What do Telfar Handbags Have to Do With Writing?

YOU CAN LEARN A LOT FROM THIS DESIGNER

I’m curious how many of you are familiar with Telfar? He’s a New York-based fashion designer who’s become super popular, mainly because of his handbags. Whether you’re familiar with him or not, I’m going to tell you what he did to make his handbags so popular and the lessons you can take and apply to your writing.

Who is Telfar?

OK, so a brief summary of who Telfar is before we get into why I’m writing about him today. He was born in Queens, New York to Liberian parents. He actually went back to Liberia briefly before the 1989 civil war forced his parents back to New York. His family then moved to Maryland where Telfar first started playing with fashion by deconstructing and reconstructing clothing that he would sell to his friends. He moved back to New York for university, where he studied accounting. Studied is a strong word. Telfar just really wanted to be back in New York and still spent most of his time in fashion instead of class.

Telfar officially started in 2005 with his first sponsored runway show. He created a bit of a buzz but the 2008 recession brought his line to an end. Telfar himself thought he might be done with fashion, but then he produced an art exhibition that also incorporated elements of fashion and that jump-started his passion again.

Unexpected partnerships lift Telfar’s status

In 2013, Telfar partnered with his friend Babak Radboy, making him Creative Director of his brand, with Radboy’s main goal being to build brand recognition. Telfar was known in the New York scene as an emerging designer back then but hadn’t yet broken through to mainstream popularity. He’d done some fashion shows and dressed some celebrities, but nothing major enough to make Telfar a household name in the industry.

But Telfar also wasn’t a nobody. He did have some clout and so Babak had some leverage when thinking of ways to gain more exposure to Telfar’s clothing. One of those ideas was to partner with K-Mart. This sounds odd because Telfar was creating high-end clothing at the time and K-Mart is a discount store, but it made sense, and as you’ll see, ended up making Telfar lots of dollars.

The thing is, even though Telfar was designing more exclusive clothing and accessories, his tagline was “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone.” He wanted his clothing to be accessible and so partnering with a brand like K-Mart, which is all about access, made sense.

Babak setup a K-Mart looking pop-up shop and displayed Telfar’s clothing on mannequins and hangers throughout the store. Since K-Mart was a shopping store, Telfar figured he’d also design some shopping bags, mainly to act as accessories to his show. However, people loved the bags and those became the most popular item at the popup.

Telfar doubles down on his handbags

By 2017, Telfar was getting noticed by influential players in the industry. That led to him being the recipient of the Vogue Fashion Fund, which provides resources to select up-and-coming fashion designers. What do I mean by resources? Well, Telfar was given $400,000 to put towards his brand. That’s a significant investment, but you still need to know what to do with that kind of money to have the most impact and Telfar and his partner knew exactly what to do.

Telfar could’ve funded another collection or invested in different parts of his line. But what he did instead was double down on his handbags. By doubling down, I mean Telfar spent nearly the entire 400 grand on producing more handbags. He did different sizes and styles, but he focused on bags and nothing else.

Remember his slogan “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone.” Telfar honoured that statement and priced his most expensive handbags at about $250. For those of you who aren’t super familiar with fashion, $250 for a designer handbag is like paying $500 for a diamond necklace. Seriously, similar handbags would retail for thousands of dollars but Telfar made the decision to keep them accessible. That decision would pay off.

Telfar handbags became the “it” thing in fashion. When he did drops (put out new designs), his handbags would sell out in minutes. Today, Telfar has a preorder system that gives his customers 24 hours to make a purchase. He then produces however many bags are ordered over those 24 hours.

What can writers learn from this?

There’s a very simple but profound lesson for writers in all of this. For those of you who are blogging and submitting articles to publications to build your profile and accumulate readers, choose a lane and dominate. My friend Allison Gaines is a master of this. She writes about race, specifically as it relates to Black people in America. She’s a brilliant writer who can write about other things, but when you scroll through her content, you know exactly what you’re getting. It’s the reason she’s been able to attract over 6,000 followers, all of those since starting in late 2020.

This lesson can go for authors, too, including myself. I used to run away from the label of being a YA writer. Even though my main characters were always teenagers, I didn’t promote my first two, self-published books as YA. Being labelled as anything felt limiting to me, and I wanted to feel free as a writer and not be compressed into any one genre.

It wasn’t until writing my current novel, Boys And Girls Screaming, where I first accepted that YA title. I wrote the story with intention, understanding my audience and what that meant for the way I constructed the story.

To my surprise, I wasn’t limited at all. Even with the parameters I set for myself, the creativity flowed out of me. I love all of the books I wrote, but I’m most proud of Boys And Girls Screaming because it’s the story where I most depended on my imagination. It’s also my first published book, which isn’t as surprising. I knew this would be the one partly because I chose my lane as a YA writer and ran with it.

As you read this right now, I’ve signed another publishing deal with Scholastic to produce a middle-grade story and I am in the midst of closing another publishing deal for a YA manuscript titled And Then There Was Us. Accepting this label has injected life into my career as an author and I’m literally living my dream every single day.

Having said that, if I ever want to write an adult book, I will. I’m enjoying the stories I’m writing now and find purpose in all of them. I want to continue till I completely dominate this lane and that means selling books. But I don’t feel constricted at all, I feel inspired. Narrowing my focus has expanded my reach as an author. I know who I’m writing about and who I want to most feel impacted by my books.

We’re all writers here, and I know that as writers, we want to express what’s in our souls. And sometimes what’s in our soul changes day by day. But if you want to become the superstar writer I know you’re capable of becoming, then find that thing you’re most passionate about and show readers why it would be worth their time reading your pieces.