Elena Velez has been making headlines since she stepped into the fashion scene. She was named “one of five under the radar designers to discover at New York Fashion Week” by I-D Magazine in 2018, and has built her business up from scratch. Velez grew up in Wisconsin as the only child to a single mother who is a ship’s captain on the Great Lakes, so she didn’t have private or generational wealth to help her along the way.

Instead, she turned to venture capital firms Gener8tor, and CSA Partners to found her company, Elena Velez Industries Inc., in 2021. Even her company makes headlines. A Forbes profile of the company revealed that it had a mission to “democratize resources and recognition” for artists outside of traditional creative capitals, which is why it wanted to work with Midwestern makers, not just those in traditional fashion hubs.

Velez has always been untraditional, and that hasn’t changed yet. The 30-year-old designer, who has dressed celebrities like Grimes, Taylor Swift, Julia Fox, Solange Knowles, and Charli XCX, has also seen negative attention. The Washington Post called her “problematic,” and her New York Fashion Week show last year was controversial and had many potential guests canceling after she revealed that the show would be a meditation on “Gone With The Wind.”

So it isn’t a shock that the CFDA Award for Emerging Designer of the Year is the latest celebrity to align with adult-content-based platform OnlyFans. The subscription-based platform is going out of its way to entice creators outside the sex industry to join, and Velez is happy to be on board so she can escape “outrage” and the “culture war” that she claims to be facing in mainstream media.

The “explosive and aggressive” as per Vogue opened up about the decision to Page Six.

“On top of the precarity of a career in the creative industry, we’re also in the middle of a culture war. Every public proclamation or creative assertion that lies outside of a tightly sanctioned social window comes with the possibility of outrage and professional ostracizing. It has never been more important as an artist who values the integrity of creative expression to diversify their means of income.”

“OnlyFans is a really cheeky and disruptive way to democratize access to capital and target different audiences.” Velez added that her unusual lifestyle and struggles as a professional artist may make for some compelling footage for subscribers.

If you want to own a piece of her collaboration with OnlyFans, better pull out that credit card. There are only two pieces in the capsule collection: an oversized black hoodie that features both Elena Velez and OnlyFans on the arms, a small logo on the upper left corner and a white corset design on the back that costs $350 and a ripped black washed-out T-shirt featuring a white corset print on the front and Elena Velez and OnlyFans written on the back that costs $275.

If you don’t want to spend that much, you can always check out the content Velez will create for OFTV, the “SFW” (safe for work) side of OnlyFans, their OFTV.

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