Notes
Store
info@divacorp.net
Elena Velez & Diva Corp Conversation
September 21, 2026
INTERVIEW WITH ELENA VELEZ:
BEHIND ENEMY LINES AT NYFW
We went deep behind enemy lines (NY) last week to talk w Elena Velez and see her new collection SMITE.
Velez is equal parts industry cancellata and avant-garde darling, censured for her recent associations with Kanye West, Clavicular, & Red Scare.
Her work cuts more toward art than most. Hermann Nitsch would’ve liked it, I think -- it’s aggressive, fed by ritual, yet there’s play.
- - -
[START OF CONVERSATION]
Diva Corp: Hey Elena. Your show opens soon. You must be busy. Maybe you’re always busy. What’s the temperature in fashion right now? John Galliano just lost his show, it looks turbulent from over here…
Elena Velez: Definitely busy, busy in ways that feel like work… fashion month is a physical endurance exercise. I rely a lot on sports psychology to keep my BPMs up. The fashion industry is struggling with a uniquely modern identity crisis right now which I see as an exciting opening. It’s clear we’re transitioning from centralized institutional authorities to the Wild West of the internet. The space has been diluted and democratized to the point where nobody even knows what function fashion should even serve anymore. Nobody is brave enough to posit a pointed statement anymore out of fear of alienation or backlash. Simultaneously, problematic geniuses are in short supply but high demand, which isn’t a coincidence.
Diva: You know, I was just listening to your Met Gala podcast with Anna and Dasha -- that was my homework. You are funny. To some people, that might seem at odds with your brand, which is filled with post-apocalyptic themes and sharp edges and rust… darkness. I have my own thoughts on this, but where do you think that levity comes from, and where do you see it in your work?
Velez: I think I’m the queen of gallows humor! At the end of the day I’m immeasurably blessed and also uniquely humiliated, as most public artists are, so a sense of humor is an important survival skill. You’ve got to be able to take the piss if you’re going to stay agile in such a pressurized environment…
Diva: In the episode, you guys went through and appraised almost every look from the red carpet. This was fantastic: it reminded me of when Diderot critiqued all 200 works in the salon of 1765. I was struck by how curious you were, as if you weren’t an authority, or something. You know, you’re an award-winning designer engaging with two… I assume you all are friends, but they’re not in it like you, in the industry sense. Fashion is remarkably exclusive… What draws you to voices like these? How do you know when someone’s worth listening to?
Velez: Unfortunately there’s nothing exclusive about the fashion industry anymore. I’m also not really all that excited by the industry of fashion. I have this bizarre craft-based compulsion and a knack for visual communication but beyond that it’s hard for me to scrounge up a take on where the garment lives after it’s left my hands. I like critiquing the garments formally but the politics of houses, directors, and celebrity pairings really put me to sleep at the wheel. Beyond that I also just like and trust unyielding contrarians.
Diva: Speaking of, the Red Scare girls were in your salon show [Salon 001: Tomorrow Is Another Day, February 2024] which was criticized for its interrogation of Gone with the Wind. Your most recent show [YR008 Manus Maxxima, February 2026] got a lot of pushback for, among other things, featuring Clavicular as a model on the runway. With these critics and commenters, it all gets really overcoded. There’s, like, this hysteria to determine a single meaning, which almost always devolves into politics. What gets lost in interpretations like these?
Velez: I’m trying to build something descriptive, not prescriptive that doesn’t start and end in the simplistic confines of ideological binaries. I often wish I had the plausible deniability of any other form of documentarian who is afforded some intellectual distance to their subject material but I don't think there’s “artists privilege” for anyone anymore. Ultimately I’m exhausted by the moral posturing and tidy conclusions that have to accompany every artistic endeavor in 2026. It’s a fool's errand in our era of non-existent media literacy and ideological tribalism, but I refuse to spend my time on earth upholding its continuity.
Diva: Okay. Into the deep. I was just looking at the flyer for your upcoming show in a few days [YR009: Smite on Saturday, September 12]. On it you’ve got a photo of the Trinity explosion, the first nuclear weapon test [in 1945]. It’s a black-and-white still frame by Berlyn Brixner, taken 25 milliseconds into the detonation. It feels biblical to me, like a creation event. It also looks kind of like an ultrasound. I guess, in a way, it is. Can you talk about that image? What about it resonates with your upcoming collection?
Velez: The storytelling focus of this season is a creative inversion of the aggressor and a commentary on brutality under the pretense of heavenly mandate. It’s a cautionary portrait of righteous violence that asks us to reconsider both victim and perpetrator. I want to update our association of militant tribalism and holy warfare (which I define as the “spiritual” posturing we undertake in an increasingly secular society). It’s a story about our timeless preoccupation with waging interpersonal violence in a way that feels both ancient and modern. The image really does capture this grotesque modern motif of biblical reformation through annihilation.
Diva: Brixner’s image is, to be specific, a document of a test. It’s a step removed from the explosion, which is a step removed from the actual annihilation event. Maybe this is useful to think about. Most people encounter fashion as photographs – individual models walking down the runway, straight toward the camera. Naturally, what’s lost is, you know, the gravity of a garment, how it might move and fall, how its textures shift with light. The tension. In other words, almost everything. What’s your relationship to documentation? How do you communicate the spirit of your clothes to someone who isn’t physically there to see them?
Velez: I’m a literalist when it comes to cataloguing as much “supporting evidence" as possible when building a thesis through a collection. I like to work with textiles that are original to the source of the inspiration for the season, whether its repurposed military canvas or used ship sails- materiality that captures the energy of a past life or of a distinct activity. I like to collect human artifacts... I think we neglect to consider all the ways we might collect ephemera around the fashion spectacle.
Diva: How much of the runway is part of the garment? Can the themes and the afterlife of your shows fill in the gaps of documentation?
Velez: The reason I love fashion as a medium is because it's a creative response to a sociological prompt. For me the spectacle is so satisfying because it’s an opportunity to curate all sorts of artistic references and iconoclastic figures into a tableau vivant of “now”. For me, even the language used to review my work, (whether good or bad) is also written in the vernacular of the times which adds another layer of complimentary context to the work. It’s all a Rorschach test. My work can be thematically overcomplicated sometimes but I think it should be the burden of a good critic to have to parse the semantics.
Diva: Building off that, a lot of the people you cast arrive with an image pre-attached. I’ve already mentioned Clavicular, Dasha… you’ve also had Anna Delvey and Liv Schmidt walk… Pariah the Doll is a frequent collaborator, and is involved again this time. These people are all sort of living readymades, built by the internet. Thematically, what interests you about putting that type of person into your shows?
Velez: I think of these people as conceptual ambassadors. They’re all thematically connected to a story or a subculture that I find interesting or impactful each season. Beyond that I just feel an obligation to elevate and shield disrupters and contrarians from the meat grinder of the Monoculture. I don’t think complicated people can be meaningfully defined by the internet.
Diva: Is there a formal appeal, too? They obviously come with a built-in constraint – you already know roughly how people will react to them. So, if you’re sculpting in the theater of the real, these characters are like an armature, something you can shape around. What does having that fixed point let you do elsewhere in the show?
Velez: I’m not all that interested in viewer reaction or preconception around the people I work with. My project is a space for the audience to overhear me in conversation with myself. I think a good designer should be able to impose their vision on any person, place, or thing, even if it comes with its own distinct individual identity, and come away with a visually coherent, amalgamated result.
Diva: Brett Cooper was at your last show, too. She’s someone who weighs in on masculinity quite a bit, as does Clav, in his own way. Until very recently, your work has focused almost entirely on femininity. This week you’ll launch your first menswear collection. What can we expect? Why menswear, and why now?
Velez: There’s so much combustible energy around depicting masculinity these days. It’s become so taboo and politically coded... I want to make sense of it for myself artistically. I’ve enjoyed making work that inverts mainstream gender discourse, like YR004 & YR006 which were inspired by the theory of toxic femininity, so this feels like a natural and exciting unfolding.
Diva: A couple years ago you said that the woman you want to make clothes for is one “who revels in her autonomy and doesn’t make excuses for her capacity for wickedness.” Who is the man you want to make clothes for?
Velez: I think another woman coming in hot with a preachy, prescriptive take on masculinity is the last thing sensitive young men want these days so I’ll try my best to be thoughtful and responsive instead.
Diva: You often talk about your work in very autobiographical terms. Early on, you talked a lot about your upbringing – you were raised in Milwaukee by a single mother who worked as a ship captain on the Great Lakes – and how that informed some of your material choices (the sailcloth, the corrosion, etc.). You’ve also spoken publicly about the financial sacrifices she made to support you. What you haven’t spoken about much is your father – though on Red Scare you did say that Bad Bunny in his Met Gala old-man outfit “looks just like my dad.” Jokes aside, it makes me curious. How has your father influenced your work, your life, your concept of masculinity?
Velez: My dad came up from Puerto Rico. My parents divorced when I was young. He’s got a sensitive artist's soul and very worldly tastes– I imagine the banality of middle class life in Wisconsin was frustrating and unsatisfying for him. The demand for a more meaningful outlet for masculine catharsis is universally palpable.
Diva: I guess what all this makes me think of is… A couple days ago I went to Glendale, to Forest Lawn, the cemetery. At the very top, inside a church, is this massive painting of Christ on Golgotha Hill, where he was crucified. It’s one of the biggest paintings in the world. Wonderful. And that made me think of Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ, which is a great movie. Now Mel has already shot Passion 2, you know, The Resurrection, which was an entirely unexpected and unprecedented event, so Mel says it’s going to be hallucinatory, a fever dream… And it makes me think, like: When you build a world this specific, you create all this expectation. And I love that, because expectation creates a ton of space where people could never imagine you’d go. So much real estate. Do you feel that opening up around you? Does that possibility excite you?
Velez: Yes! People call me a rage baiter which I think is such a lazy term. I see a lot of value in pressurizing the atmosphere around the brand in different ways so that the eventual ignition can fuel something new and unexpected. Counterculture is a gated community: the friction points are an essential bonding and sorting tool. Cesar A. Cruz says “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”, which I think is an extremely important energy to bring to your creative work in the dystopian hellscape that is 2026.
[END OF CONVERSATION]
- - - - -