Did Gap drop its collaboration with Telfar for one with Yeezy?
Gap’s recent announcement of a new collaboration with Kanye West’s fashion label Yeezy made headlines for the simple reason that anything West does cannot go unnoticed. And as excited as everyone is about the upcoming collection, this news also raised questions about Gap’s prior collaboration commitments with the fashion brand Telfar, which have now been ‘indefinitely postponed’. Did Gap just drop Telfar for Yeezy?
In January, when Gap—an American brand that seems to have been there since day one—announced its upcoming partnership with Telfar, one of the most provocative designers in the US, the news was arguably the most exciting collaboration of 2020. When Telfar shared on Instagram a hybrid of the two brands’ iconic logos, the post racked up more than 15,000 likes. The announcement resulted in an impressive celebration at Gap’s multi-level store in Paris during the Men Fashion Week, where the location was turned into an after-hours club.
As reported by Vogue, it was planned that Gap would debut the product drops later in 2020. Founder and designer Telfar Clemens and his team had met with Gap in 2019 and felt inspired by the way Gap caters to “regular people.” For many, this meant that not only would the collaboration be fashun but it would also be affordable! For Clemens, working with Gap was a dream come true.
But in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collaboration was halted. In an interview with Business of Fashion, Telfar Clemens and his business partner Babak Radboy mentioned the partnership: “We have to stick together and figure out what we all want to do as a team, moving forward. And if the environment allows us to continue, how does that work?” This was on 7 April, two months before Yeezy revealed the new collaboration. Since then, many had questioned whether the Telfar collaboration was still happening given no official statement had been made at the time.
Enters more drama, when rumours spread that the Telfar team had only heard about the Yeezy collaboration at the time it was announced and that no payments had been made to the team for the work it had already done.
According to Hypebeast, Gap sent an email to Telfar in March noting that the team-up would need to be pushed to 2021 with contracts adjusted to reflect the change. Telfar was reportedly offered a “25 per cent of the design fee as an advance for work completed” but never paid in the end.
On 27 June in an interview with Business of Fashion, Gap finally confirmed that the collaboration with Telfar had been dropped. The brand also addressed the non-payment allegations: “While we’ve chosen not to move forward with the Gap x Telfar partnership at this time, we’re making whole on our payment regardless and have only respect and appreciation for Telfar’s time and vision.”
Now that we know for sure that Yeezy replaced Telfar, we’re eager to see whether Kanye West will be able to revive the struggling brand that had a steep decline in sales even before COVID-19. The collaboration will be available in stores and online at one point in 2021—that is, if it doesn’t get cancelled before that.
