Jerry Lorenzo, Fear of God and the Elevation of American Sportswear Silhouettes

How the Los Angeles brand affected a global reorientation in streetwear.

WRITER: GREGK FOLEY

At the turn of the 2010s, streetwear was undergoing a mammoth transformation. Thanks to a confluence of factors—such as hip-hop replacing rock as the centerpoint of popular music and Supreme’s dominance of social media feeds—the fashion world began reckoning with the culture, values and signifiers of streetwear. Streetwear, for its part, entered a long period of evolution and maturation, flirting with elevation and luxury while remaining rooted in the casual, comfortable styles that gave it its original appeal.

Several big names were at the forefront of this monumental shift, including Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo. In less than a decade, Lorenzo and Fear of God effected a huge reorientation in American streetwear, constituting the vanguard, if not the original source, of many trends that are now ubiquitous. As the label continues to refine its influential point of view, we recap the history of Fear of God and the multi-hyphenate creative behind it.

Jerry Lorenzo: From Promoter to Designer

Jerry Lorenzo’s professional background is both antithetical to that of the typical fashion house creative director and an inspiring template for the modern clothing designer. Bouncing from Diesel to a sports marketing agency to Los Angeles party promotion, Lorenzo turned to fashion design to fill niches he had identified in the market as a fledgling stylist. Using profits from his successful club nights, Lorenzo produced custom pieces for one of his clients, Matt Kemp of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Over the next few years, he would continue to ply his craft, working with various garment manufacturers in LA as he endeavored to produce premium casual pieces with luxury touches.

Oftentimes, Lorenzo was simply making subtle adjustments to classic silhouettes, tweaking them for the tastes of modern clientele; a slightly-longer hoodie, a lower neckline, longer sleeves and so on. Eventually, some of these pieces found their way into the hands of Virgil Abloh, who then passed them onto Kanye West, and bigger wheels started turning.

Fear of God Debuts

Lorenzo founded his label, Fear of God, in 2013, taking the name from a description of God in a book by the early 20th-century Baptist preacher Oswald Chambers. The inaugural collection was compiled of various designs and ideas Lorenzo had developed over the years, rounded out with new concepts to complete the collection.

Fear of God’s debut captured the aesthetic it would become known for in subsequent releases: classic menswear pieces incorporating references from rap, rock, grunge, metal and all manner of subcultural Americana, typically presented in muted color palettes. Key influences commonly cited by Lorenzo and others include Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and John Bender, the fictional anti-hero from John Hughes’ seminal ’80s coming-of-age film The Breakfast Club.

Around the same time Lorenzo was preparing to launch his own label, he was invited by Kanye West to consult on his nascent collaboration with A.P.C. Their work together on this project helps explain the affinity that exists between Lorenzo’s label and Kanye’s fashion output, placing an emphasis on fine-tuned articulations of key wardrobe pieces. Indeed, the iconic “Hip-Hop T-Shirt” from Kanye’s A.P.C. collection arguably captures the purest expression of both designers’ work; a luxury interpretation of a wardrobe staple, adjusted for the new fashion customer.

Jerry Lorenzo, Kanye West, Justin Bieber and Tour Merch

Following the release of Yeezus in 2013, Kanye adopted a distinctive heavy-metal aesthetic, often dressing in vintage band tees laden with skeletons, roses and metal band typographies—not entirely dissimilar from some of Lorenzo’s own cultural reference points. Hardly surprising, then, that Lorenzo had a hand in the tour merch designs for Yeezus. In a move that produced a paradigm shift in the ways mainstream artists approached the tour merchandise model, the Yeezus tour treated these styles as a fashion collection like any other, creating a template that would be replicated by countless other stars, including Justin Bieber.

In 2016, Bieber enlisted Lorenzo to creatively direct the merchandise for his Purpose album tour. Lorenzo’s influence was immediately visible in the collection’s aesthetic, from the metal-inspired graphics to the quintessentially American silhouettes like hoodies and raglan-sleeve tops. The color palette was also suitably stripped back, comprising just a few core colors.

Lorenzo also style-directed Bieber’s tour wardrobe, bringing the Fear of God aesthetic—and the Fear of God brand itself—to the forefront of pop culture. Seemingly overnight, draped pieces, layering, check flannels and customized vintage band T-shirts flooded Instagram feeds. Fear of God, already increasing in popularity season after season, faced a spike in demand from fans around the world, while brands such as Vans lined up to collaborate with Lorenzo’s soaring label.

Fear of God Essentials

In order to meet this overwhelming demand, Lorenzo pursued a number of projects that made the Fear of God brand more widely available. Around the same time he had been working on Bieber’s tour merch, Lorenzo announced the release of an exclusive F.O.G. collection at PacSun. Comprising familiar Fear of God designs, the collection was a huge success and led to several subsequent collections.

In 2017, for the third F.O.G. collection, Lorenzo reformatted the line entirely, renaming the collection “Essentials” and slightly altering the format. While the initial PacSun collaborations offered a notably distinct line of products compared to the mainline collection, Essentials took a more complementary approach, producing pared-down pieces such as hoodies and sweats in muted colors that were designed to easily blend in with the mainline collection. Essentials also broke away from PacSun exclusivity, seeing much wider distribution globally.

Even more ubiquitous than its parent brand, Fear of God Essentials helped drive style’s shift towards subdued shades and elevated sportswear staples. For men, relaxed silhouettes in soft greens, beiges and greys. For women, French Terry polos, mockneck long-sleeves and leggings in the same understated palette. A father of three children, Lorenzo would later expand the line’s offering further, launching a unisex kids collection comprised of the brand’s hoodies, T-shirts and sweatpants in miniature sizes.

Fear of God and Fear of God Essentials Collaborations

By the late 2010s, collaborations began arriving like clockwork. In 2018, Fear of God collaborated with Nike to produce a brand new silhouette, the aptly-named Air Fear of God 1, making Lorenzo one of an elite few given the opportunity to create their own exclusive Swoosh silhouette. In 2020, Essentials collaborated with Nike family member Converse on a Fear of God take on the classic Chuck Taylor. The same year, Lorenzo cemented his position in style by teaming up with Ermenegildo Zegna on a premium collection of staples, bringing his sharp American perspective to the respected Italian fashion house.

In 2021, Fear of God went into overdrive, announcing collaborations with New Era, Barton Perreira, Awake NY, Grey Ant and others. At the same time, the brand announced its Seventh Collection, folding a range of influences into its purview, from the 100th-anniversary of the Negro Leagues to military-inspired stencils.

The brand also unveiled its own take on the minimalist slip-on with the California, a hand-sculpted mule manufactured in Italy and inspired by the West Coast lifestyle. Before the year was up, Lorenzo delivered even more Fear of God Essentials products and announced yet another addition to the Fear of God family: Fear of God Athletics, the third pillar of Fear of God created in collaboration with adidas.

Fear of God Today

From Essentials to Fear of God x Ermenegildo Zegna, what Jerry Lorenzo has accomplished is a feat which, for most modern designers, is the holy grail: an exclusive luxury brand that commands genuine prestige, bolstered by a diffusion line that expands on the former without detracting from the main brand’s mystique and appeal. It’s a balancing act that few labels, even the most storied and revered, have been able to pull off.

And maybe it’s Fear of God’s relative newness and naivety that makes this all possible; Lorenzo’s lack of formal fashion design training; his label’s emergence out of near-total detachment from traditional fashion networks; the label’s quintessential Americanness, from the style of the clothes to the pioneer spirit that has underpinned the endeavor.

In interviews, Lorenzo has elaborated on the connection between Fear of God and a certain conception of modern Americana. He’s even gone as far as to state his aspiration that one day Fear of God might hold the same status as Ralph Lauren. Yes, Ralph Lauren, the other unlikely success story of American menswear, that quintessential emblem of all-American spirit, founded by the Bronx’s Ralph Lifshitz. Another success story so unexpected, it almost had to come true. Only in America.