Telfar: Telfar Clemens and Babak Radboy

As he started to gain a name as a New York fashion designer in the 2010s, Telfar Clemens often joked that he was "constantly emerging." At least, that's how the establishment fashion press saw him: a child of Liberian immigrants, building a small but devoted following with his deconstructed T-shirts and sandals made from hollowed-out Converse. But after Telfar partnered with Babak Radboy as his creative director in 2013, the brand began to reach a wider audience. There were splashy partnerships with K-Mart and White Castle; and in 2018, the wide release of the Telfar Bag, a vegan-leather shopping bag that became the "it"-accessory for everyone from A-list celebrities to the neighbors next door. Today, Telfar and Babak say they've succeeded by designing exactly what they want—and sidestepping a fashion system that was not always welcoming. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 5:13Speaker 01

  I would make a show. And you know, you try to get press people to cover it. They wouldn't. You try to get buyers to buy it. They wouldn't. So I'm like, damn, how am I going to do this next thing?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. My experience of it was to go to shows and then be mad that that wasn't enough. And you know, like, fashion is like, it's like a more subjective form of like sport, let's say. And if somebody's really good, then shouldn't they be on the team? And it's just not happening. Like, I go to a show and it's just us. Like, there's no press, there's no buyers. It's like as if it never happened.

• 5:55Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:07Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz. And on the show today, how Telfar Clemens and Babak Radboy came together to build Telfar, a fashion brand that started in the clubs and side streets of New York City and grew into a global phenomenon.

• 6:26Guy Raz?

  A few years ago, celebrities started to be photographed with a particular handbag. It was shaped like a shopping bag, so think a Bloomingdale's-type bag, but with two sets of straps, one set to hang over your shoulder, the other to clutch in your hand. Embossed on the bag was the letter "T," artfully and symmetrically inserted inside the letter "C." The "T" stands for Telfar, the "C" for Clemens. Telfar Clemens has become one of the hottest fashion designers in the US over the past few years. His brand logo, the "T" inside the "C," seems like it's everywhere. Look around, you'll see it on t-shirts, on sweatpants, on hats, even on the uniforms

• 7:11Guy Raz?

  worn by employees at White Castle. It's almost as if Telfar appeared out of nowhere, except that Telfar Clemens has been designing and selling his apparel and accessories for more than 15 years. But for much of that time, Telfar's work was largely ignored by the tastemakers in the fashion industry. And a big part of the brand's success has come from a deliberate strategy of working outside and, at times, against the fashion industry. Telfar and his creative partner, Babak Radboy, don't go to the Met Gala, they don't attend the major fashion shows, and they don't price their products beyond the reach of most consumers.

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  The designs are simple, genderless, and, as Telfar's tagline says, "Not for you, for everyone." The story of how Telfar got to where he is is not a simple one to tell. As he and Babak reminded me during the interview, there's an easy version, basically, young man, child of immigrants, struggles in the big city, eventually redefines the concept of luxury, and then makes it big. And part of that interpretation is real. But there's another part of the story, a more complicated one, a story of two outsiders who were shut out of an industry with specific rules and codes. Who then rejected the system that supported all of that and charted their

• 8:38Guy Raz?

  own path on their own terms. Babak Radboy first met Telfar in the early 2000s, but he didn't start working with a designer until a few years later. We'll hear a lot more from Babak later in the interview, but for now, we'll be hearing a lot from Telfar. He spent much of his early life in Liberia, but his family eventually fled the civil war there and moved to Gaithersburg, a suburb just outside Washington DC.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I just remember taking ESOL classes and different language courses because people couldn't understand what I was saying because my accent was really thick at the time, you know? Also, I used to have this like condition that my eyes would water. So people constantly thought I was lost, in trouble. And then also, you know, like when they like heard my accent, I was just like, it's like, so people are constantly trying to help me that I did not need help from.

• 9:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Were most of your parents friends when you were growing up in Gaithersburg? Liberians as well?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a huge community of Liberians. I think that's like one of the big reasons that we ended up relocating there. I was actually only allowed to hang out with Liberian kids. It's like my parents used to be like, oh no, you can't hang out with American kids. They're evil.

• 9:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah. What about religion? Were you guys religious?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that's like such a big part. I went to church every Sunday.

• 10:05Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  The most boring church ever, but really sweet. You know, like the music was just not, it didn't move me. But it was like a community of people that took care of each other. That's like where the food pantries were, you know? And I don't know, just like a lot of support.

• 10:24Guy Raz?

  I find in my interviews that middle school is the first time when most of us start to.

• 10:32Guy Raz?

  Find things in our lives that are more interesting, more sophisticated, music and.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Colored contacts.

• 10:41Guy Raz?

  Whatever it's like going to the shopping mall, whatever it might be. What do you remember about the things that you were interested in in middle school?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  I feel like that's like what I really began to find myself, you know? Because it was just, my parents were just like focused on you going to the best school possible. And so they were trying to get me into private school for years in Maryland. And every single placement test that I would take, I would mark AAA AAA AAA all the way down the placement test. So I wouldn't get in.

• 11:13Guy Raz?

  You didn't want to go to private school?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  I did not want to go to private school and I didn't want to go because you had to wear a uniform.

• 11:19Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  And my only thing that I was allowed to do was like, I was allowed to dress how I wanted to dress for the most part, you know?

• 11:27Guy Raz?

  When did you first start to get into clothes?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  I think always, you know, like I wore a pair of Oshkosh B'gosh, like, um, overalls.

• 11:35Guy Raz?

  Overalls, yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  I was really specific, like about what I wanted to dress like, you know? And it's kind of like dressing like a toy or like the idea of like exactly like what you saw on TV, you know?

• 11:48Guy Raz?

  Would you have both of the buckles buckled up or would you ever have one?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  It began, it began to be one strap up like as I progressed, but at first it was just like neat, tidy, you know? Later in middle school, before I went to high school, it's like only designer things. It's like, I wanted to wear Calvin Klein. I wanted to wear Iceberg. I wanted to wear Armani. I wanted to wear Dochi and Gabana, you know? I used to want to go to like, like in DC particularly to go shopping because I was like, oh, Maryland. I wanted to see like real designer things and like things that like I couldn't find in like the mall.

• 12:24Guy Raz?

  How were you able to, to buy it? I mean, I'm assuming that your parents, they were middle class, right? Cause your dad was a talent.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  I had a job. I worked at a daycare center that my aunt actually like ran, you know? That also my little brother went to, so I don't know how I afforded it, but I did. I saved money for Diesel jeans. I saved money for Dochi and Gabana sandals, you know?

• 12:51Guy Raz?

  And as you kind of got more and more into fashion, did it create tension with your parents? Were they?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:58Guy Raz?

  How so?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I would say like the sexier I wanted to dress or the more feminine influences that I had on dressing, they were completely against it. They're like used to like a world of like, oh, that man's suit is so beautiful. The cut of that suit, you know, that's what they consider it to be, fashion. And I'm like, oh, wow, I want low-rise jeans that are really ripped. And I want my shirt to say bitch on it and be three sizes too small.

• 13:23Guy Raz?

  But it sounds like even though there was some tension between you and your parents, that it was a very loving relationship. Is that fair to say?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. Too loving. Too loving. It's like I'm looked after heavily, you know? And I needed to look after myself in the way that I needed to be looked after, you know? Not like someone telling me what to do, but more like me knowing what I wanted to do and doing it on my own.

• 13:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I'm just totally blown away at how confident you seemed to have been at such a young age to... Because what, you know, a lot of kids in... Probably less so today, but definitely then and when I was in high school. And it was easier to just conform, right? To just wear jeans and a T-shirt. And not to stand out. But it sounds like you were really comfortable already at 14, 15, expressing yourself through clothing and not, I guess, not being worried about what other kids said? Or were you?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  I think I probably was. That's why I finished school early, got out of there and got around people that I felt like I was more like. You know, I don't know. Like also too, it's like I grew up very... I didn't know what I was gonna be, but I was like, I'm not gonna be hanging out in Maryland. It's like I had already seen New York. I used to go there every weekend. You know, I saw what people were up to. So I was just like, this shit is not for me, you know? Like literally the day that I graduated high school was the day that I moved. Like the first chance that I got, I was out.

• 15:00Guy Raz?

  So you knew, Telfar, you knew already in high school that you were going to get out of the suburbs and go to a city and probably New York. And clothing was a way that you expressed yourself, but it doesn't sound like... At that point in your life, you knew that you were going to go into the clothing world, right? I mean, you kind of had a, or am I wrong? I mean, did you, was that something that already as a teenager, you thought, I really like this?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  I mean, okay, so right before I moved to Maryland, I would say like-

• 15:31Guy Raz?

  Right before you moved to New York, you mean?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Right before I moved to New York, sorry. Kind of senior year of high school, I met this group of like, young designers in DC. One of them's name is Jonathan Nelson. I forget what their line was called. They had me, because they're Liberian also, and I forget how I got hooked up with them, but like, they showed me like, T-shirt printing operation that they had. And like, as I was going away to college, they gave me this entire bag of these Barb Marley T-shirts that they had, heat pressed. And he gave me a bunch of just like, the prints, and I ended up cutting them up, and I made this collection of stuff that I sold on the street.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Like, I just basically deconstructed these T-shirts to make this collection of clothes.

• 16:20Guy Raz?

  So you would, you would literally take these T-shirts that you got from these guys in DC, and just kind of very gently cut the, along the seams, and you deconstruct the shirts into parts-

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:33Guy Raz?

  And then reconstruct them into different garments?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Dresses, T-shirts, skirts, backpacks, motorcycle jackets, you know?

• 16:42Guy Raz?

  Wow. Can I ask you, can I ask you kind of a sort of weird, I don't know, maybe it's not a dumb question. How did you know how to sew?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Um, I, I got a machine, like, I guess like, the first time that Black Friday ever happened. I was in New Jersey, and we went to Walmart there, and I bought a machine for like, a hundred and fifty dollars. And it was like, right after my grandmother had passed, who also, she had a sewing school in Liberia. She always wanted to sew our clothes and we were just like, oh, can we go to the Gap and get, you know, like whatever we want. She's like, if I had my way, I'll sew all of you guys this clothes. We're like, no, no. But like strangely, right after she died, I took up sewing and my aunt Musu, she showed me how to sew. It was bad. Like I was bad at it, but I knew how to like thread a bobbin

• 17:32Speaker 01

  and put a thread in the machine. And I was deconstructing clothes by that time. So I was like seeing how they were put together. So I began to just like, you know, put things back together and I still didn't really know. And I still continued doing that all through college.

• 17:46Guy Raz?

  How did you just, you just figured it out? I mean, because sewing, like any craft, carpentry or, or, or any, anything, any art, anything, it's, it's very complicated and it's like anything. I mean, you said, you said you were bad at it.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I was bad at it and I'm still bad at it. Like I can't sew for shit and I wouldn't want to. That's when I, you know, I really like, you know, I'm blessed enough to have like great people that work with me that make things the way how they should be made. But I was like, you know, the roughness about what I was doing at that time, though, I really do appreciate. Cause I'm still like that to this point that I'm like, just rip that thing and it needs to be bigger here and less there. And that's what I wanted to look like, you know? And I don't think you need any kind of formal training to do that or necessarily, it's like sometimes ripping something and to telling someone to do that thing that you just did is like the thing that you need to do, you know, to get what you want. It's not a refined thing. And I don't think my craft is such a refined craft.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  It's like, it really comes from taking things apart and putting them back together in a non traditional way.

• 18:50Guy Raz?

  So the, the story that, that I've read is that you went to New York because you, you were gonna enroll in Pace, at Pace University in the fall to study, actually study business and accounting.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:02Guy Raz?

  And, and that you, you moved in with, with, with one of your aunts in Queens, but that summer before you started college. You started to sell your, the garments that you would make from these T-shirts. On the Lower East Side, on Mulberry Street.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:20Guy Raz?

  You would just set up like a, I don't know, a table on the street and.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  So also too, great advice from Jonathan Nelson. He was like, go to the Lower East Side, that's the bargain district. He was like, yo, you can get like a lot of T-shirts there. So I was walking down Orchard Street with like a bag of my stuff. Cause I would do that every single day.

• 19:40Guy Raz?

  You would go down.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  I would go, I would go walking around to stores and ask for the buyer. Again, like this was like Jonathan Nelson was like, yeah, just go to a store and ask for the buyer. I was like, really? You just go there and ask for the buyer? He was like, yeah, just show them what you got, you know?

• 19:56Guy Raz?

  You were seventeen, I think, and.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I was eighteen, yeah.

• 20:00Guy Raz?

  Eighteen. It's quite amazing. I mean, were you nervous? I think of myself as an eighteen year old and I think I'd be so nervous to walk in and think, oh, are they gonna like talk to me? I'm just a kid and.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, also too, like I had this whole thing that I wouldn't tell anyone how old I was. Like my best friends, they didn't know I was eighteen until I was twenty one, you know? Like they thought I was twenty one the whole time because I always just immediately would just feel like this amount of disrespect. When you told someone that was twenty five that you were eighteen, you know? So I just didn't tell anybody how old I was, especially people that are older than me.

• 20:38Guy Raz?

  So when you were, when you got to New York and you started to, you know, to take your designs to the Lower East Side, you're eighteen. What would you say when you would walk into the stores? You would say, hi, I'm Telfar Clemens, I'm a designer, this is my line. What was your, what was your pitch?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I think it was about that. I'd mostly go to stores that they were doing consignment. At that time, I was like seven at a store called Funky Lala. The store was cool. Like it had like all these like kind of ripped denim skirts and like vintage shoes. It was just like, they just had all this cool vintage stuff and they were also selling designer stuff in there. So it was that store Funky Lala. It was Vice, the Vice store.

• 21:19Guy Raz?

  The Vice store, right? The Vice magazine, they had a store initially, yeah. And how, what, where were you drawing your inspiration from? Like, cause I think initially you really were working with like T-shirts, right?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  T-shirts, yeah, T-shirt and jeans.

• 21:32Guy Raz?

  Because they were, I mean, they were basic. I'm trying to picture them. I mean, they were Bob Marley T-shirts.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Uh, no, no, no. This was like, those Bob Marley T-shirts only lasted me like, I think I sold them all like the first month that I got to New York. It was just like, anything that was like deconstructed, vintage stuff, I would go vintage shopping, like, I would go all the way out to like places that you'll buy clothes by the pound and buy like a bunch of blue denim, you know? And a lot of the things that I would make did not exist.

• 22:04Guy Raz?

  Like, what do you remember?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Um, I like, one of the pieces that like was the thing that I was like, okay, this is a business and or it has potential to be financially beneficial to me, you know, so. So I would buy these three X T-shirts and put them together into a triple T-shirt.

• 22:24Guy Raz?

  And just to create an image in, in the mind's eye, when you describe a triple T-shirt, I think what you're describing is something that went down was like vertical, right?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  It had three holes. So you would take three T-shirts together. I would chop the right arm off of one, the left arm off of another and make a triangle with the third one and connect all of that together. Where your two arms would come out of the neck hole and you could wear them in multiple neck holes. Like I was making this all through college. That's like what I was making for people to wear. That's what I met some of my best friends wearing.

• 22:58Guy Raz?

  And so it had multiple, like the, the neck hole was designed for the arms. So it was different than just like an oversized, single T-shirt because it sounds like when you would lift your arms up, it almost would have this kind of flowing kind of profile.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you could also wear it another way too, that you would wear asymmetric and you would have a T-shirt arm and a neck and then a very long shape on one side.

• 23:23Guy Raz?

  And, and you were just making clothing in your aunt's apartment, like with your sewing machine?

• 23:30Speaker 01

  No, I was at a dorm room at that time.

• 23:32Guy Raz?

  You were making it in your dorm room?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:35Guy Raz?

  Wow. All right. So you are, I mean, you're like 18, 19, you're a student at Pace University, going to class. And also designing clothing that was appearing in some small boutiques. I'm just trying to imagine, like, if I knew you then and I was like, hey, tell me a little bit about yourself, tell her, and you would say, oh, yeah, I'm designing some clothing. And yeah, some of it's in these boutiques in New York. I would have been really impressed. I mean, that, that sounds like-

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I thought I was fab. Like, I did not talk to people at school. Like, I went to school at six in the morning and mind my business, you know? And also, too, at that time, I started to hang out at clubs and I noticed that you could get paid at night.

• 24:18Guy Raz?

  By?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  By DJing, by hosting a party, by just showing up.

• 24:24Guy Raz?

  I mean, it seems to me like you also had real ambitions, that you were really thinking about you and what you were gonna do with your life and that you were creating something bigger. Is that, is that true? Or were you not quite, was it not quite formed?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  No, I, like, at a certain point, I was like, I want to do this and I wanna begin to, it began with, like, oh, making seasonal collections and doing a show to be able to achieve getting respect from people that were in the fashion industry and that do do this. So it's like, after I had started making things out of, like, fabric and I had an account at Vice-

• 25:07Guy Raz?

  Vice magazine.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Vice magazine and the Vice store, which was like my main account at that time.

• 25:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Vice and Funky Lala.

• 25:13Guy Raz?

  Were you making money off of it? Serious money or, or?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Um, enough to eat. Enough to, enough to buy dumplings, dollar dumplings, you know?

• 25:26Guy Raz?

  How much were they selling your shirts for, do you remember?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  I was selling sweatshirts and stuff for maybe like $150, $170. It was on consignment, too, so I was probably getting all of that.

• 25:38Guy Raz?

  These were sweatshirts that you were creating, that you were stitching together and you were designing. Each one was handmade?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were handmade and then I met a brother and sister company. They were called PVR menswear and they had clothes that were at the Marlberry Street Market. And I was like, wow, their clothes are cool. And I bought like a shirt one time and like we became friends. And then I was like, hey, do you, what do you guys think about, you know, sewing these triple T-shirts and these sweatshirts for like these vice orders that are beginning to sell? And they were just like the sweetest people. So they began to do all of the, you know, sewing and things just from there improved.

• 26:21Guy Raz?

  What kept you at it and going? Because it sounds like you were really grinding and just, I mean, you're making clothing. You've got stuff in consignment shops, you're DJing, you're designing. I mean, but you weren't quite breaking through yet. What was it in your mind that enabled you to continue to just kind of push through that?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  I kinda, I would look at what was going on around me and realize that even more I needed to do this. You know what I mean? Cause you know, I had people around me, like in my close circle that were ready for what was going on. And then everybody else in the fashion industry that was completely not, you know?

• 27:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  It was specifically like I was making, um, you know, it was like split pants. You know, it was like really like post-apocalyptic in this way that it was Converse sneakers that the toe was cut out. So I was called them the mandal. It was like the toe and the tongue was cut out.

• 27:22Guy Raz?

  Wait, so were your toes pointing out from the front?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, your toes were pointing out from the front and the back, your heel was out.

• 27:29Guy Raz?

  So this like sandals?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  So it was like, it was like a sandal made out of Converse sneakers. And it was just cut really raw, you know? So it was like, really like, I'm so inspired by a certain look. That's almost like you can't tell if the person's cleaning the house or if they own the house, you know?

• 27:46Guy Raz?

  I've looked at so many images of your designs. And as you know, Norma Kamali was a guest on our show a year ago. And is a, I think, somebody who, whose work you really respect. And one of the things that I think is very similar about the clothing that you both produce is that comfort is a huge part of your design aesthetic.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that that's like, kind of, that's when I can draw the distinction between what I think is fashion and what fashion is, you know? It's like, I'm usually on the opposite side. It's like what you're wearing before you got dressed. It's like the thing that you're wearing every single day because you just know that that's, it's like, damn, I look good. That's like your actual person. And then fashion is like, oh, yeah, red carpet. My feet are bleeding. My zipper's caught. I tripped over my train. You know, all of that.

• 28:38Guy Raz?

  Meanwhile, while you're still in college, I think you start doing a few small shows around the city, right?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I basically started making clothes and doing runway shows two times a year. And, you know, it was like small interactions. Sometimes there were videos. I would have a club night where people would come and see this video of a collection that I made. And I was like, you know, there's no line that was unisex at that time, that was coming from the place that mine was. Everything was like, oh, a dress on a man meant unisex. It's like-

• 29:16Guy Raz?

  But it was important for you from the beginning not to be limited by gender-specific clothing?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Specifically, because, yeah, I was just limited by it in every way. You know, it was like, there's so many things you can't do because you're not this person or this thing or that thing, you know? I just wanted a thing that you make your mind up about what you're gonna be.

• 29:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And making things that did not exist, you know? It's like, at that time, I would go to the Fashion Archives every single day.

• 29:42Guy Raz?

  In Manhattan?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  In Manhattan, like at Gallagher's. I would be there every single day in between classes, just looking at magazines and stuff. So I was like, determined on also not repeating some shit that I just saw in a magazine. You know, it's like, oh, he did that. He did that. He did that. That's like when I got to know every single designer.

• 30:00Guy Raz?

  That's like, you were doing, like, some pretty serious, sort of scholarly, kind of- Right, I mean, you were going there looking for, because this is a very serious, this is like where people who write books about fashion go and great designers go. Like, I mean, you were serious. You were really serious about this.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  If there's one thing that I do love, I think I love fashion, and that's why I never went to fashion school, because I knew once it was a task that I had to do with a certain grade that I would get from someone, but based on doing something that they liked me doing, I was like, no, I would have figured it out all by old. I want to do it wrong. Because I, at that time, my aunt, she was like, you should really go to FIT. And she was trying to get me into FIT. I was like, hmm, no, I think I'm just going to finish that page. She was like, you're not going to learn anything. I was like, yeah, I don't want to learn anything from there either, you know? It's like, I wanted to get it wrong, because I was already making money getting it wrong.

• 31:02Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Telfar finds a creative partner who not only loves and admires his work, but who knows how to get it seen and sold. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 31:24Guy Raz?

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• 32:07Guy Raz?

  speed and scale, and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist, or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 32:51Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called "Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work." And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 33:36Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, "Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work", at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,

• 34:20Guy Raz?

  Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 34:57Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2004, and Telfar is designing and showing some of his fashions in New York while still going to college. And this is right around the time he meets the guy who will become his creative director, Babak Radboy. Now, just a bit of background about Babak before we get into it. He's the son of Iranian immigrants, and as a teenager, he was into computers and art and design. And he grew up in Seattle, a place where he was actually pretty unhappy.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  I knew that I was not employable in Seattle. You know, Seattle is-

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Stay with me here, Gethys, bro.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  I never agreed to growing up there to begin with, you know? I was born, you know, I mean, my earliest memories are from there. And the whole time, I was like, this can't be it. Like, this cannot possibly be it, because I didn't have any space there. I always wanted to get out, and I just didn't have any money or any prospects. And then I remember I did, you know, I was good at art. And I think I did an album cover, and I had 600 bucks, and I bought a one-way ticket to New York.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Can you say what the album cover was?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  It was the album cover to a Modest Mouse album.

• 36:14Guy Raz?

  Wow. Portland, a Portland-based band, right?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:18Guy Raz?

  You did a Modest Mouse cover. Album cover, that's pretty cool.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  It was the moon in Antarctica, I think.

• 36:24Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  But I basically, yeah, I bought a one-way ticket over here. I was dating a girl who had moved out here. And then, within two weeks, three weeks, I got a job making concept art for TV commercials. I had my whole plan of how I was going to do New York, which was like, not going exactly how I thought, because I just thought, my whole mind was about like, I was going to do commercial art direction, because I was really good at it. I was going to make a lot of money doing boring shit, and then use that money to do the things I want to do.

• 36:58Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  It never occurred to me that doing the things that I wanted to do-

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Were the same thing.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  -directly-

• 37:04Guy Raz?

  Could make money.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, the first couple of months, I just remember going to work every day, having no money. I was like, can it to the dinner, waiting for the first paycheck. And then you get the paycheck and you don't have a bank account.

• 37:21Guy Raz?

  Hmm. And how about you, Telfar? How were you making a living at that time? Like after you graduated from college, were you, how were you earning money?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Um, I was DJing and I had my consignment.

• 37:34Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  And, you know, I was living in an apartment that was, what, I think like seven or $800 a month. I had no heat. So that's what, and I could pay at the end of the month instead of the beginning because I had no heat. And that's how I did it, you know? It was like really just tough and like extremely tough.

• 37:53Guy Raz?

  Was Telfar at this point still you, just you?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:58Guy Raz?

  You were doing everything.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Jason Ferrer also too was helping me style stuff at that time. It was like I would work with people after I was kind of done making the clothes.

• 38:07Guy Raz?

  But you were also the sales rep.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Guy Raz?

  You were the sales guy.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:12Guy Raz?

  You were the marketing guy. You were the CEO, the designer, right?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:16Guy Raz?

  All those things.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would, I wouldn't tell anyone who they were speaking to. So I would just sign everything capital, all capital Telfar. That just sounded like.

• 38:25Guy Raz?

  It was somebody from this huge warehouse of designers, right, artists?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  At that time too, it was like really hard to make production of anything that I made.

• 38:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  You know, because I was getting the fabric as a gift from Supima. You know, I couldn't even afford the fabric that they were giving me.

• 38:43Guy Raz?

  They would gift it to you, just like samples of it?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would go to a Supima apartment and they would give me one roll of like dis-stripe fabric to make. It was enough to make a sample out of, but it wasn't enough for me to, oh yeah, a store came and ordered 60 units of it. It's like, no, I couldn't do that with like certain collections and I really wanted to push each collection. So, you know, sometimes the idea would sacrifice me being able to actually make it, you know?

• 39:11Guy Raz?

  Do you remember Telfar? I mean, you, you have such a bright and sunny disposition. But I wonder if at that time, because I'm trying to channel back to that time in my life. And there's a lot of uncertainty in your twenties and early thirties when you're trying to kind of build your career and it's scary. And I wonder if you ever experienced anxiety or sadness about your future?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  I mean, completely. It was like a thing that I would make a show and do all the things that would go into a show. And, you know, you try to get press people to cover it. They wouldn't. You try to get buyers to buy it. They wouldn't. So I'm like, damn, how am I gonna do this next thing? So I was like, kind of in this way, waiting for someone to, like, some investor to come in, or like, some store to give me a check to make this thing. And I'm just like, I'm gonna make these things. And if nobody buys it, I'm gonna wear it, you know?

• 40:06Guy Raz?

  I love that.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And literally, I would make that shit in my size. And I would have those clothes. I still do.

• 40:13Guy Raz?

  I think the two of you met for the first time around 2004, 2005. Just, and I, from what I gather, you don't even remember when you first met. Is that right?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  No. Well, we used to hang out a lot. We'd see each other on the street and like, hang out in Tompkins Square Park on a number, like, of times.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  If it's a group of people who are looking for something different, period, right? I wanna hear some music, but it's something different.

• 40:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  I wanna hang out with some people, but not like people I've seen before.

• 40:46Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  I didn't think of the world in terms of like, a fashion industry.

• 40:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Or starting a business. What was real to us was like, this, the context that we were in and how people looked.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, damn, his haircut's really cool.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  And I feel like that's, my memory of Telfar is like, this particular person looks ways that I can't describe.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  You know, I don't, I don't know where the coordinates of this look are.

• 41:17Guy Raz?

  And I think, I think around this time, like, Telfar, you were still doing small fashion shows around, around New York. And I guess you were also hanging out with a stylist named Avina Gallagher. And this is somebody who would become an incredibly important partner to, to both of you, because Babak, you, you wound up marrying her. And, and Telfar, I think Avina eventually became the stylist for the brand, right?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, literally, she was around and I would see her around a lot. I didn't even know what a stylist was until I met her. I didn't know what they did, you know? And then like, one time, I remember looking in a magazine and it had her name on it. But I was just like, oh shit, Avina styled that? Like, that's what she does?

• 42:00Guy Raz?

  And you were working with her, she was working with you as your stylist. But from what I understand, like, she wasn't, because you didn't have any money, right?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:08Guy Raz?

  She wasn't, she wasn't charging you anything, right?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 42:11Guy Raz?

  She was kind of a friend.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yes, this was like my one friend that I was like, yo, I'm doing a show.

• 42:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so it was more of a casual, like, yeah, I can help you, no problem.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yes, it was just a bunch of friends getting together to do something cool.

• 42:24Guy Raz?

  Babak, what did you, when you said, you know, I think I want to work with this, with this guy, what in your mind did you think that you could, you could do?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Well, my, my experience of it was to go to shows, see this thing, and then be mad.

• 42:40Guy Raz?

  Because?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  I was just mad that that wasn't enough to get the recognition, to get some kind of support.

• 42:46Guy Raz?

  You would basically be going to, doing these fashion shows, and it was like a tree falling on a forest, and nobody was around to hear it.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Yes, like, that was amazing. Okay, let's go.

• 42:57Guy Raz?

  People were saying, how is this not getting attention? This is such interesting clothing.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is, you know, like, fashion is like, it's like a more subjective form of like sport, let's say. And if somebody's really good, then shouldn't they be on the team? It's like, this is the one, right? And it's just not happening. The press are, like, I go to a show and it's just us. Like, there's no press, there's no buyers, you know? It's like as if it never happened.

• 43:24Guy Raz?

  And you're trying to get the attention of like the famous fashion writers, like Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, or...

• 43:30Speaker 02

  We would go for the unfamous ones. You have to understand that when people, you know, you have these institutions like Vogue and Style.com, and they're like the library of Congress of fashion.

• 43:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  So they, your entry means that you happened. So when they refuse to even record that you had a show, they are saying that you don't exist.

• 43:49Guy Raz?

  You don't exist. Well, so it's really, the gatekeepers in that world at that time, and maybe even today, were pretty powerful.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but at the same time, we probably were completely misunderstanding what was happening, right? Because we're thinking, oh, this brand is so popular because of how cool this show was.

• 44:10Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  You know, so if we do a show that's even cooler...

• 44:15Guy Raz?

  But it's not that way.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  We're gonna get it too, and that is not, you know.

• 44:19Guy Raz?

  So clearly, you were, Babak, you were frustrated because you knew that there was something here that wasn't getting the attention it deserved, and you thought maybe you could help.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just thought that it was about communication, because that's what I did.

• 44:34Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Right?

• 44:35Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  I mean, when I came onto Telfar, his logo was like written with a Sharpie.

• 44:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  You know, and his press kit was designed by a DJ. And like, there wasn't any of that basic infrastructure that could help you navigate within our scene.

• 44:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  And so I really, the first show we did together was, yeah, we started in 2013. We did the SS 2014 collection, and it seemed like a really big show, right? We entered into this new phase of like, how do you get the free space? How do you get a 20-foot LED screen for free, shipped to you? You know, like it was, how do you get a video for free? Okay, we're gonna reach out to the Museum of Contemporary Art LA, and you're gonna write a paragraph around why this is important, and why you have to support it, and what it means, like all that communication.

• 45:26Guy Raz?

  So in other words, it wasn't about having a press strategy to reach out to reporters and the fashion press, but it was about actually reaching out to people outside the industry to support the work that, that Telfar was doing.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  It was all of those things. It was all of those things, you know, because you just gotta understand, like, Telfar's already doing everything that makes it what it is, and then has to do the job of explaining to someone who should be able to clearly see it in front of them.

• 45:56Guy Raz?

  What it is.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  In their, what it is, that they're already looking at. And, you know, you're dealing with an all-white industry.

• 46:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Right? And who know it?

• 46:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  And you symbolize something specific that's useful up until a point, you know? And if you have no choice, you can't choose your industry. So, you know, like, I thought that there was enough wiggle room in communication to find a way through that gauntlet.

• 46:25Guy Raz?

  But that wasn't enough.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  What we ended up doing is like, almost operating like a festival, because we would make money from doing shows.

• 46:32Guy Raz?

  And you would make money by getting sponsors to sponsor your shows.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  We were basically the absolute, like, premier artists of sponsor voodoo.

• 46:46Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so the two of you are working together, and you're working, obviously, on a new strategy. And I guess, I think 2014 was a pretty important and pivotal moment, because that year, you approached Kmart to sponsor one of your shows. Kmart, which is the furthest brand from, like, London, or from Paris and Milan, right? The furthest brand you would think of when you think of like, a Paris and Milan runway show. Kmart to sponsor your fall 2014 collection. First of all, tell me about the idea of even approaching Kmart.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Did they reach out to us?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  They, I think we might have reached out to them. What happened was, in those days, specifically, hair and makeup sponsors paid for your show.

• 47:37Guy Raz?

  So, like, hair, like, makeup brands, like Bobby Brown, or, you know?

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Shiseido.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Like Mac.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Shiseido.

• 47:42Guy Raz?

  Mac, okay, Shiseido, okay.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  And that was not an option for us, arguably because people in our shows had the wrong hair and skin, and it was genderless, and, you know, for all the many reasons. It wasn't giving.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  The type of thing they were selling, right?

• 48:03Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  So as a reaction to that constraint, we just, you know, started reaching out to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. So we started, we were kind of like systematically reached out to like the worst possible sponsors from a fashion perspective.

• 48:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, so you, you end up working with Kmart. This is for the, your fall 2014 fashion show. And I think you put it up at the new museum in New York. And I want to describe this for people. Just walk me into that show. Cause from what I understand, it was like a mock Kmart. Like you kind of had a mock Kmart as you walked in.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  It was the introduction of the Telfar shopping bag, first off.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  We had, you know, like so tiny statues of every model in the show, T-shirts of every model in the show, a seven foot Telfar at the end.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. There was a statue of me. Cause the collection was kind of based on size and proportions too. So like this whole idea of small, medium, large, we applied it to the clothes as well.

• 49:05Guy Raz?

  And you're, and the clothing that you were designing for this show, did any, any of it have, did you try to kind of create a Kmart aesthetic in any way?

• 49:16Speaker 01

  I mean, and the fabrics that we're using, kind of like, I think the closest thing was like polar fleece, you know? That would be like a lot of Target.

• 49:24Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  And then we had produced the Telfar bag, the shopping bag. And we put the entire production in the store. So it's like hundreds and hundreds of this bag, you know, for a brand that had never sold more than maybe dozen, couple dozen of anything.

• 49:40Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  I think we sold gift cards.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. We sold gift cards.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  That didn't actually buy anything. It was literally a card you could give as a gift, but you know.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  It was $10, but it did nothing. And then the shopping bag was supposed to be the thing that you were gonna put all of these gifts that you would buy at the gift shop in.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:02Guy Raz?

  And so after you did that show with with Kmart, what what happened? Like, what what kind of reaction did it get?

• 50:10Speaker 01

  I think I think that one show at the New Museum was the first time we got on Style.com.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  That was the first time ever.

• 50:18Guy Raz?

  The first time you got sort of quote mainstream press coverage?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like some glowing review from like their the Style.com, whoever that person was at that time. That was just like, I can't believe that we've never featured this person before. He's constantly emerging.

• 50:35Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  And, you know, all the reporting started to get really like, you know, evangelical at that point.

• 50:43Guy Raz?

  But what I'm what I'm trying to get at is what did you and you may not know, right? Because as somebody listening to this who's trying to figure out how to do something similar is gonna want to know like, what what was the turn? Was it? I mean, was it a convergence of things? Was it just that there were more websites coming online that were see, there were more places where you could get coverage? Was it luck? What?

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Well, first off, it wasn't just me anymore. I had other people that were we were doing it the quote unquote, right way that we had to do it.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  You know, and this is the thing, if you're trying to make an argument around the listener, right? Like, how did you build it? I would pause before saying that this is how you build it. Because that stuff worked and that stuff got us somewhere else. But it almost got us in the wrong place. It was a better place, you know?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Also, too, we owed, we were tremendously in debt after doing that, you know? We didn't get that space for free. We have to pay for that. We, you know, it was like, and we. Do what we didn't want to have to do like we didn't want to have to have an experience that was just overwhelmingly expensive for us to, you know, recoup from and we didn't really sell anything, you know?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, so the, you know, that's the thing. So, okay, lesson one. Should you start a company without any capital? Even enough to just pay your own rent, right? You know, like we, the things we were doing in terms of communication with potential sponsors ended up becoming a revenue stream that let us do things at the absolute minimum of possibility. That, I mean, that's as much as I could say about it. It made it as impossible as it was for Telfar to do the collection before. It was a little less impossible. Right? Because now we had at least these budgets for shows and I could hire a producer and we could have, you know, it wasn't just our friends.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people doing favors.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  And even then it still was favors. But you know, I would get this money from a museum.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  This money from this brand, this money from that brand.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  People said that we could pay later, you know?

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Like, at some point, we were bringing in over a million dollars just from doing shows. So what you would consider marketing is actually, wasn't an expense, it was our income.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  And then the press is able to see what it would be like if you were allowed to do something.

• 53:15Guy Raz?

  This, from what I gather, this partnership with Kmart would lead to bold sort of sponsorship and partnerships that you, you embarked on. The, the next one was with White Castle, the hamburger restaurant.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  That's the first burger place that I ate when I came to America. Before I had McDonald's, I had White Castle because it was cheaper.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, we reached out to White Castle. In fact, we called their 1-800 line. They had a 1-800 line.

• 53:48Guy Raz?

  And you said what?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Well, we were having a fashion show in New York City for a genderless line.

• 53:54Guy Raz?

  But you just got some customer service rep on the other line.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:57Guy Raz?

  And so you called the 1-800 number and the service and you told the service for the customer agent like, "Hey, we wanna, we're doing a fashion show. We're looking for sponsorship."

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Yes. And then the next call, well, we got a call from the vice president after that.

• 54:13Guy Raz?

  From the vice president of like, of like, marketing or something?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the vice president of White Castle is an unusual person, like a kind of patron saint of ours.

• 54:24Guy Raz?

  This is Jamie Richardson, who you're talking about, right?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. Jamie Richardson.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  And after that point, he's the only, pretty much the only person we talked to. I mean, he, he got very personally involved. I think, you know, we were writing, we had really good press kits where we would explain what this brand, what the proposition of this project is, and he responded to it.

• 54:45Guy Raz?

  I'm just curious, you guys contact White Castle and say, "Hey, we're doing a fashion show. We'd love for you to sponsor it." You were not, at that point, a hugely well-known brand. What was it that prompted Jamie Richardson, the vice president of White Castle, to call you back, intrigued, to talk more?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Mind you, they funded the Harold and Kumar movie from the same 1-800 number.

• 55:09Guy Raz?

  Oh, they did? They funded that movie?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  They had never made a film before.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  And the person that did it was Jamie.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  So we're dealing with an unusual person.

• 55:19Guy Raz?

  So Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. They had sponsored that film.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:24Guy Raz?

  Or, okay, so they had already done some wild things.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Wild things.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  He is, he is a really cool person.

• 55:31Guy Raz?

  You end up doing your spring/summer 2016 collection, you end up doing that show sponsored by White Castle, and you had your after-party, the fashion after-party at White Castle in Times Square.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Which was Jamie's idea, by the way. Jamie Richardson's idea.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  I was the one saying, do you have permits for this?

• 55:52Guy Raz?

  So what, like fashion models and, you know, just beautiful people at White Castle in Times Square?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  I mean, our entire cast and crew, we allowed the public that was just there to come in. Yeah. And it just ended up being like the best party. Like, the workers there got to party with us. Jamie was doing the light show.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  By turning them off and on. Yeah, the workers were all dancing behind the counter.

• 56:19Guy Raz?

  Were you, did you have champagne inside the White Castle? Were you popping champagne, Cor?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Champagne and orange soda.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  At the soda fountain, so you could serve yourself.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Your own drink.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  In the cups that they have.

• 56:33Guy Raz?

  And just, and what goes better with a few glasses of champagne than a few White Castle cheeseburgers?

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, champagne and sliders.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  But I have to explain, like, that party, you know, that became like the kind of signature, where it just felt like your TV was broken, you know? Like, it really felt like this, how does this happen? It didn't feel completely planned, you know what I mean? It's the type of thing that, like, this is where things kind of changed.

• 57:06Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how the collaboration with White Castle and with Kmart led to two iconic new looks for Telfar, including one item that suddenly everyone seemed to want, the Telfar bag. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 58:01Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017, and after collaborating on shows with Kmart and White Castle, Telfar is starting to get more attention in the fashion world. And as a brand, it's still pretty small. But after that show at White Castle, something kind of unexpected happens. That led White Castle to then ask you to redesign their employee uniforms.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yes, so like, kind of like after we did such a beautiful party, they were like, uh, what do you think about making the uniform?

• 58:39Guy Raz?

  And this was just for the employees? This was not going to be something... I know a limited number were sold, but this was not made to be sold to the general public?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this was just for the employees at first.

• 58:52Guy Raz?

  You can buy on the secondary market a Telfar White Castle hoodie for more than $100.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  More than $100?

• 59:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Wow, you hear that, Jamie?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  And you know, so I would say the thing that people really heard about was that we designed the uniform. But what started to kind of form our approach to these collaborations is that we produced the uniform. That is the difference.

• 59:19Guy Raz?

  Why is that? Explain that to me. Instead of somebody else producing them, you yourself financed the production of them?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Well, think, you know, these things are usually for show. They're for press. It's just you want a press release saying that happened, and then you get a little check for your design fee. The way that we approached it was, you know, we were a brand. I think that that season, we maybe had $60,000 in orders.

• 59:43Guy Raz?

  So you were small.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. We were making like maybe 200 garments, right? So with White Castle, we had the opportunity to make unisex clothes for a 20,000 unit order.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  In multiple sizes, men and women.

• 59:59Guy Raz?

  So you went and found the factory to make them and to produce them?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  We made it in our factory that made our collection.

• 1:00:04Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  In China. So we became a supplier to White Castle and they're renewing them every, you know, six months and like that became a revenue stream, not just a kind of press release.

• 1:00:18Guy Raz?

  Right, because normally what would happen is a designer would just send the design in and walk away and then they would handle it. The customer would just, they would get it made for them. But this way, you not only had the design, but you controlled the production.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Which in those days was, you know, that's like, that was a lifeline.

• 1:00:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So one thing that we, we kind of, I think alluded to, but didn't really go into in depth was, at your Kmart show in 2014, one of the things that you guys had on display were shopping bags.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:50Guy Raz?

  And you really just had them there, I think as part of the show. You hadn't started making them to sell them. And I guess for a variety of reasons, including just the financing of it. But in 2017, you won a prestigious award for your work. This was the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund. And that came with a $400,000 prize. And I guess you decided to use that money to finance what would become probably your most famous product today, the Telfar Shopping Bag. Tell me about the genesis of that product.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Well, this idea totally came from like the holidays. He said, like, I was like, walking in SoHo and just seeing everybody consuming, like their lives depended on that. So it was like, men and women walking with like six shopping bags of all different sizes. I was like, wow, they look so beautiful. They look so rich. They look so wealthy. They look so like careless. And like, just seeing this person smiling with a lot of bags and a big fur coat was like, you know, it was like, ooh, fab, you know, like. And I was like, wow, I wish people were carrying a shopping bag that had my name on it and what people had like these shopping bags. So, um, I was like, yeah, it's like the one bag that just, everybody looks so good with.

• 1:02:08Guy Raz?

  A shopping bag, like the Bloomingdale's shopping bag?

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Specifically the Bloomingdale's one. Small, like, because they had a big brown bag, little brown bag. So they had all of these sizes of bags. And I was like-

• 1:02:18Guy Raz?

  And everybody looks good carrying.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Even like a man that's carrying his wife's bag looks so good. A baby looks so good carrying that bag.

• 1:02:25Guy Raz?

  And for people who don't know what this bag looks like, obviously you can Google it, but it's a very simple bag. It's a very simple functional handbag with two straps, a small strap to carry it by with your hands and then a larger strap if you want to put over your shoulder. And it has your logo embossed in the center of it. Fair description?

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Guy Raz?

  And these were made out of leather initially, right?

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:51Guy Raz?

  Vegan leather?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  They were always made out of vegan leather or polyurethane.

• 1:02:55Guy Raz?

  Okay. And when you relaunched this, or really launched this in a big way, they sold out. It was like a, and by the way, they weren't crazy expensive, right? I mean, I think they ranged from $140 to $240, something like that?

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  That was a big part of it is that Telfar wanted to base the price on how much you would make in a night DJ.

• 1:03:17Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  And that absolutely didn't square up with how much it cost to make the bag, like at all. But it's like the price of the bag was part of the concept and design of the bag, even though you weren't making money on that.

• 1:03:31Guy Raz?

  And you had them manufactured in China?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:35Guy Raz?

  All right. I think it's fair to say the bag really was kind of like a stratospheric leap for your brand. I know you were selling them in small quantities for a few years, but you really launched it in a much bigger way in 2018. Is it fair to say that that year was sort of a turning point in your public profile, the profile of the brand, that Telfar really became a much, much bigger brand around 2018 through the relaunch of the bag?

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  A much more accessible brand, yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, I don't, it didn't feel like that's how it happened.

• 1:04:13Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Right? Because it took time. Like, you know, it doesn't fly off the shelves. We're still only making like a few thousand dollars a month, right?

• 1:04:22Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Through 2018 and into 2019. So, do you know what I mean? Like it's...

• 1:04:28Guy Raz?

  What was the turning point? What was the thing? I mean, obviously, we, not obviously, I should say Oprah eventually named it as one of her favorite things, but that wasn't until 2020. But...

• 1:04:38Guy Raz?

  What was the thing that made this bag become such a huge like Beyonce, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and all these amazingly famous people who had this bag and talking about it? What was it? Do you even know?

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  I think like a lot of people is like is a viral motion to how the bag grew because people took a picture with it online and that meant a thing to them. And the people that carry it and the people that see each other carrying it. Or there'll be completely different people that have nothing to do with each other carrying a bag and they look at each other and they're like, oh, wow, everybody has, you know, like it's this kind of conversation. It wasn't overnight, like, oh, everything's sold out. It's like bags were around. We gave bags to people, you know, like, and that was the thing too, the power of gifting. It's like, if it means something to you, you give it to that person. You know what I mean? And we gifted a lot of things to our friends that they just actually became a staple.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  They're like, I want a black one now after you gave me this brown one, you know? Or someone gave them their first Telfar bag. They didn't buy it.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  But it's the exact moments when we were getting the most recognition is when it felt like the environment was like more hostile.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Now we were like, our success just meant that we were exploitable, right? And we were navigating that world. You know, if we want to tell the story about the bag, it's all wrapped up in these types of things. And there is a very specific kind of like narrative to that.

• 1:06:12Guy Raz?

  But tell me, tell me the narrative. What is that narrative?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  I'll say this, that we won the CFDA Fashion Fund a year to the day that Donald Trump was elected president.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  There was a need for a certain type of performance of, you know, inclusivity. And so there had to be the production of platforms and opportunities to get the right people to say the things that needed to be said for people to feel like a progressive.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  You know, maybe they feel like they're part of some kind of resistance or that there is at least dignity to be at this place. But in any case, you know, it had a considerable effect on what you ended up seeing. If you look at a magazine before 2016, it's very easy to see an all white issue of any fashion magazine. That wasn't even a question. No one was there to question it.

• 1:07:10Guy Raz?

  So just to clarify, it sounds like what you're saying is there was a very much a sort of a performative kind of aspect to trying to increase racial awareness and to examine the absence of diversity in mainstream institutions. And as a result of that.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  So this is one factor that's at play, right?

• 1:07:36Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  And when you really look at the term inclusion, it means that ownership doesn't change. Now you're just being allowed in.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Included in it.

• 1:07:44Guy Raz?

  Right. Gotcha.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:46Guy Raz?

  So that was the context of what was happening when you won the award.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And previous to that, the context was like, it was like hostile. You know what I mean? It was hostile on kind of every level. It was really, really difficult to do things. People didn't really want to work with you. The opportunities weren't really there. And then when things kind of changed over, it was kind of the same thing, but in a different way. Like now you were exploitable. So someone would want to sign a contract with you where it's a 90 10 split, you know? And that's supposed to be success, right? So then you're in a position where you're no longer trying to explain yourself. You're trying to say, how do I get, how do I stop talking to these people at all?

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  And how do I talk to a different group of people? Like, is it possible to not go through these gates at all?

• 1:08:41Guy Raz?

  So there were all of these, these, I mean, these things that were happening and sort of explain from your perspective, how you responded to that or maybe didn't respond to that with what you were doing.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  We had to look at like what we have that other people don't have. And part of that was just like the ability to take risks. So like, you know, in January 2019, we wanted to kind of make our business practices reflect the creative practices that we've been developing. And in order to do that, we wanted to, and at that time, you know, our wholesale accounts were doubling every season.

• 1:09:21Guy Raz?

  And that was your primary distribution channel. You were, you were doing wholesale, sales, and then retailers would sell your stuff.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:30Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  But we made the decision, January 2019, that by January 2020, we would be completely out, which was a very difficult thing to do.

• 1:09:39Guy Raz?

  Out of the wholesale business, you would be directly selling to your customers.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:43Guy Raz?

  So you wouldn't be in stores anymore. You would not be in, right, okay.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  So we did that on a principle, but the way that that set of decisions lined up with COVID.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  COVID was, yeah.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  And the fact.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  It was exactly at the same time.

• 1:09:58Guy Raz?

  Because with COVID, because you decided to go direct to consumer, you actually didn't have to rely on these stores that were essentially shut.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  It's as if we'd prepared for it.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  And not only that, other brands had already invested millions into their next collection, and we had already not been doing it.

• 1:10:16Guy Raz?

  Wow. Just, I think just before the pandemic, like, like 2019 into 2020, you guys were doing pretty well. I think you hit about $2 million in sales. And then something happened that got a lot of attention in, in the fashion world because you had entered into a, a relationship with the Gap. You were talking with them about, like, creating a line for them. And I think you got to the point where, where you both, you signed the agreement and, and Gap, the, the Gap store in Paris even showed photos of, of a Telfar show and they plastered the, the windows with them. And, and the head of Gap was like, oh, he's talking about Telfar and this is the future and blah, blah, blah. And then I think you had delivered.

• 1:11:01Guy Raz?

  Like thirty designs to Gap by the time the pandemic had hit and many retailers had shut their stores. Is that more or less true?

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  We did the collection, yeah.

• 1:11:12Guy Raz?

  All right. And you weren't hearing back from Gap? And because you had this collaboration, this design collaboration, and you didn't hear back from them. And the person that you'd done the deal with was fired or was, I don't know, was let go. And so you had, but you had to be paid. So you sent them an invoice. And they?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Well, there wasn't a reply. That's the thing.

• 1:11:37Guy Raz?

  There wasn't even a reply?

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Guy Raz?

  No reply?

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  It was in the middle of, I mean, everybody was shut down, right?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also, too, the team that we were working with was completely dismissed as that happened. So everybody that we were writing, we didn't have a point of contact. I think someone from Gap actually wrote us to tell us like a little bit later that they had been let go. If we needed any help getting in contact with someone, they could put us in the direction.

• 1:12:06Guy Raz?

  So no, right, no contact from Gap and G to be paid?

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. But this is like the month of March, like New York is shut down.

• 1:12:17Guy Raz?

  Twenty twenty, yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  This is when it was really crazy. China is shut down, so we have nothing to sell. And then we're not getting paid this thing, and it doesn't seem like it's going to happen. You know, it was like a really scary moment for us. But that is the exact moment. It was the end of March, where finally China opened up, we got a shipment of bags, we post a bag drop in the middle of this crazy pandemic.

• 1:12:44Guy Raz?

  A bag drop, meaning that they're available on the website?

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:47Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  And those bag drops would usually last, we'd put them up. I mean, they weren't really drops, like they would last for like a month, you know? But in the middle of lockdown, we're all holding our breath after this drop, and they sold out in seconds.

• 1:13:00Guy Raz?

  Were you just like totally stunned? Were you like, what's going on?

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  We were stunned. It's bananas.

• 1:13:05Guy Raz?

  So in March of 2020, you, what, like on your social media account, you just said, hey, we have a bag drop?

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Guy Raz?

  Like, they're available?

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Guy Raz?

  And then somebody, I don't know, like you look at your website and you're like, we're sold out. Like a few hours later.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  No, they're gone in like seconds.

• 1:13:21Guy Raz?

  In like seconds?

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Seconds.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  I think it was like one minute.

• 1:13:24Guy Raz?

  And how many bags were available?

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  I don't know at that time.

• 1:13:28Guy Raz?

  Thousands, hundreds?

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Well, it might have been like 1,000 or something.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  And then, so then we, we started air shipping the bags because we couldn't wait for the boat. And then that one would sell out and the next, and it just kind of continued like that for a few months.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Also the pandemic.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  So, you know, the context of us getting the bad news, we were kind of okay.

• 1:13:50Guy Raz?

  Because the bags were selling. So meantime, you're selling bags, you're not hearing anything back from Gap, which you had a design deal with. And then, I don't remember exactly when, but in 2020, in the middle of the year, I think, they announced a collaboration with Kanye West. Did you, did that take you by surprise?

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Literally, like when the world found out, we found out. And then people were on our timeline being like, wait, what happened to the Telfar one? Twitter just went.

• 1:14:25Guy Raz?

  They went bananas because they were like, wait a minute, what's going on with Telfar collaboration?

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the TC people got to the bottom of it.

• 1:14:34Guy Raz?

  Your stans on the Twitters.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  But at the same time, we hated that because they made it about competition.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  They made it really vicious and just like completely missed the point.

• 1:14:45Guy Raz?

  Like Yeezy versus Telfar kind of thing, which is not what you wanted.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Completely, completely couldn't be more honest.

• 1:14:51Guy Raz?

  But in the meantime, you hadn't been paid. Gap didn't pay you.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:55Guy Raz?

  So from my research, that the, the Telfar fans online, when they found out that you, you had not been paid by Gap, they mounted a social media campaign and Gap did actually pay you for your work.

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were paid.

• 1:15:11Guy Raz?

  And, and did you just leave that relationship like, okay, whatever, that's fine, no hard feelings?

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were not stressed about it, to be honest.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  We were stressed about it. I thought that that was a bigger lose for them. And also too, just seeing how things unfolded, I wanted nothing to do with that situation. Like, I was happy. That's Kanye's gig. It was like, for me, once I saw how they operated within that, I'm really glad things just turned out the way how they did. It's the best possible case scenario.

• 1:15:44Guy Raz?

  Did that change the way you think about working with a big brand?

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely. It taught us so much.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  We also no longer needed to, right? The whole reason why we collaborate changed because of our material position. Like, we're not looking for that check, actually. We're looking to develop a product that somebody is better at making, or that would take us two years to do.

• 1:16:10Guy Raz?

  So, when, so essentially it was like a blessing in disguise?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like, everything I think that has happened to us has been that case, you know?

• 1:16:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, because 2020 was a catastrophe for the fashion industry, but, and I'm sure this is not easy or fun for you to say, but it was a record year for Telfar, for your brand.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm proud of that. And I'm proud that we exited the fashion industry. That's why.

• 1:16:35Guy Raz?

  You exited the fashion industry. That is how you...

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  We exited the fashion system, I would say.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  That was our plan.

• 1:16:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  It was like, we need to get out of here.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  It's just like...

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  This is not safe.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not safe. It's just also not in your best interests. My interests are to make really cool things, get them to people that want them, and continue to do this throughout my life and continue to make my own money.

• 1:17:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  And not give my money to someone else that didn't help me do this.

• 1:17:04Guy Raz?

  So, instead of being in a system where you are totally at the mercy of distributors and retailers and the fashion press, et cetera, you said, "Forget about all of that. Let's not even be involved. Let's not engage with that. Let's just do our own thing. We will make the bricks. We will build the building. We will own the land. We will sell the products."

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  And also take our time to do it, because the fashion industry imposes this really strange time, where you're supposed to be successful, when no one, you know, it's just like, no one's even seen this thing.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  You're overproducing by design, right? Two collections, like, you know, 400 items every six months.

• 1:17:45Guy Raz?

  Right, right. And wasteful.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely wasteful and you end up, when you have to make like that, that's why you're selling a pair of jeans for a thousand dollars. Is because you didn't figure out the supply chain at all for that, right? It takes a year to figure that out.

• 1:18:03Guy Raz?

  One of the really interesting things that you did was, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, so I hope it doesn't come out that way. But you kind of used the machinery of the fashion industry to build yourself up to a certain level. And once you were able to make the choice to completely reject it and move away and start your own thing. And that may have been that $400,000 grant in 2017 that kind of helped you to jumpstart it. You were able to do it, right? Because you had, you kind of got to the point as far as you could get with the fashion industry. And you knew that in order to grow and to thrive, you had to leave it. Is that, is that a fair interpretation?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That was the approach, is how do we get out of this?

• 1:18:54Guy Raz?

  Tough. I'm curious. I mean, you came to New York as a 17 year old selling T-shirts that you recreated on Mulberry Street, right? And your handbags are worn by some of the most famous people on the planet. Some of the most influential tastemakers. When you see them holding your bag with your logo on it, I don't know. Do you think, my God, that's just, that's wild?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  It makes me smile. It makes me smile. I'm really, really, really happy about that part of it, you know? Because that's how I meant it to be. That's in my view, that's what I think is successful. Like when I turn my head three times when I leave my house and I see one each time I turn my head and it's a different person. That's like, oh yeah, cool. I'm smiling constantly, you know? Because it's literally like a reminder that I did something in culture.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  That is fab.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  It's like you literally did that. You changed how someone dressed and that's the only thing that I wanted to do.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  I mean, we appreciate, you know, the well-known people who buy the bag. But that wasn't our trajectory. Like they bought the bag afterwards. Which is great, but we always joke like they saw their assistant had it, you know?

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  It's like, damn, my assistant looks good. It's that bag that they have. It's like, you know, like, it's like.

• 1:20:18Guy Raz?

  But let's talk about what you want to be in 10 years from now, because what do you think this brand will be? It will be handbags, there will be clothing that people wear. What else? I mean, tell me, what's your vision?

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  I definitely do, I already do have a 360 brand. I want it to be accessible. Like, you can go to a store and get the things that you want to get, you know?

• 1:20:44Guy Raz?

  And it's going to be a Telfar store?

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  A Telfar store.

• 1:20:46Guy Raz?

  And what's going to be in that store?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Definitely clothes, definitely accessories, and definitely an experience.

• 1:20:54Guy Raz?

  Candles, home, like, housewares, things like that?

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Candles, pianos.

• 1:21:00Guy Raz?

  Backbones. I mean, it's interesting, because in fashion, there are very few intergenerational iconic brands. Like, I think of Converse as an example, Converse high tops, or Wayfair sunglasses. But it's very hard to produce an intergenerational brand in fashion.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  And necessary, like, that's what we love to see, you know, when it's like three generations in the same thing.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Of someone, yeah, yeah. It's like, your grandma has the bag, and then your brother, and then your mom, you know? It's like, intergenerational, multigendered, like, multirace.

• 1:21:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Different economic statuses. It's like, love it so much.

• 1:21:44Guy Raz?

  When you think about this journey, because it's been a long time. I mean, you started this brand in 2005, Telfar, and have, you know, for most of it, most of its time until very recently, were working without massive recognition, without, you know, the kind of awareness that you have now. How much of that do you think has to do with? Just how hard you worked and how much you put into it? And how much do you think has to do with luck?

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  I worked hard, you know? I've had to do some shit that other people would not, could not, should not.

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Should not.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Should not, you know? It's like you don't need to ride bikes in the winter with your collection on your bike in the snow to get it home, you know? Like, it's like, people wouldn't do certain things that I did to do this. I did it and I'm proud of what I've done, you know? But I wouldn't, I got what I got out of it. Definitely hard work pays off, but I wouldn't be like, oh yeah, you need to do that to be successful. It's like, there's lots of people that are successful doing not that.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  Don't let this be a lesson.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just what I had to do.

• 1:22:55Guy Raz?

  How about you, Babak?

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  The work versus luck? It wasn't work or luck, because there's a lot of ways in which it was very specifically what we did and what we worked on that made it successful. And that those decisions seem to fly in the face of the pursuit of success. And it's not going to work for everybody, right? But if we're talking specifically to somebody like us, then I would say that you can't be in a position where you're binding your success or your survival to your exploitation. And that's the position that we're put in, in the creative industries in general.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Like, we need the platform, we need the budget, we need the distribution. And in order to change that situation, you literally have to change a situation. You have to change your environment, not just adapt to it all the time. And you need community to do that. You need to do it with other people.

• 1:23:56Guy Raz?

  What is the thing that most excites you about where your business is headed?

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Uh, the freedom of us being in charge of that.

• 1:24:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  And not being owned by anyone else that's going to impose anything that we don't want to do on us.

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  I mean, definitely, that is the actual process of it, that it's enjoyable to do this now and it doesn't feel like work or translation or gymnastics, like.

• 1:24:22Guy Raz?

  Or you're going to get in trouble if you don't do this thing for someone else.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  And, you know, we're trying to create a place where we can share this relationship that we have with our. Community, I guess is the word for it, or conspiracy with other people, you know?

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  Love to have a record label.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there are so many things that we want to do within, like, just like our general relationships with our friends and collaborators that actually are benefiting them and they're getting their work heard and seen without censorship or, you know, like, anyone telling them, you know, they need to do something in order to do that.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, the process, you know, we actually are doing what we want to do. And I feel like that that is the message. That's what people are responding to.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  The underlying reality of the thing.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Not just the image.

• 1:25:18Guy Raz?

  That's Babak Radboy, creative director of Telfar, along with the brand's founder, Telfar Clemens. And by the way, for last year's Summer Olympics, Telfar sponsored the Liberian Olympic team and designed the uniforms, which you can see on the Telfar website. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to contact us, our email address is [email protected]. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at How I Built This and mine is at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, we're at How I Built This NPR and mine is at Guy dot Raz. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard

• 1:26:00Guy Raz?

  with music composed by Rumtin Arablouei. It was edited by Eva Grant with research help from Farah Safari. Our audio engineer was Stu Rushfield. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, Julia Carney, Elaine Coats, Liz Metzger, Kerry Thompson, and Alex Chung. Our intern is Margaret Serino. Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 1:26:29Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.