New York Fashion Is Good Again

Photo: Clement Pascal

Designer: Elena Velez
Pictured with: Lars Johan Andreas Emenius, artist and partner; their children, Atlas (18 months) and Freja Lucía (3 weeks)

Last season, Elena Velez put on one of New York Fashion Week’s most talked-about shows, presenting a collection of deconstructed dresses and bustiers using materials like sails, army canvas, and parachutes, inspired by her mother, a Lake Michigan ship pilot. Motherhood is a through-line in her work, much of which she makes in the Brooklyn studio she shares with her partner, the painter Lars Johan Andreas Emenius, with whom she has two children. “Sometimes the work conflicts because he has a different aesthetic. He works a lot with color, and his shapes are a little bit more free-form, whereas my work is very detailed, molecular, and tactile. We have trouble commenting on each other’s work when he needs advice or when I need advice, but the energy that we’re able to create in one space keeps us both going,” says Velez. She began designing clothes in earnest in 2018 and got investors in 2020. “A precarious time to start a business,” she says. The business side is the most challenging part. “The greatest barrier to entry into fashion is finances as well as connections. If I didn’t have endurance for entrepreneurship and for all of the business components that go into running a brand, I wouldn’t be where I am. So it’s kind of frustrating to see how little talent really counts,” she says. “I don’t get as much time as I’d like to be able to focus on the creative, which is kind of a shame, but that’s what it takes to get to the level that I’ve gotten to.”