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The morning after a debut runway show that was 10 years in the making — and which took 10 days to style — Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo sits in LA’s Milk Studios contemplating the long-anticipated landmark achievement that is suddenly behind him. “I’m coming around from four hours’ sleep and trying to process,” he says. 

Comparing the live format to that of his first seven collections, all revealed via lookbooks, he adds: “In the past, I would have more time with the collection before it was shared. But, when you do a show, it’s as if you’re almost experiencing it for the first time, as your audience is, too. That was something extremely new and scary for me.”

The show was held at the Hollywood Bowl, an outdoor concert venue 10 minutes from Lorenzo’s home — and a regular date night destination for Lorenzo and his wife Desiree — which he considers “the last iconic venue in LA”. Bookended by live performances from English songwriter Sampha and American rapper Pusha T, it was a revelatory and vividly expressive leap forward in Fear of God’s evolution that explicitly connected Lorenzo’s own identity — his Christianity, his ancestry, and his life experience — with his established design codes. An exploration of American luxury, its cinematic scope felt akin to Ralph Lauren’s epic Spring/Summer 2023 show in delivery while simultaneously being rooted in experience rather than fantasy. 

Even when not running on fumes, it must be observed that Lorenzo makes a poor subject for a business interview. His primary obsessions are shapes, drapes and being true to his vision of the brand and self-expression. After a peripatetic preface, he launched Fear of God a decade ago in 2013 with no formal training — simply the conviction that there was a gap in the market. Of targets, numbers, strategy, positioning and other such conventional metrics, he observes: “I’ll never find my peace by thinking that we’re ‘on trend’, or we’re doing what the world thinks we need to be doing. I honestly find more peace in waters where I’m swimming by myself. The call of our brand is to do a new thing. And that new thing doesn’t necessarily have benchmarks, and it doesn’t necessarily have goals that are quantifiable.”

However, elsewhere in Milk Studios, which Fear of God used as its base of operations during the show, there are numbers to be gleaned. As part of Fear of God’s second-decade plans, Lorenzo recently took on his first CEO. Alfred Chang, who began his duties mid-March, first encountered Fear of God seven years ago when he was working with US retailer Pacsun and began partnering with Lorenzo to offer the then-nascent Essentials line. Then known as ‘FoG’, Essentials has since grown into a commercial juggernaut streetwear staple across the US, UK, China and beyond.