In January 2020, around the time word first began to leak of Covid-19 in China, Telfar Clemens, the queer Liberian-American designer who has been preaching the gospel of inclusivity for 15 years, had a wine-drenched banquet and sleepover for more than 40 of his closest creative collaborators and friends in the Pitti Palace, a former home of the Medicis in Florence. They dined and danced and reveled in his new collection courtesy of Pitti Uomo, the men's wear organization that had invited Mr. Clemens to be the guest star of the season (despite the fact his clothes are unisex). Then, the next day, amid the detritus, he let critics and retailers in to see what they had missed. “It was so elegant,” said Terence Nance, a filmmaker who was there, along with Solange Knowles, Kelela and Michele Lamy. “The master’s tools and money were being used to destroy the master’s house — or at least throw paint at it that he can’t get off.”It was also the first salvo in a conscious disengagement from the fashion system that Mr. Clemens and Babak Radboy, his artistic director and de facto business guru, had been planning for the year.

Source: New York Times December 21, 2020 09:56 UTC