Elena Velez

Elena Velez is a young American fashion designer and artist based in New York City. Her work is known for its non traditional synthesis of metalsmith and high fashion. Dressing celebrities including Solange Knowles, Grimes, Charli XCX, Arca, Brooke Candy, and Caroline Polachek, her recent collaborations include custom tour looks for music artists such as Kali Uchis, Ariana Grande, and Halsey. Velez was named by I-D Magazine in 2018 as one of five under the radar designers to discover at New York Fashion Week after first gaining viral success on VFILES Season 10 Runway.

Velez studied at Parsons Paris from 2013-2015 and graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2018 with a BFA in fashion design and minor in creative entrepreneurship. Additionally in 2020 she received a Graduate Diploma in fashion design from Central Saint Martins in London. Her BFA thesis collection was shown at VFILES Season 10 Runway, and London Fashion Week, as a guest of the Swedish Fashion Council. In 2019 Velez's work was exhibited as a Teen Vogue 2019 Generation Next designer curated by Editor in Chief of Vogue Magazine's Anna Wintour, and Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue's Lindsey Peoples Wagner as “a designer representing the future of fashion”. Her work has received coverage in Business of Fashion, Women's Wear Daily, WGSN, Vogue, Vogue Runway, i-D Magazine, Dazed, Numero Berlin, Paper Magazine, Office Magazine, Schön!, CNN Style, and New York Times The Cut.

Described by Vogue as a "unique take on deconstruction, Velez's current work is inspired by the historic craftsmanship and manufacturing legacy of the American rustbelt and is the product of collaboration with local metalsmith artisans to revisit the regional craft. Central themes in her work include deconstruction, unconventional femininity, and alternative construction methods, which include "salvaged" and "site-specific materiality". Velez coins her visual identity as "aggressively delicate". 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". 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.