The Next Men’s Fashion Superstars are Already Here

Kostadinov has a fine-tuned sense of where he’s headed. As he explained before the opening, he doesn’t see the new store (which joins an existing shop in Tokyo) as just a place to move product, but as how he will define his future. “I was thinking a lot about how in the eighties stores were so important for brands like Gianni Versace, Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, all the legendary brands,” Kostadinov said. “The first CDG store in New York [which opened on Wooster Street in 1985] was so pivotal for the brand. So I was thinking, okay, we need to think beyond digital and wholesale. I want to use the store as a portal to what we do.”

The name drops are deliberate and telling. Kostadinov idolizes these independent geniuses who shaped generations of menswear, and he seeks to emulate the way they’ve used uncompromising creativity to achieve mass popularity and influence. The Liberian-American Clemens has more populist goals. He envisions Telfar as a Black-owned designer alternative to something like Gap, with reliable, accessible products fit for modern attitudes. Telfar bags start at $150, and the brand says it has served over three million customers in the last four years.

Still, there’s something about Telfar that makes it feel like you’ve just discovered the next coolest brand. On Saturday, the flagship appeared to have the energy of a DIY performance. Just off the sales floor is a built-in Telfar TV studio, and all day the cameras were rolling and beaming interviews with fans in the crowd onto huge LED screens around the store. When Clemens and his crew of merry pranksters aren’t filming, promises a press release, “you can shop the set—and shoot your own content right there, giving the people the most elevated possible scenario for a fit-shot.”

Kostadinov shares this DIY sensibility. He chose LA for his first US-based store so he could be close to the gallerist Al Morán, with whom he runs art merch imprint Otto 958, one of several Kiko side-quests that make it feel like you’re encountering entirely new worlds the deeper you journey into his universe. After Kostadinov locked up the shop, Morán hosted a team dinner at nearby hotspot Etrà, where he noted that the first half-day of business exceeded any of their expectations. “I mean, it was beyond successful,” Morán said. “Something real is happening.”

What’s happening, exactly? It’s not that the next big things in fashion are arriving. As of last weekend, it seems clear they are already here.