Fashion designer Telfar Clemens. Photo: Mireya Acierto/Getty Images
Telfar Clemens, the designer behind "the Bushwick Birkin" closed out this season's New York Fashion Week.
Why it matters: The show itself — ambitious and the opposite of subdued — and its timing are harbingers of change, writes Vanessa Friedman, chief fashion critic at the New York Times.
- The unofficial honor has gone to Marc Jacobs for almost a decade.
- Clemens, a queer Liberian American, stands for everything the fashion establishment has long ignored.
The big picture: The show was made to demonstrate that he is becoming his own establishment, says Friedman.
- “[And] the way these things go, [what he’s built] has only made the establishment love him more, especially as the establishment grapples with its own history of racism and need to make reparations," she added.