Fear of God Founder Jerry Lorenzo Is Creating a Space That Didn’t Exist

0:05This is The Run Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. Today, we have Fear of God founder and designer Jerry Lorenzo on the show. Just last night, he was given the CFDA Innovation Award, and he joined us in the studio ahead of the award ceremony. Jerry is a great and thoughtful storyteller. He shared with us how he went from throwing Hollywood parties to starting one of fashion's most influential labels. We also talked about his views on elegance and comfort and what innovation means to him. Welcome, Jerry Lorenzo. Thank you for joining me on the run-through. Thank you for having me. We are several hours ahead of the CFDA Fashion Awards.

0:43You are receiving the Innovation Award. You have said that you orient yourself around purpose and not so much about being in the conversation. But here you are in the conversation, and I want to know what it feels like to be getting this award. Anytime you're recognized for the 10 ,000 hours, it's humbling. I could be someone on the street coming up and telling you how much they love how they feel and what you make. Or it could be an award like tonight. I mean, I think for me, I just take it all as encouragement that I'm on the right path and I'm kind of doing what I've been called to do. I'm just happy to be acknowledged, to be honest.

1:28Well, as an aside, my son was wearing the Vogue Fear of God sweatshirt that you made for the Vogue World event yesterday out in New York City. And he did have someone come up and ask him where he got that sweatshirt. Oh, amazing. I love that. Well, let's talk about that idea of innovation. I think you probably do identify as an innovator. Yeah, I mean, I think above all, I feel like the way that, the vision that God has given me and the way that I see things and the perspective that I have, I have so much conviction in it because I feel like it is somewhat innovative. It is somewhat new. And I think what we do with fear of God and our ability to speak across luxury authentically, to speak across accessible aspiration through essentials and have a conversation in sport, whether that's through our relationships across the NBA and Major League Baseball, NFL, or with Adidas, and we're talking about performance basketball.

2:30And for us to have a conversation across all of these different touch points, to me, is the vision, is the modernity that makes, that gives us the permission to have a voice in this space. and I feel like that in and of itself in a time like today is somewhat innovative. Well, I know you come from a baseball family, so congratulations to the Dodgers. Were you watching the World Series? It was funny, yeah. I mean, I watched every game and then we were actually on our way to the airport coming here to New York and so we started at the house and we were watching it on DirecTV in the car and then we were watching it in the Delta Lounge And then, you know, they finally won.

3:13We were on the plane, like on our phones right before we took off. So it was a cool little game setting. It was an incredible final game. Yeah. Yeah. What you're talking about being in different parts of the fashion business is something that Willie Chavaria told me. I noticed that back in January that you were on Willie's runway. You walked the runway, which I thought was very cool. And so I talked to him and he said that that you represent a perspective on luxury and on the mass market that he deeply respects. Tell me why you decided to walk in Willie's show and why you respect him. Oh, man, I respect him because I I see a lot of myself in him.

3:54You know, I think his perspective is uniquely his, you know, through the way that he grew up and through his culture and things that everything that he was exposed to and it comes out and through his designs, how he communicates. And he shows beauty in a place where it's not always seen. And I think I'm trying to do the same exact thing and put a beautiful, eternal perspective against my surroundings and where I'm from that may not always have that beautiful, eternal perspective attached to it.

4:34More with Jerry Lorenzo after the break.

4:48You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

5:16Let's go back to what shaped your perspective. Take us back to the beginning. I know you've said that your mom, who was an interior designer, shaped your taste. How so? She just had a knack for, I mean, we grew up, my dad, for the most part, in a minor league baseball family. And so we did a lot of driving across the South, the minor league baseball games. And she loved stopping in antique shops. And she just had a knack for finding the most perfect thing that would fit in the most perfect place in our home. And although we were check to check, we had such an elegant, beautiful home. and she knew how to take what she had access to and make it beautiful and make it luxury.

6:03On top of that, my parents are married over 50 years. My dad was in Major League Baseball on a coach's salary and so we were kind of exposed to or around a higher class. We were struggling as a coach in the big leagues and he went to the ballpark every day with like the same Navy blazer. But somehow the way he wore, the way he presented himself, players, staff, coaches, the league had a different level of respect for him. And so as a young child, I knew a lot about the way you present yourself is kind of who you are beyond just kind of what you're wearing. And so taking this idea of integrity and dignity and putting that against this honesty of taking the best you have with what you have, I knew there was a way to say luxury and aspiration without it having to be tied to a price tag.

7:02And I think that informed everything that I do with fear of God, the approach, this humility that the clothing has, this elegance, but yet relaxed feeling and welcoming feeling. It's a luxury that's welcoming. It's not luxury that is trying to set yourself apart in a way. You've talked a lot about moving around quite a bit as a young person. Did that shape you? Oh, yeah. I mean, I look back and I'm pulling, you know, from all these different places, you know, Northern California to West Palm to Chicago, New York for a little bit, you know, Los Angeles. and just being exposed to all the different cultures here in America.

7:48Living in Montreal for about six summers and my dad was with the Expos. Being able to find myself in all of these places that I felt like I didn't fit, right? I was still able to like find something about these different places that spoke to me. And so as I started to develop my perspective, I realized that it came from so many different places. Did you use clothes as like a tool to fit in or stand out? I remember, you know, moving around a fair bit before the time I hit high school and, you know, leaving the Midwest, going to the East Coast and seeing that, you know, there was a totally different way of dressing.

8:30I had the wrong shoes. I mean, how did that go for you when you were moving around so much? Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, definitely being, you know, black in America, right? You're aware that the first thing someone sees is going to be like your skin color before they see you, right? And so, you know, the attempt really is to how am I presenting myself in a way to disarm someone of their preconceived notions of who I am? Not necessarily to stand out, not necessarily to look better than anyone else. more so to just kind of be seen as equal, to just be seen as human, just to have a conversation on the same playing field, you know?

9:11And I think there's a lot of thought and consideration and the weight of what you put on sometimes is what allows you to have access to certain rooms, to have access to different things in life. And I realized that at a really, really young age that, hey, I can't change this, I can't change who I am, the color of my external appearance, but I can change the way that I present myself, but change it in a way that at its core is, more importantly, the most authentic version of who I am. You know, not changing to assimilate, but changing to how do I present myself in the best way that is unequivocally me.

9:59So you've talked about, you know, being in Florida and you were at a predominantly white school and then you were, you know, attending a black church. So you're going between worlds. How did that influence you? Yeah. I mean, you find a little bit of yourself on church on Sundays. You find a little bit of yourself, you know, in high school and you're, you know, you're exposed to things that maybe you wouldn't have had you grew up in an all black area. I mean, you know, my basketball team ran out to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Like, I loved grunge in the 90s. That's just what I was around, you know, but just as much as I loved hip hop.

10:37You know, I loved Allen Iverson, you know, and I didn't necessarily love the aesthetic of Allen, but I love the spirit of Allen. I love this, like, I'm going to be myself. You know what I mean? Not to say I could pull off those looks back then, even back in the 90s. it didn't work for me, but there was something about like, I'm just going to be me. And I think there's a little bit of that like spirit of like, Hey, me is enough, whatever that me is. And I think that was encouraging for me to find myself in high school, to find myself, you know, on the weekends at church, to find myself at a historically black college and my first time exposed to like, you know, all of us in one place and then going to grad school and getting my master's and then back to kind of what America really looks like.

11:28And I think there's all these different moments and places that I found myself that required me to continually look in the mirror and say, hey, how am I presenting myself? That's Jerry. Because you want to be in everything, but not necessarily of it. So you were at Florida A &M University, right? And we actually just covered their homecoming. And my colleague, Leah Faye Cooper, said that the F in FAMU actually stands for fashion. I don't know if you agree with that, but I'm curious what you looked like in college. What was Jerry wearing? My style was definitely like evolving because you had, to your point earlier, where you talked about kind of going from the Midwest, you know, you could see the Chicago kids had a certain swag.

12:21The D.C. kids had like a specific swag. The Atlanta kids' fashion was different. You know, the New York kids' fashion was different. And this is kind of just before the internet where we had access to like everything. And now everyone kind of dresses similar. But back then, you know, you could see it, you know. And I think for me, you could clearly see the difference, right? And one of the things for me was like, I didn't ever want to look like I was from somewhere specifically. I didn't want you to be able to look at Jerry and say, oh, I have this preconceived notion about anything about you, either where you're from or like any of that.

13:00And so I think it was that experience through Florida A &M where I was finding myself. So you probably saw me with a super baggy football jersey on one day. You maybe saw I used to work at the Gap, so I might have been in some khakis and a tighter fitting button up the next day. I think I went through lots of different phases to try to find Jerry. And so moving forward, you got your MPA and you're in Los Angeles and you are throwing parties. You were like sort of a nightlife guy. And that is when you decided to launch Fear of God. Yep. Right? So just tell us that story, how you decided to make that move.

13:43Yeah. So through undergrad and through grad school, I always worked retail. I think when I moved to L.A. to finish my MBA, I was working at like Dolce & Gabbana. I was working at Diesel. It was popping back then. You know, I thought I wanted to be like a Jerry Maguire. I wanted to be working baseball, working sports. And so I was working towards that. But even my first job with the Dodgers doing like corporate sponsorships on the weekend, I was still working kind of retail to help like supplement my income. Post that ended up with some Hollywood girlfriend and we were out like five nights a week for like two years straight.

14:18Like that was just the lifestyle we lived. And I'd wake up and go to work in the morning and party at night. And then by the time we broke up, I just had this Rolodex of Los Angeles just from going out. You know, it would be one culture one night, another culture another night, but there was never a night where we all kind of came together. And I was like, man, we should figure that out. And so me and my partner were kind of the first on this wave of kind of like bringing all these different kind of like from streetwear brand owners and fashion kids to actors and directors to professional athletes and kind of creating this new space that really didn't exist.

14:54And so that led to me being exposed to like all the kids that had their own streetwear brands. And I was just kind of like narcissistically, I feel like I could maybe dress better than some of these kids. I should be able to figure this out. And I just went downtown and self-taught, taught myself how to make a pattern, how to make a long T-shirt, how to make a hoodie with zippers. And I remember Virgil was in town from Chicago and I was, hey, man, I just started this like clothing brand. And it's kind of like this luxury street thing because I feel like, you know, like streetwear is kind of dying, but luxury is like a little too pretentious.

15:31And, you know, I showed him all these like long T-shirts and hoodies in my basement or in my garage. And then he's like, oh, I just started this brand Pyrex. And then I just remember from, you know, we kind of began to work together soon after that. But just kind of like we both were convicted of like the space that didn't exist. Right. us and then there was like hood by air with shane and i remember walking in barney's and the three of us were in there and it just kind of like felt like the beginning of something new but i say a lot to say like it was like just this this vision of what was missing right and this conviction of what didn't exist that um has always led me to whether it was the parties or whether it was a starter brand you know it came from a place of hey i see something that's not there that i know people want.

16:21And you had the name right from the start, Fear of God. Not really. I had the idea of clothing, but it just felt, I don't want to say corny, it just felt like there was no weight to it. I didn't know that I could continue to be driven to create without like real purpose and intention. So I was doing a devotion with my parents and we talked about the clouds and darkness around the kingdom of God and how that spoke to the layers of him. And if you were in relationship with God, it spoke to like a reverence and a peace, the clouds and darkness, the layers. But if you kind of are not in relationship, those layers could be darkness and be a real fear.

17:06So I like this play on fear of God and how it's both a reverence and a peace in it and how it could also be a real fear. To know God is to not know fear. And so after we read that devotion, I remember me and my dad were driving somewhere after that that morning. I was like, Dad, I got it. Like I got what I really think I can build this thing after that I can always pull from. You know, this deep well of like my conviction of what I believe I'm here and called to do against these gifts and against this vision that I feel like I've been given that I could continually pour into. And that was that was the beginning of fear of God.

17:47It's such a powerful name. And then on the other hand, your aesthetic was so sort of fully formed very early on. And I wonder when you reflect back on the evolution of your brand and you, if you see the name being very important to its growth and success, or is it the aesthetics or is it the combination? I think it's all of it. I think it's all of it. I think you can't take any element out of it, you know, because the aesthetic was built on humility and dignity and fighting for to be seen. it never came from a place of crying for attention. It came from a place of like fighting for equality. And I think there's something that is extremely immovable and humble about the God we serve.

18:45And those traits and that feeling is what I'm trying to put into clothing. Something that's so immovable and like clearly, like it is what it is at the same time It's not calling for attention, you know, similar to God. It's not, he's not calling. He sits back and he waits, you know, but he's always there. He's immovable. I feel like everything that God has brought me through my entire life, I've been able to use against this calling that he's called me to. And I honestly feel that about like anyone that wants to get into fashion or like, I feel like we all live one unique life. that's different from everyone else in the world.

19:32And if you have the ability to put that perspective, your perspective into a thing, into a calling, into a purpose, the world will make room for it. When you look back at that collection, it was 12 pieces, right? The first season? Yeah, maybe about 12, yeah. What do you see? What do you think of it when you look back? It's like 13 years now, 12 years now? I'm embarrassed. I mean, because I'm self-taught, right? And so it's like you could look at that collection and look at what we just did with ninth and men's and women's. You know, it's like because I'm self-taught, I'm still learning. And each collection is like exponentially better than the last because I'm in the middle of class in front of the world.

20:17But the intention of that collection is the same exact intention of the last collection. You know, I look at those pieces and I understand my intention and why I'm doing this hasn't changed. And it's just that I'm getting better at saying what I've always been trying to say. I think that's what gives me the courage to continue to go because it's not like I need to change what I'm saying. It's just I'm just making it more and more clear and direct every collection. That makes me think of something you said to Luke Leach, who reviewed your Spring 26 collection. And you said it was the Dieter Rams idea of refining what already works.

20:59Yeah. I would like you to talk more about your design philosophy. You know what? I look at other designers and I say, oh, yeah, I like that. But I'm always looking for the root, the essence of where that comes from. There was a time where people said, oh, your stuff really looks like Armani, and it has this effortless and this elegance, and the shoulders are generous. And I'm like, yeah, but that's not where I'm pulling from. And, you know, and it was maybe like a couple of years ago I read, you know, I'm looking at these old ads on, I don't know, Tumblr or something. And it was like, you know, Armani, like the American collection.

21:41And it was, you know, his perspective was on these silhouettes were taken from just the way we dressed here, you know. And so to see that was really encouraging in the sense that I'm inspired by the everyday person. I'm inspired by what I grew up watching, the movies that I saw, the films and athletes and how they dressed, Michael Jordan coming into the arena. And I always thought it was cool to be comfortable and elegant. And, you know, I never thought it was cool to be in a proportion that was restricting. You know what I mean? Like to me, it just like, how can you be elegant and you can't move, you know, and it's not functional.

22:26And so for me, I don't really have mentors in this space, but I have mentors in life and I have mentors. You know, I have spiritual coaches and people that pour into me in a different way. And I feel like, you know, I watched my dad manage baseball in the big leagues and before his games, you know, he's reading Gandhi's reading Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. And he's taking these life principles and saying, how do I move men with these principles? Like, I understand the game. I know what I want to do within baseball, but how do I take these higher, you know, principles from the Bible and apply it to what I'm doing in baseball?

23:08and I feel like that's how I kind of approach clothing. I think if anything, what we do that's innovative within clothing is it's honest, you know? And I think that's the innovation. It comes from an honest place. Does honesty apply to materials too? I mean, would you say that you're like a real materialist? Fabrics are important to you? A thousand percent, yeah. I mean, and maybe that's like, you know, I could go through fabrics all day, But, you know, my team will tell you, they'll put a thousand fabrics in front of me. I'll run through and I'll pick 10. They'll put the same thousand in front of me maybe three months later and I pick the same 10.

23:48You know, it's like I know what I'm looking for. You know, there's a conviction in what I know, how I know something needs to feel depending on kind of where it lives. and I think for me I'm very much a feel and a drape of fabric and like a silhouette and a proportion and a shape and the details to me kind of are kind of neither here nor there. I'm always trying to find a way to strip them back and let the fabric and the proportion and the drape of it and the silhouette, the color like speak, you know, and I feel like the more that I can do my job in doing that, the more that the person who's wearing it is, you know, seen before the clothes are seen.

24:32So it's like I want to design pieces that allow people to be seen. You know, I don't want to design pieces that you see the pieces before you see the person walk in the room. I think that goes back to like the intention of like me wanting to walk in a room and just be seen.

24:51We'll be right back with Jerry Lorenzo. Thank you.

25:26Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

25:40Let's go back to May because you dressed a table of incredible people at the Met Gala, including Andre Walker, who is getting his own CFDA award tonight. And how did you go about that process? Yes. Was it a back and forth with Ryan Coogler and his wife or Arthur Jaffa? And what they wore? Mm-hmm. Oh, it was the most back and forth with Yara. She's super specific. Yeah, and intentional. And I love that. And the rest of the guests were just like, hey, man, we trust what you want to do. And, of course, we had about, you know, I had the one look that I, you know, felt most convicted on. But we had some options around that because, you know, it's not like putting clothes on a model.

26:30You know, it's like, I really want you to feel like yourself in this. I want you to feel good. I want you to love what you have on. Well, I'm glad you brought up Yara because you have just launched Women's Wear. and some might ask, you know, it took you 12 years to launch Women's Wear. To me, it seems like, you know, you are very thoughtful and strategic, but what has it been like to branch out into Women's Wear? You know, I've always wanted to do it. You know, I watch my wife get dressed every day. And, you know, if you look at all of our collections, we've always put women in men's clothing.

27:06You know, it's all, it's Fear of God has historically been, you know, design for a man with a woman in mind. I love how, you know, my wife or women look in their boyfriends or husbands pieces. It's just cool to me. But it got to a place where I just, I had a little bit more to say. Um, and I felt like I had kind of the chops to say it. Although I look at that collection now and I'm like, Oh man, I wish I would have done this, this, this, and that. Um, which is encouraging because I know I have more to say in that space. But yeah, I just felt, you know, as, as the brand grows, you know, I'm my perspective, I have a perspective on how a woman, I would like to see a woman dress.