The Year of Telfar A queer Liberian-American designer became the success story of the pandemic. Now he wants to smash the old fashion system to bits. Telfar Clemens at his studio in Brooklyn.Credit...Simbarashe Cha for The New York Times Published Dec. 21, 2020Updated Dec. 22, 2020 In January 2020, around the time word first began to leak of Covid-19 in China, Telfar Clemens, the queer Liberian-American designer who has been preaching the gospel of inclusivity for 15 years, had a wine-drenched banquet and sleepover for more than 40 of his closest creative collaborators and friends in the Pitti Palace, a former home of the Medicis in Florence.