Elena Velez is an American fashion designer and creative from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, based in New York City.[1] Her work is known for its synthesis of metalsmith and high fashion and has been featured in the V&A Museum[2] and Barbican Centre.[3] Velez was a semi-finalist for the 2024 LVMH prize and the CFDA's 2022 Emerging Designer of the Year.
Described by Vogue as "explosive and aggressive",[4] Velez's work has been inspired by the craftsmanship of the American Rust Belt as well as reactionary aesthetics.[5] Themes in her work include deconstruction,[6] "apocalyptic anti-heroines",[7] and alternative construction methods, which include salvaged materials.[8] Velez coins her visual identity as "aggressively delicate" and anti-fragile.[9]
Early life and education
Of Puerto Rican heritage[6] but raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Velez claims in recent interviews that the "industrial" nature of her "nontraditional upbringing" as the only child to a single mother who is a ship's captain on the Great Lakes influenced her current artistic identity, which she says draws heavily on "the relationship between femininity and force".[10] With a beginning interest in design from early childhood, the first documentation of her developments appear in local TV news as a teenager in 2010.[11] In 2023 Velez was profiled in the New York Times detailing her difficulties in growing a brand without private wealth or industry connections.[12]
Velez studied at Parsons Paris from 2013 to 2015 and graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2018 with a BFA in fashion design and minor in creative entrepreneurship.[13][1] Additionally in 2020 she received a Graduate Diploma in fashion design from Central Saint Martins in London.[1] Her BFA thesis collection was shown at VFILES Season 10 Runway,[14] and London Fashion Week, as a guest of the Swedish Fashion Council.[15]
Velez attended the 2023 Met Gala as a guest of Balenciaga. For the occasion, she created a crackle medium screen print ink-gown for the artist Sasha Gordon as a nod to Gordon's painting career.[37]
Velez is alleged to be associated with scenes connected to Peter Thiel and the new "tech right", collaborating with digital art collective Remilia Corporation in 2025 [38]. Velez "aligns herself with the unsavory flavor of a tendentious downtown New York crowd, whose podcasters, media personalities and fashion and art-adjacent figures rose to prominence under the aegis of 'Dimes Square'". The scene is known for its "reactionary politics and associations with Peter Thiel."[39]
In February 2024 Velez hosted controversial EVSALON001,[40] which drew on "antiheroic female archetypes"[41] from Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind.The Washington Post criticized the salon as "problematic" and "dangerously cheesy".[39]Sohrab Ahmari referred to the presentation as a "weird racial" variation of the "Art-right".[bettersourceneeded] The salon garnered Velez the nickname of "Fashion's first post-woke designer" according to The Free Press.[42]
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