Want to be a top model? New York designer Telfar Clemens will premiere his brand’s first-ever reality casting show during his 20th anniversary show over Juneteenth weekend.
New Models is a one-hour special that follows contestants as they take on a variety of challenges. At the end, the live audience votes to decide who will walk the runway.
The show is entirely street-cast, with only new faces. (After an open call for contestants on Instagram, the line stretched four or five blocks down the street.)
Contestants will then compete in a series of contests all about movement and self-expression, like the “Black Gaze Challenge” and the “Crazy Khaki Contest.”
The experience is “part game show, part media experiment, and totally Telfar,” according to a press release.
It’s also a new take on Telfar TV. The brand launched its media platform in 2021 in partnership with the Ummah Chroma Collective (“Community of Color”) – a 24-hour live linear TV network designed to address issues of censorship, visibility, and broadcast autonomy.
“Essentially, we launched a TV channel with no content – because we were tired of providing content for other channels,” says the Telfar website.
Clemens founded his eponymous brand in New York in 2005 with the tagline “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone.”
He is known for his cult shopping bags, also known as “Bushwick Birkins,” as well as unisex clothing and accessories. As Beyoncé sings in “Summer Revival,” “This Telfar bag imported Birkins, they’re like garbage in the closet.”
In 2024, the designer opened his first flagship store near New York’s Canal Street. Since its inception, Telfar has been challenging fashion conventions, and the first reality show casting in years is no exception.