Telfar Just Announced a Collaboration With Gap

Telfar is a brand over a decade in the making.. It's designer Telfar Clemens has been dutifully working at and building the brand for all of that time, working in the realms of "gender-neutral" clothing well before it became popular. And now, the brand is being recognized by various entities for that work having recently shown at Pitti Uomo and won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Well, it's time to go mass!

On Thursday Telfar announced that they had inked a collaboration with Gap. Yeah, you read that right: Gap. Where Middle America goes to get blue plaid button downs and chinos. And that's no shade; that's some people's personal style, but high fashion it is not. Well, it's certainly going to get an injection of some fashion credibility with this partnership. And Telfar is the brand for it, having reworked American basics into basics for a new, queerer generation.

"Working with Gap is a dream come true for me," Clemens said in a statement. "It shouldn't be a surprise that I'm obsessed with Gap -- what I do is about the idea of 'normal' and changing that because that is when you change real life. Gap created the blueprint for my brand because the Gap person is literally everybody: every possible race, gender, rich, poor. I want to take that idea to the year 2020 -- and to take my clothes outside of just fashion capitals and boutiques and actually make them available for everybody. Gap makes that possible."

Telfar has made a name for itself providing this sort of accessible, and affordable luxury. In the past collaborations have been done with the likes of Century 21, Converse, and White Castle -- the latter gave us some really amazing, blow out parties. In addition, the brand has been making this happen by itself. With the prize money from the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, Clemens invested in the brand's Shopping Bag, which comes in three sizes. The bag has since taken off in popularity, taking on the moniker of the "Bushwick Birkin" in some circles. This status as an "it bag" is unprecedented in fashion for something that retails between $150 and $260.

For the new upcoming collaboration, Telfar turned Gap's multi-level Tronchet store in Paris into an after-hours club. This marked the first time that Gap had ever done an event for Paris Fashion Week. Dev Hynes, Honey Dijon, Kate Moss, Violet Chachki, Stefano Pilati and more attended. SOPHIE performed in addition to other artists.