How Fear of God became a rare US luxury brand success story: founder Jerry Lorenzo talks taking inspiration from faith, streetwear and DJ culture – and why he skips Paris Fashion Week
- A God-fearing Christian, Lorenzo started in fashion late with a few looks for Justin Bieber’s Purpose world tour, and has gone on to partner with Italian menswear brand Zegna and sportswear giant Adidas
- Celebrated by streetwise celebs like Zendaya and Ja Rule, Fear of God follows its own path, having had only had one fashion show – in Los Angeles rather than Milan or New York
Fear of God is something of an exception as the only American luxury brand to successfully go global in recent years.
Except for a few household names like Ralph Lauren – and designers such as Tory Burch and Thom Browne – very few US labels have managed to build strong businesses outside their home country. New York Fashion Week, once a hotbed of young talent, has seen much better days. While there are still success stories coming from the city, they tend to have little to no presence overseas.
Yet Fear of God began almost on a whim when, in 2011, Jerry Lorenzo Manuel Jnr designed a few custom looks for Justin Bieber’s Purpose world tour.
Going by Jerry Lorenzo, he is the son of Jerry Manuel, an American baseball player, coach and manager who has been a big influence on him. Also crucial has been Lorenzo’s Christian faith, as the name of his company suggests. It dictates much of how he runs the company – as he explains in an interview at Fear of God’s headquarters in Los Angeles on a sunny morning in early September.
“My faith is the foundation of all I do,” he says. “It gave me transcendent values and tools that I’m able to use in clothing. I truly believe that God uses every part of your life and every experience to shape your future. The more experiences and the more that you’re exposed to, the more you have to shape what that future is – I think that I have been through enough and learned a lot and had good role models as parents.”
With a background in sports marketing and party promotion, Lorenzo never trained as a designer or worked for an established brand before striking out on his own. He came to the industry at a time when the worlds of fashion, music, sports, entertainment and pop culture started to collide.
“I approached clothes the same way I approached parties,” he says. “I was trying to create a space that I didn’t feel like existed, create a crowd that didn’t exist – with music and a DJ, you know, a place I wanted to hang out that didn’t exist in LA. And so I was like, ‘Man, if I would want to hang out in a place that feels like this, I’m sure someone else would.’”
Unlike many designers who start companies right after graduating with plenty of talent but little business acumen, Lorenzo was already well into his mid-thirties when he established Fear of God. “I think 1,000 per cent the fact that this happened later in life has been an advantage for me because the intention is a lot different now than what the intention would have been if I started early, when the intention may have been relevance,” says the now-46-year-old.