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The creator of the ‘Bushwick Birkin’ is headed to London. And this relocation is just one of the ways Telfar is ripping up its playbook for the launch of its first real leather bag.
The Carry will debut at Selfridges’s The Corner Shop, available in-store from 30 September to 2 November. It’s a pebble leather carryall and is embossed with the Telfar T logo, just like the shopper. The Carry will only be available at the physical space, a sharp pivot from Telfar’s infamous online-only drop model.
“The Carry is not optimised for Instagram. It should not sell out in two minutes. You should not buy it from a picture,” the release reads. “Every aspect of this bag was designed for physical experience: you have to touch it and feel it and carry it to carry The Carry. That’s why we are opening a store.”
It’s a pushback against the luxury industry’s capitalisation on the merchandising and marketing model founder Telfar Clemens popularised with his sell-out drops. Clemens built the brand on a drop model where online 24-hour-only releases would sell out in far less (usually minutes). Luxury soon caught on and began playing into the drop model at far higher price points — just look at Phoebe Philo, which launched with this very model (and far, far higher price points), raising questions about whether the model could work for blue-chip luxury.
Telfar’s brand was built on a unique mix of accessibility (price point) and inaccessibility (scarcity). Luxury brands worked with a different formula: inaccessibility and inaccessibility. This goes against the premise of Clemens’s brand, which, per the release, was “propelled by an actual ‘community’ who, like Telfar, had been intentionally excluded from the industry”.
Telfar’s physical leather release — where product will be available throughout the entire duration of the pop-up — is a rejection of high luxury’s attempts to replicate its approach to fashion. “Now we are coming for their bag,” Telfar’s release reads, referring to the luxury industry. It’ll also help prevent the onslaught of bots that notoriously buy up Telfar stock to resell at prices far higher than retail.
Prices for the leather bags are four times higher than Telfar’s traditional range, but they’re still far more accessible than traditional luxury brand offerings, which have seen higher-than-ever hikes in recent years. Telfar’s Carry costs £391 for the small, £591 for the medium and £953 for the large.
Does Telfar have another hit on its hands? The brand led Rebag’s 2023 Clair report as the top-performing bag. The brand also (ironically) boasts higher value retention rates than a Birkin — Telfar’s is 228 per cent; Hermes’s is 115 per cent, per Rebag.
As well as the new bags, Telfar is launching a 20-piece capsule collaboration collection with Wilsons Leather (prices range from £195 to £495). As is now well-documented, collaborations are the backbone of many independent brand collections and launches. This one feels fitting; the release notes that Wilsons is “a brand which, for many of us, was our first experience of real leather”.
The collection is also a hint at Telfar’s next project. The leather pieces are accompanied by a selection of ribbed basics, which are described as a “sneak peek” at Telfar’s forthcoming collection — where and when is yet to be confirmed. But if this release strategy is anything to go by, it won’t be Bushwick.
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