The Bushwick Birkin

In any given city, one should expect a change of scenery from traveling to different neighborhoods or boroughs. Brooklyn, NY, is no exception. Assembled among brick townhouses resides the gentrification portending neighborhood café, the ethnically ambiguous neighborhood bodega, the old lady on the stoop who serves as the neighborhood watchman, and the genderless neighborhood bag: The Telfar shopping bag, also known as the Bushwick Birkin.

Over the last couple of years, thanks to fashion’s sudden interest in inclusion, the Telfar shopping bag became a status symbol for cool kids who synced up with the label’s message: “It’s not for you, it’s for everyone.” Indeed, according to the founder and designer Telfar Clemens, what the bag represents extends far beyond luxury as he declares, “What makes the bag really different is that it is a status bag, and the status has nothing to do with price.” Available in three sizes and nine different colors, these “TC” logo embroidered bags hang on the arms of young, creative New Yorkers instead of socialite Manhattanites.

The inspiration behind the hero product came to Clemens a few Christmases ago. "Just looking at everyone with their paper shopping bags, I realized that this is a completely unisex silhouette. We measured a Bloomingdale's bag to make the first sample. When it came to the price, I based it on what a DJ might make in a night; that’s what felt right for me,” explains Clemens, who used to DJ in his home neighborhood of Queens in his 20s. For a brand on the rise like Telfar, who generated more than $2 million in revenue in 2019 following a 15-year-build-up, COVID-19 could not have come at a worse time.

“There were so many opportunities that were on the brink of happening that there is no reason to follow up on right now,” admits creative director Babak Radboy, referring to an indefinitely postponed Gap partnership as one of the many.

Nevertheless, Telfar has one thing other young yet trendy brands do not: A strong community of loyal customers and collaborators who formed meaningful relationships with the brand. Telfar grew organically with an old-school trendsetting effort every PR endorsement hopes to achieve; it was on the train, then at the coffee shop, and at brunch, and soon enough, people started to wonder what the hell it was. Despite the pandemic, the label sold out 1,000 units of its latest bag drop on its e-commerce site in just 12 hours last month.

You need interested people to be invested in your work for it to succeed, and Telfar has done just that. While this may not guarantee survival for the label during the recession, it sure does raise an interesting point for many brands who spend a fortune on influencer and advertising campaigns only to become one-season wonders. Customers who make purchase decisions off forced hype are not sustainable; even when initiating sales and momentum, it should be quality over quantity for brands to have a longer shelf life.

Telfar’s customers are different because they are the type to show up when the brand needs them the most and rise to the occasion. It would be unfair to expect that kind of loyalty from a customer who once purchased a product they saw on social media out of curiosity. While it is hard to predict who is more likely to survive the COVID-19 era and the aftermath, brands with strong communities, like Telfar, seem to have the upper hand, at least for now.