GREATEST: Jerry Lorenzo
Fear of God designer and founder, Jerry Lorenzo, discusses his Fifth Collection, moving into the footwear space, and why he wants you to feel something.
You’ve been outspoken about being a self-taught designer, learning the ins and outs of fashion production, fabric sourcing, etc. from the ground up. Given Fear of God’s exponential success since its inception five years ago, were there any early hiccups or setbacks when you first started the line that caused doubts for you to continue?
I think the entire process is filled with setbacks. There are always more reasons to stop what you’re doing. The amount of times I lost, whether it was $10- $15- or $20,000, or making bad purchase decisions on fabric, there have been more times where it made sense to stop this dream and to focus on reality. I had just had a son at the time, I was a party promoter, and I knew I didn’t want to go into my late 30s as a party promoter while being a father at the same time.
I needed to make a way. I was headstrong on making a way through fashion, and I was convinced that what I had to say wasn’t being said at the time. I really felt that there were pieces missing from my closet that were then missing from others’ as well.
There is a clear definition now of Fear of God’s aesthetic, in large part due to the emphasis placed on mastering shape and proportion when the pieces are worn. Can you tell us about the progression from each collection Fear of God has released, starting with the First and Second Collection (extra-long tees, short-sleeve side-zip hoodies) versus what we’re seeing now with the Fifth Collection?
The progression is just that - it’s a progression. My production manager is better, so I’m dealing with better fabrics, better materials, and the construction of my garments is better as well. I feel like I’m still saying the same thing, but my vocabulary is enhanced because I have a better team around me. I’m able to say these things more eloquently, in a more elevated way than I was during my First Collection, when I was walking through Downtown picking up French terry in a random spot, or when I was trying to find Riri zippers to make this thing feel like luxury. I knew the shape and the silhouette was a luxurious proposition, although the fabrication wasn’t in line with the idea. I feel like the idea has always been the same and that is a luxury point of view.
How often are you looking back at what you’ve done - like the extra-long tees and the short-sleeve side-zip hoodies that were staples from your First Collection?
We still do that. The long tank underneath is now mesh, and it’s a basketball jersey. The more I understand why I was so into that long tee, now I know because I’ve dug into my references as to why I have an emotional connection to certain things. The long tee is just a long basketball jersey that we’ve seen in fashion forever. It was what I used to wear in high school underneath my hoodie. We’re still doing that long tank top but it’s in mesh now, and now you see it hanging underneath a t-shirt and it looks more like a jersey; it doesn’t feel like a trendy long tank anymore.
To go back to your question about looking back, I guess if I’m more proud of anything, I can look back at those designs, and if I were to put those [pieces from the First Collection] into the Fifth Collection, they’d still fit. One of the things I’m trying to do is create timeless pieces, just modernized. If you have a piece from the First, Second, or Third Collection, you don’t feel like it’s out of style. It’s always a piece you can somehow fit into your wardrobe.
The Fifth Collection ‘96-look campaign is my favorite for many reasons, the main one being that it features an all-brown cast of models (Geron, Sasha, Selena, Alanna, and Adonis). As a female person of color, the entire collection and how it was presented really resonated with me. What was the creative process behind not only the short film directed by Lane Stewart but also the narrative for the lookbook campaign?
I was at a place when I was making the Fifth Collection, where I’d lost a lot in my life and people who I thought were my friends. I wasn’t a part of crews that I had been a part of in the past. I was forced to look at myself in the mirror and forced to really dig deep and understand what it is I’m trying to say. The deeper I looked, I realized that the muse was myself this whole time.
Even with the First Collection, it was this kind of grungy white kid that maybe I went to high school with. The Second Collection was more like a London skinhead vibe. All those muses were still put through my lens of how I would dress if I was like this kid. I realized in this Fifth Collection that, hey, this muse is myself – this high school athlete from the 90s who doesn’t know anything about fashion, who is taking whatever he can from his closet to put together a dope outfit, you know? If it’s a football jersey over a hoodie, or if it’s track pants and a basketball jersey underneath a t-shirt, etc. and in telling that story with myself being the muse of that, I’m a person of color. I’m getting older and my son, who is now six, my daughters are now four, they are becoming more interested in what I’m doing. I feel a responsibility to show a cast of characters who look like them.
To go back to your point of seeing a cast of color, it was a purposeful thing. It was something I felt was necessary, especially where we are right now as a country, for kids of color to look and to see themselves - through a luxurious lens.
What’s the story behind the couch that you used in the short film for the Fifth Collection?
All the furniture you see is my grandmother’s. We shot the Fifth Collection film at her home in Sacramento. We actually drove the furniture down to L.A., shot it in the studio, and drove it back up the next day to shoot the film inside her house. She passed away last year and so I wanted to honor her. I wanted people to really see where I’m getting these references from and understand [when you see me in the film] flipping through this photo album, and you’re seeing my dad’s baseball things and understanding why there’s a baseball jersey in my collection. You’re seeing my son watching basketball and taking in these references. (He kind of plays a younger version of me.)
We start the film shooting it in my grandmother’s house, walking through seeing a younger version of myself. Then the film transcends to this place outside of time, which was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the very end of that movie, there’s a room set with this furniture in eternity, like this intergalactic place stuck in time. When our film transitions I turn into Geron McKinley, who is like a good-looking version of myself. It’s now set in a place where all of those memories are alive – where time doesn’t exist. We were trying to honor my grandma, understanding that she’s in heaven, and take her furniture from this small house in Sacramento and show her how it would look like in heaven with the models.
My favorite scene is when you’re walking outside alongside your son, but you both aren’t in the same frame yet. He’s just walking along the sidewalk next to you and he sees a puddle and jumps over it. The whole film is so impactful.
I’m trying to get my audience to feel something. That’s why we do videos and not fashion shows. I want you to feel something. I want you to understand the emotion and the roots of how deep this is.
I was just talking to my buddy who was here on-set today with us, explaining to him how we did these New Era hats. The hat is from the team that drafted my dad. It’s the Detroit Tigers’ “D.” Their legal said no. I had to fly down to Detroit and explain to them, “Hey, you drafted my dad in the first round in high school. I’m only trying to shed light on the organization, I’m not trying to take anything away."
Every detail, there’s a story that means something. I feel like as a designer today, my fans have so much access to me and with that access comes responsibility. As much as I hate it, I need to over-explain the pieces and why the proportions are what they are. Why they cost what they cost. It’s made here in Los Angeles and you know, this is the story behind why we use a basketball short, because the muse is a high school athlete. Not because it’s fashionable to have a basketball short. It fits the story. So yeah, I’m glad you felt that, because what we do is 90% emotion and 10% physicality.
I’ve shot for you numerous times, but what’s so amazing to see from the outside looking in, while the fashion and the construction and the draping of your pieces pull you in, what makes Fear of God stick with people, is your emphasis on faith and family.
If we shift gears a little bit to the Fourth Collection, this was the first time you introduced denim and the Military Sneaker. How did you decide to move into the footwear space? What made you want to move into the footwear space?
I’m not going to say I’m responsible for the desert storm boot taking off the way it did a few years ago, but we did use that shoe in the Third Collection and I felt like it did hit culture in a way. You started to see kids try to find these vintage desert storm boots from the 90s and mix it with their wardrobe. That gave me the confidence that I could have an opinion in footwear. Furthermore, I just wanted to tell a complete story. There wasn’t one shoe in the marketplace that I could style my collection with and do it justice. I needed to propose something there. What we do in footwear, 90% of the time, it’s designing the shape, the last that goes inside the shoe and controls the shape of the shoe. For anyone that is designing footwear, design lines can change from the outside of the shoe, but the shape is really what you put your heart and soul into. I get a lot of noise from kids saying that my shoe looks like other shoes. I’m like, yeah, but you’ve never felt a shape like this. You’ve never seen this before. This is a new proposition. You’ve never seen a sole the way our sole is modernized. And it’s done in a way that allows for us to have a vintage throwback upper, but because it sits on a sole and it has a sleeker sexier shape you’re not used to seeing in performance shoes (or even other luxury shoes). It has a different feel to it.
I really want to say something around shoes and voice my opinion there, so for the Fourth Collection I put together all my favorite shoes into this Military Sneaker – the desert storm boot, the Nike Vandal, you see that in there. It’s a juxtaposition of a lot of shoes, even the Air Force 1. The way we’re able to play with the toe box, sometimes it looks like a sneaker, sometimes it looks like a boot, depending on the fabrics and materials we play with.
So yeah, in the Fourth Collection we introduced denim and footwear. Again, because I have a good team, with the Fifth Collection we’re able to now introduce the alpaca, corduroy, satins that we hadn’t played with before. We released four new sneaker silhouettes: the Hiking Sneaker, the Jungle Sneaker, the Basketball Sneaker, and now the Military Sneaker. We also have accessories – hats and bandanas. There’s still a lot of room for us to grow. I’m looking forward to the Sixth Collection to introduce new ideas.
How involved was the process going back and forth from L.A. to Italy to master the final construction and look of that first silhouette?
It was about a year-long process of going to Italy with a sketch and telling them this is exactly what I wanted the shoe to look like. Not knowing everything that would go into making a shoe and fighting about shape half the time. Not knowing that it was the last that was wrong. We realized, oh, we have to design the last first. It was a learning process, but again, moving with conviction and knowing that if I get the shape right I’d be okay. The shoe and the design lines can change but the shoe shape has to be changed and perfected. We still deal with production issues there. We were supposed to release our Basketball Sneaker this month, but the sample we got from production had changed the shoe a little bit. It felt like a wedge. So we had to destroy about 600 pairs of shoes.
To the naked eye, some people probably would have never seen the difference. But to me, as a brand owner, and not having any partners, all I have is that product. I can’t afford to sell a kid a shoe that costs a $1,000 and it not be perfect by my standards and so we fight that battle daily. It’s not an easy battle to fight when you’re an up-and-coming brand and you’re dealing with factories that are dealing with Chanel, Fendi, and Prada doing units at 20 times what I’m doing. We’re a very small fish in a big pond, but we believe that what we have to say is different and we’re trying to respect these opportunities as best we can with the best possible product.
With mentioning the big fashion houses like Chanel, Fendi, and Prada, and seeing Fear of God mentioned in that same circle but knowing you have a small independent team working with you, how does it feel to have a brand that is, in a way, in a league of its own?
I think it’s when you know that you see something different and it gives you the confidence that you can do it. I know that I see fashion differently than the majority of people. Not that how I see it is correct, but I have a different point of view, and I feel like it’s valid. There’s a customer that is interested in what I have to say, and that there’s enough of that customer to keep Fear of God going. I don’t really see it as competing with other houses. I just look at it as what I’m putting out is different. The way I see it, is different from how you see it. So I’m not concerned that you’re necessarily speaking to the same person I’m speaking to, because I know what that person wants to hear.
If we talk sneakers for a moment - were there any specific shoes you recall wearing or collecting growing up?
I grew up here [in L.A.] and graduated high school in ‘95. I was in the middle of The Bulls’ Golden Years. It was only Nike, it was only Flight, it was only Jordans. There was nothing else to compare sneakers to. Your wardrobe was based on a dope pair of sneakers. That bar was set by Jordan, that’s just what it was. I was never a “sneakerhead,” I just wanted the Jordans. Back then, that’s all that there was. Now there are names for the Jordans, they’re retro’d, and there are more shoe collaborations, but I just wanted that sneaker [Jordans]. Every Christmas, I’d hope I’d get that new pair of Jordans under the tree and that’s what I’d build my outfit around.
How did the Fear of God ‘1987’ collection with the black and white Basketball Sneaker come about?
A lot of people, their references only go back so far. They see a black sneaker with white laces and they think of a specific luxury sneaker, and I was trying to educate my customer on where this came from. The Boston Celtics from ‘84 to ‘88, they all wore black sneakers with white shoelaces. As a kid, I thought that that was the dopest thing. As much as I hated the Celtics and grew up a Lakers fan, it was either Magic or Bird. And of course growing up black in America, I was a Lakers fan. I always loved the Celtics uniform and whether they had on Converse, Reebok, or Nikes, all the sneakers were black with white laces. The shoe that we did, it was from an L.A. Gear shoe that was a knockoff of another shoe from that era. I was trying to tell a story of why the color palette is what it is. Why the design is what it is, and in order to tell that story, we put it next to the ‘87 team [the ‘87 team lost to the Lakers that year. But it was the year that that shoe came out]. I was really trying to tell a complete story and give a modernized feel of 1987 fast forwarded to 2017.
I really liked how all the black and white Fear of God Basketball Sneakers were lined up on the back of the wall with the old school stadium seats inside the store.
Yeah, our shoe is made in Italy and Back Door Bottega is the number-one basketball sneaker store, probably in Europe, so it was important for us to do it there. In the shop, they have a beautiful wall with all the Jordans up there – from the Jordan 1 to the latest one out right now. There is all this messaging behind taking down the Jordans and putting up the Fear of God sneaker. We did a video where during that series in ‘86-‘87, they had “I Hate L.A.” t-shirts that all the Boston fans wore. So we flipped it and made tees that said “I Love L.A.” and had the Randy Newman “I Love L.A.” song in the video, which is the song you hear when the Dodgers or Lakers win a game. [With the ‘1987’ collection], it was really honoring that time period. If you were a Lakers fan, you’d have to respect the Celtics for being that rival. It was just looking at that time period as a kid and honoring the Lakers as much as the Celtics. But bringing it back to fashion and using that Boston Celtics palette as the backdrop for the story.
Anyone who has been following you knows of your vintage clothing collection. Do you still have a large number of them?
I think I started off with maybe 500 to 700 or 1,000 tees, and then I started printing on them and selling them. As we did that, I went through my whole collection and saved maybe 100. I started to source them and am still going through that exercise. It was me saying, hey, I’m not a graphic artist, I can’t make a dope graphic and put it on a tee the way other artists can, but I can propose to you what I feel is the best t-shirt. To me, that’s a vintage tee from the 80s or 90s. It’s faded, it’s aged, it’s boxy, the cotton is broken down, the shape and the proportion are perfect, and the graphic is timeless. So it was me printing on them and authenticating each of those tees.
Each kid who has a Fear of God vintage tee knows that they have a one-of-one tee that no one else has. I thought that that was more special than a fashion house selling fashion t-shirts at $600 and putting out 1,000 of the exact same thing. I thought it was a special way of putting my mark on what I think is the best tee.
I first photographed you when Fear of God unveiled its ‘Chapel of God’ collection at Maxfield LA with Chapel NY over a year ago (seems like it has been longer). Since then, you’ve allowed me the opportunity to shoot you, the ‘Purpose’ tour collection for Barneys, the ‘1997’ collection most recently, and so on. Even though you manage to make everything look effortlessly cool, does it ever feel like you’re still learning things as you go in maintaining the line?
Yeah, I feel like I’m always learning. I’ve kind of stopped searching for this ultimate cool look, and realized that it’s not so much about finding the coolest thing. It’s about having an opinion and being able to really communicate that.
Now, I’m like, just give me the best team so we can say this in the most eloquent, elevated, luxurious way out of Los Angeles. I’m kind of obsessed with getting the team together, getting the fabrics, getting the materials, and really saying what I’ve really always been trying to say since the First Collection, which is this California wardrobe that feels effortless and is appropriate for any situation.
Whether you’re going to the gym or to a lunch meeting or a movie date, whatever it is you’re doing, you can put on Fear of God and feel comfortable and luxurious. What I’m trying to do for my customer is free him up. I’m trying to give you something where you can be yourself and still feel chic. Many times with menswear fashion, you’re getting a Hedi Slimane proportion and the jeans are way too tight for you. That proportion isn’t right, but you want to say that you look “fashion,” so you’re kind of looking a little bit off? So I’m trying to have my guy look “fashion” and not have a bunch of logos all over him, still look cool, be himself, and be comfortable.
What have been some of the best stand-out moments to you thus far in Fear of God’s five-year history?
I feel like when I first put out Fear of God and we did pre-orders, at that time, I’m looking at all the orders coming in and kind of getting excited. I saw my mom and dad’s name pop up, and they had pre-ordered something. It just brought me down to exactly why I do what I do. Anything that has happened after that has never felt like the way that felt, you know? It grounded me from the beginning, and I’m like, oh, this is why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s not for me. How do I carry the legacy of my parents? How do I make something that I can pass down to my kids? There have been a lot of highlights. Not that I’m not excited about them or that they don’t make me feel good. I just feel like these things are supposed to be happening. This is the journey. These things are supposed to happen. And as exciting as these things are, these things are going to pass too. Just like bad times. You can’t get caught up in it and think that it’s bigger than what the purpose is. It’s always understanding the purpose and making sure that the purpose stays most important, and that has been my key.
Interview and Photography: Diane Abapo