Telfar Clemens

Telfar Clemens (born 1985) is a Liberian-American fashion designer and the founder of the fashion label Telfar. Clemens won the 2017 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and won the CFDA Fashion Award for American Accessories Designer of the Year in 2020 and 2021.

Clemens was born in Lefrak City, Queens in 1985 to Liberian parents. His family moved back to Liberia for a short period of time, but then to avoid the Second Liberian Civil War, relocated to Gaithersburg, Maryland.

While in high school at New York's P.S. 206, Clemens's teacher wrote monograms for all of their students. The monogram the teacher gave to Clemens would later become the brand's signature logo.

In 2005, Clemens was an accounting student at Pace University and a DJ, where he would go downtown at Century 21 to go shopping in women's European brands such as: Yves Saint-Laurent, Maison Margiela and Helmut Lang. Clemens then founded his eponymous, unisex fashion brand, Telfar. Clemens later graduated from Pace University in 2008 with a degree in accounting.

Clemens met Babak Radboy in 2004, who later joined Telfar as creative director and business partner in 2013.

In 2014, Clemens released the first iteration of the Shopping Bag, which would go on to become a major it bag.

In September 2016, Clemens and Radboy worked together on an installation at the Berlin Biennale, accompanied by a video rendered by artists Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch.

In May 2017, Clemens collaborated with musician Solange Knowles to design the outfits for Knowles and her dancers for "An Ode To", a no-phones-allowed interdisciplinary performance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.