THE JOURNAL
Mr Jerry Lorenzo On Personal Style, His Friendship With Mr Virgil Abloh And Why Comfort Is The Ultimate Luxury
From left to right: Mr Jerry Lorenzo in Milan, 11 January 2020; photograph by Mr Christian Vierig/Getty Images. Jerry Lorenzo in New York, 10 November 2021; photograph by Mr Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com. Jerry Lorenzo in Paris, 16 January 2020; photograph by Christian Vierig/Getty Images.
Mr Jerry Lorenzo has a confession to make. He is a big fan of Kenny G. At first, Lorenzo’s effortless cool versus the curly-haired jazz saxophonist’s middle-brow pop may seem an incongruous pairing, but he says Kenny G’s music provides the perfect aural blank canvas. “You can tune in or out,” he says. “It’s up to you.”
Look at Lorenzo’s designs for his label Fear of God and you’ll start to understand its connection to jazz. Both prioritise creative expression done with elegance and fluidity. To listen to the sultry sounds of Kenny G or see the louche drape of a Fear of God sweatshirt is to understand something about moving through the world with confidence and ease. That sense of freedom is at the very core of Lorenzo’s brand. To him, there is nothing more luxurious than comfort.
The rest of the world has noticed, be it bold-faced fans such as Mr Kanye West, Jay-Z or Mr Justin Bieber, buzzy stores that try (and often fail) to keep his clothing in stock or global fashion behemoths such as adidas that have tapped him as a creative partner. With the pandemic drastically altering the way we approach dressing, Lorenzo’s instincts on how we want to feel in our clothes fit the moment. There’s serendipitous sartorial timing at work here. Lorenzo understood years ago that sweatpants would replace jeans, not in a sloppy or unkempt way, but in the same mould that Giorgio Armani imbued the businessman suit with a touch of sensuality in the 1980s. Lorenzo intuited that an unfussy blazer with a hoodie or a slip-on, backless shoe would encapsulate the way men want to dress now – to look elegant and sophisticated without losing that swaddling quarantine cosiness.
The day we meet, in his dramatic office in Downtown Los Angeles, he embodies this spirit with his tinted glasses, oversized hoodie and tapered sweats. The arms of his sweatshirt are cut mid-forearm and tattoos run down the rest of the length to his wrists, one of which is adorned with a Rolex. He is quiet, unrushed and a bit intense. It’s all very clear – he is intentional in the way he dresses, the way he chooses his words and the way he designs.
As MR PORTER releases a 40-piece capsule collection with the designer, based around the idea of living authentically and luxuriously, it’s a good time to catch up. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how working in retail helped shape his design philosophy, how he’s building a multi-layered lifestyle brand that’s accessible to everyone and the lessons he learnt from his good friend and colleague, Mr Virgil Abloh.
Do you have a first memory of fashion, noticing the way people dress or having an understanding of your own style?
I just wanted to walk in and fit in places. In high school, one day I was with the athletes, the next day I was at the cool table and then I was at the black table. I had a bunch of different groups of friends and I wanted to be able to mingle with everyone. I wanted to remove anyone’s preconceived notions of who I was as a person. I didn’t want to look too fresh, too cool or not cool enough. As a man of colour, when you walk into a room that’s the first thing people see. So how do I compensate by somehow presenting myself in a way that’s effortless, sophisticated and unimpeded? That’s what I’ve always kind of been chasing as a kid.
How does that affect your work today?
I don’t want something luxurious just to make me look better. I want it to inspire you, to open you up. I want it to be elegant and sophisticated, but also have a level of humility to it. There’s an intention behind the beauty.
That’s interesting. A lot of luxury brands strive to create the feeling of inaccessibility and unattainability.
Well, that’s why it’s so important to redefine luxury. It doesn’t necessarily mean access or not having access. Look, I think everyone wants to feel inspired and feel included. And so, making someone feel good about themselves, or making them feel free to be who they are, is the greatest luxury you could give someone. We’re making sure our clothes enhance the individual.
**Did that thinking inform the way you’ve structured the business by having a main line and then offering **Fear of God Essentials** as a more affordable option?**
There was a time when fast fashion, maybe five years ago, was a knock-off of something trending on the runway two years prior. Now, with the internet moving so fast, fast fashion is this obvious knock-off of something authentic. So how do you make the person buying feel like they are buying aspiration, not a knock-off of the authentic thing? That’s the intention of Essentials. There is the same level of consideration we put into garments that are made from cashmere, you know? How are we giving this honest accessibility that still allows the person to feel as if they just bought that $3,000 coat, but through a hoodie?
“How are we giving this honest accessibility that still allows the person to feel as if they just bought that $3,000 coat, but through a hoodie?”
Early in your design career, you worked with Mr Kanye West on Yeezy. What did you learn from him?
He helped me to realise there’s always a solution. We’d be at his house in Beverly Hills and he’d be interested in a fabric and he’d say, “Let’s go to Italy and look at this exact fabric.” And you have all these barriers in your mind, like, man, how are we going to figure that out? But he’s like, “Let’s just go.” And that’s from doing a photo shoot with Nick Knight, working on the A.P.C. line, creating the Yeezus Tour to recording music. He would find a solution. He showed me that all these worlds work together and they are all part of the same world. Or they are separate worlds in the same universe and they all speak to each other.
You worked in retail when you were younger. Was that a good training for designing?
Oh, yeah. Being on your feet all day and coming into contact with all these people. I worked at Diesel in the 1990s and I’ll never forget when my dad walked in and he was like, “Two hundred dollar jeans? What do they do?” I was like, “What do you mean, Dad? You wear them! They’re fresh.” We had so many different people coming in, so many different body types. Selling denim at that time, someone would walk in and I knew exactly what could fit, what would enhance who they are. I developed a knack for understanding what people were looking for.
What is your favourite piece from the collection with MR PORTER?
The Donegal blazer is probably my favourite. It’s inspired by the press conference in Rocky IV where he’s got on this super ill Donegal blazer. And it felt so cosy, kind of like a heather grey sweatshirt. And that makes sense for Rocky to have on a blazer that’s like a sweatshirt.
It’s amazing the way it looks like a marled sweatshirt from afar, but when you get closer, you see all the flecks of different colours in there.
Yeah and there’s an iridescent lining. One of the things about the brand is, our hope is, that it gets better as you get to know it. So you may see this online, buy it and then you get to know it. And it’s like, oh wow! I didn’t know about that_._ There’s this discovery and the more that you dig into it, the more you build a relationship with it, the more that you love it, right? It’s like a marriage.
You’ve been making elevated but cosy clothes for some time now, but the pandemic really made your designs seem so prescient. The way you pair a blazer with sweats makes total sense.
Our proposition has always been to be comfortable, easy. It just so happened that the world shifted to a place with what we were proposing. We want to be easy, effortless and provide products that our customers can slip in and out of easily throughout their day without changing who they are. Be that blazers, sweats, trousers, it all fits together, like Tetris.
What is your design process?
I love vintage. I’m constantly at flea markets. I know how I want to feel and then it’s about what that looks like. And then all this research informs all the design decisions and it gets put through our prism and filter – our point of view, our colour palette, shape and material fabrications.
“It’s about feeling good about yourself, feeling comfortable in your own skin, in your own clothes and how that all works together”
You once said you’re not a “conceptual” designer, that you make things to wear every day, but your designs have an unmistakable look.
I would hate to feel like I’m creating stuff just to be creating it. Our approach to sustainability is providing solutions that you don’t have to keep re-upping on. You could buy an overcoat from us that’s gonna last you for 10 years if you wanted it to. It’s not going to go out of style. It’s constructed in a way that’s going to last. It’s about feeling good about yourself, feeling comfortable in your own skin, in your own clothes and how that all works together.
What do your customers say?
What we hear a lot is that it’s comfortable and the luxury kind of, like, sneaks up on you. I like that. The intention is comfort. But then you’re wearing it and then people are complimenting you. And you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t really realise I was… I’m fresh!” It’s the sneak-up. And they then look like themselves. They don’t look like they’re wearing a costume. You know who they are.
You said you design based on how a person feels, rather than how they look. That’s a much more profound approach, less surface level.
It’s like medicine, right? I can give you a pill that’s gonna make you feel better right now. I can give you a hoodie that’s gonna give you some street credit, but tomorrow will you need to come back and get another hoodie? Or am I giving you the cure by giving you the hoodie that you can wear every day, something that may give you street credit, but really, it makes you feel like yourself?
You don’t adhere to the traditional fashion calendar when it comes to showing collections, so how do you feel inspired to create and move forward?
It’s life. I think, as my life evolves and my needs evolve, there are different solutions. It’s like the California [slip-on shoe]. I was just tired of seeing my kids wearing Crocs in a bad shape that didn’t match the rest of the house. I wanted something that was a beautiful colour and a beautiful shape.
You were close to Mr Virgil Abloh. How did he influence you?
I declined to speak about this initially, but I think I’m at the place now that I want to celebrate his life and at every opportunity I want to celebrate his legacy. He was the one that actually did the interviewing for me to start working with Ye [Mr Kanye West]. And that was like three weeks in Paris staying up until 4.00am. And I thought, how are we doing this? And Virgil told me, “I’ve just committed myself to always stay up longer than Ye, to always work harder than him.” Virgil knew that Kanye was calling him to greatness and he didn’t have to meet that, he had to beat it. And that’s something I took from him. Virgil was just a special individual. I’ve never seen a fan, an influencer and a lover of culture all in one person. As much as he directed things, he loved them and was deeply interested in them. He was able to see the beauty and nuances through all these different perspectives and bring them all together somehow. His memorial service was a testament to all that. And I felt, being in that room, all these diverse creatives were brought together and for the first time ever, the pretentiousness was gone. I wish he could have felt that love of all those people whose lives he touched, together, and he could have seen that we finally saw everyone else the way he had.