Photo: Julien M. Hekimian / Getty Images for GAP
Last week, when Gap announced a massive ten-year partnership agreement with Kanye West, many were forced to ask: What happened to Gap’s collaboration with Telfar?
The collaboration between the American chain and the New York-based fashion brand was first announced in January with a lively party at a Gap store in Paris. Kate Moss was there. Designer Telfar Clemens, who founded his eponymous label in 2005 and came up with the democratic motto: “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone.” He was photographed in a hoodie that combined his and Gap’s logo. The drop was expected sometime later this year, with a two-season deal, with unlimited options to renew, plus a design fee and royalties.
And then the pandemic struck. The Gap, Inc., canceled orders, closed thousands of stores, and laid off thousands of other employees. In early April, Fashion business reported that the Telfar x Gap collaboration had been “indefinitely postponed.”
Last week, a representative for Telfar told Cut that the brand was offered a deferral fee in March for the work it had done, which included 30 designs, representing 25 percent of the original design fee. Telfar then sent an invoice, but as of Friday, June 26 (when the Yeezy Gap collaboration was announced), the payment had not yet materialized. Telfar had not heard from the Gap, either, despite multiple follow-up emails.
When these details were made public last week, they sparked outrage on social media. The Gap then “took immediate steps to resolve this matter,” a spokesperson told the Times on Wednesday. Since then, Telfar has been paid a deferral fee, and Gap has it has now agreed to pay the original fee in full, and a spokesperson added that “an organizational change in the brand for an unprecedented period” was to blame for the drop in communication. “Simply put, this is not at all how we would expect an association to be run and apologize for the way this worked,” said a Gap statement. (The Gap also claims that the Yeezy Gap partnership and the Telfar collaboration were managed by “completely separate” teams.)
In an interview with the TimesClemens expressed his discomfort with the way the social media narrative pitted Telfar against Kanye, saying he was happy for West and Yeezy Gap’s new design director Mowalola Ogunlesi and loved his work. He especially disagreed with the perception that Telfar was a victim in the situation, saying he was distracted from the real issues at stake: the way collaborations between independent designers, and in particular color designers, and large corporations represent “a great deal power imbalance, perpetuated by the narrative of ‘inclusion’ ”or“ that is allowed to appear in territory owned by white people ”.
“We grew up looking at the mall building and wanting to be a part of it, to have power there,” added Telfar creative director Babak Radboy. “Now we have realized that we should not. It has been part of our survival to become content for a bigger brand so they can make a statement about their racial solidarity. But the real problem is the initial situation that blocks the progress of a designer, so they must say “yes” to such a thing “.
Regardless, Telfar has a strong online business, direct to the consumer. Its exclusive bags remain extremely popular, with a recent resupply that sold out in an hour, according to the Times. As for the fate of the Gap collaboration, Clemens said he was “really glad to be free of it.”
