Los Angeles-based Fear of God designer Jerry Lorenzo checked in with Kerwin Frost as part of his ongoing YouTube interview series with music and fashion creatives. Lorenzo provided some insight on how he evolved from a retailer worker to party promoter to a designer, which included a stint working as part of Kanye West‘s DONDA team on the 2014 APC collaboration.
Amusingly, Frost conducted the interview in a Los Angeles set designed to look like the interior of a private jet that is priced at $60/hour.
Fresh off of the news of an expansive partnership with Adidas, Lorenzo noted he didn’t aspire to become the creative director of a major fashion house mainly because he wants to stay focused on building his own brand.
Referencing Virgil Abloh‘s role at Louis Vuitton and Matthew Williams at Givenchy, Lorenzo noted, “It’s not in me to be a creative director. Not that people are calling me to be a creative director. My desire is to build Fear of God to Ralph Lauren heights.”
In the video, he references a line from Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” line (“Like I told you sell drugs; no, Hov did that so hopefully you don’t have to go through that”) when he notes that Abloh taking on the role at Louis Vuitton had provided Lorenzo and others with the credibility to build their own brand empires.
Lorenzo explained, ‘I want to creative direct my own journey. And why do we as people of color or from streetwear need to feel like we need to be validated. So I’m not chasing that validation. Not to say anyone who has done that is chasing anything; I think what Virgil is doing, what Matt is doing at the level that they’re doing it…
“Virgil is carrying his cross that allows me to carry my own cross here. And so in some indirect way, he’s validating what I’m doing by him doing that. He’s does that so I don’t have to do that. It’s like Hov saying, ‘You don’t gotta do that.'”
It’s an interesting perspective because it introduces the idea that a talented, young streetwear designer like Lorenzo no longer views a seat at global luxury brand as the the ultimate sign of success. Rather, he perceives a more receptive landscape capable of providing fertile grounds for him to grow his own brand into a global entity.
Check out the interesting exchange below.
