Founded in 2005, unisex fashion line TELFAR was ignored by the mainstream fashion press for a decade due to its non-racial/non-gendered vision of fashion. Since winning the 2017 Vogue/CFDA fashion fund, TELFAR has been developing a mode of presentation based on musical collaborations that emphasize what is collectively owned and essentially human in style and music. Founded by Telfar Clemens and since its inception in 2005, unisex line TELFAR has continually challenged the conventions of the fashion industry through unexpected executions, among them, mobile pop-up presentations, artistic instructional films (about topics like layering), and an online video game for adding colour to TELFAR pieces. TELFAR disrupts fashion conventions with its inclusive, democratically horizontal, “simplex” aesthetic (simple + complex). Laying the blueprint for today’s black avant-garde, TELFAR has been launching projects with a remarkably horizontal cultural impact — from collaborations with Solange Knowles at the Guggenheim Museum to designing the nationwide uniforms for over 10,000 employees of the US fast-food chain White Castle. After winning the 2017 Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund, TELFAR is poised to take its place in the foreground of America’s fashion future. Babak Radboy is the creative director of TELFAR and the non-profit platform Bidoun Projects. He has collaborated with artists and writers such as Roe Ethridge, Bjarne Melgaard and Chris Kraus and his commercial clients range from Kanye West and Hugo Boss to the fast-food chain White Castle.