Telfar’s First-Ever Store Is Bigger Than Bags
On November 23, a line of fashion girlies snaked around the corner of Broadway and Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. Street vendors selling counterfeit goods hawked “Louis Vuitton” bags and “Gucci” wallets, but that’s not what the crowd was there for. They were waiting for the opening of Telfar’s first-ever store.
For the past two years, whispers (and less subtle suggestions) have hinted at Telfar’s inaugural New York City flagship. The milestone finally came to fruition last month as founder Telfar Clemens cut the ribbon to his brand’s first brick-and-mortar location, stationed in the heart of New York City's infamous bootleg paradise. (In a previous conversation with Highsnobiety, Clemens described the store's location as an "if-you-know-you-know" situation.)
The space is hardly your average store. Really, it’s half-store, half-TV studio. On one side, shoppers can peruse Telfar’s famous Shopping Bag in every imaginable colorway. On the other, they can shoot their own content in a publicly accessible photo studio.
Telfar turning its first retail location into a community space is perhaps the pinnacle of the brand’s slogan, “Not for you — but for everyone.” It’s a mantra Telfar has put into action since its inception 20 years ago — and it doesn’t plan on changing course. With a wildly popular bag and a slick new store, Telfar may be on its way to becoming a household name, but it refuses to sell out. The brand is evolving on its own terms — and in 2025, Telfar is about to get realer than ever.
“Telfar makes me feel at home,” says Julie, a Telfar enthusiast from Virginia. She goes on to namecheck the brand’s catchy slogan: “The brand isn’t for you; it’s for everyone.” This community-minded ethos is what makes Telfar so appealing — and it’s what keeps fellow fans like Jess, a “longtime Telfar stan,” and Janay, whose friends call her the “Telfar Queen,” coming back.
It’s rare for a brand to inspire such fervor that shoppers scramble to collect its product. But Jess owns 10-plus versions of Telfar’s Shopping Bag, plus jelly sandals and several other pieces of the brand’s apparel. Janay has at least 11 bags and a wallet, and is looking to pounce on some Telfar sweatsuits for the winter.
Lex Lucent, a musician from Virginia, is such a big fan of Telfar that she released a song named after the brand. Eventually, Telfar connected with Lucent and gifted her product. "I appreciate what they do for the creative community and how they provide an outlet for us to shine," Lucent says. "If you ask me, Telfar is the best brand out there — they understand what matters, and that's something people should take note of."
In an era where "inclusion” has become a marketing buzzword, Telfar puts its money where its mouth is. In 2020, the label launched the Bag Security Program, a pre-order system that allowed fans to cop their dream “Telfy” in any color, size, color, and quantity, thus making the coveted bag more accessible (and flipping fashion’s scarcity model on its head). Then the label introduced a live pricing model that let customers dictate its apparel prices. Online, fans begged for a genuine leather version of the famed Telfar shopper — so Telfar gave it to them in September. There wasn't a store for customers to shop the brand's growing collection, so Telfar opened one in its hometown.
One of the reasons Telfar is able to prioritize community is its independence (Clemens calls it “the most independent brand on Earth”). It doesn’t answer to a conglomerate, and produces most of its product and social media content in-house.
"We have our own distribution center — we own the building. We have our own TV channel and sound stage,” Clemens says. “We have been building our own atelier for the last few years. We own the building. Now, we have a store and can come back to 360-degree conceptual fashion fully and independently in 2025."
(In case you missed it, Telfar owns the building.)
The 360 approach that Clemens cites will help expand Telfar’s universe beyond its signature bag. The brand is on the tip of beauty's tongue with an anticipated line in the works. There's Telfar TV, Telfar's own live television channel, which is "finally ready for prime time," per Clemens (insert eye emoji).
"Expect to see new series and content that has nothing to do with clothes, and everything to do with our community at this specific, really fucked up moment in history.” Clemens says. “We all have a duty to fight back, and a TV channel is a good thing to have right about now."
Telfar will also make its long-awaited return to the runway next February. "Starting next year, we are doing seasonal collections — but structured in a way that is totally unique to us,” Clemens says. “We show you a full concept: Some of it is 'see now, buy now,' some of it is dropping monthly, and some of it is available to wholesalers."
All that said, Telfar’s original pièce de resistance — The Shopping Bag, first released in 2014 — isn’t going anywhere. "The bag is beautiful. It was our connection to a community of people who saw us breaking free of a certain template of success where you sell out to investors and conglomerates," Clemens tells me.
"The bag symbolizes independence — not relying on anyone but your own community. And it's helped us build the rest of the brand to make that real."
