashion designer and the founder of Telfar, a fashion label based in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
FROM VOGUE:
There’s something about an It bag that makes people go wild. It might have to do with the fact that these bags are often equal parts practical and ornamental. You can justify the purchase by wearing it every single day. Recently, the Dior saddle bag has been selling out like hotcakes on sites like the RealReal. Prada’s reissued nylon mini bags have been a hit among top models too. But one style outdoes them all: Telfar’s shopping bags.
Introduced by the New York label back in 2014, the sleek mini bags from Telfar Clemens are designed in vegan leather, branded with a signature “T” logo, priced from $150 to $257, and are famously difficult to get. The appetite for them has remained strong and steady, and it’s easy to understand why. They are the perfect bags in terms of striking the right balance between fashun and function. Their roomy, top-handle shape makes them functional for everyday wear, but the logo makes them instantly recognizable status items. They’ve even become known as the Bushwick Birkin, as all of the cool Brooklyn kids would much rather score one of them versus, say, a $300,000 Himalayan Birkin. It’s not only about price or quality here—it’s about carrying around something that’s hard to get your hands on. It’s a perfect storm of price, quality, and rarity. And unlike past It bags, which fizzle out after a year, Telfar’s bags do what many others can’t: continue to stay relevant.
You can also grab HML’s Modern Manifesto poster in the shop.
