Tommy Dorfman Talks Club Curran
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Over the summer, trans actress, activist, writer, director and producer Tommy Dorfman quietly introduced her all-inclusive digital lifestyle platform that champions queer and trans artists, Club Curran. Recently, Dorfman expanded the website with an e-commerce holiday store filled with a curation of queer and trans-owned brands across ready-to-wear, accessories, beauty and home goods.
Here, Dorfman talks with WWD about expanding the world of Curran in 2024, including her newly launched podcast, “My First Time,” and upcoming directorial feature film debut of “I Wish You All the Best,” at SXSW.
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Growing up in Atlanta as a queer, trans kid, Dorfman said she had Facebook, MySpace and Xanga communities, but “didn’t have social media in the same way we do now.” Instead, her love of fashion, filmmaking, television, theater and performance was fueled by trips to the magazine aisles of Barnes & Noble and Borders. Later in life, Dorfman said she was torn between fashion or film for education, pursuing the latter as her way into the entertainment industry.
Fast forward to the pandemic, Dorfman said she felt isolated from the community and was struggling to find, “not necessarily resources specifically about being trans or transitioning, but a space that could encapsulate and give me access to different points of view from queer and trans people, whether or not they’re talking about queer and trans issues.”
A parallel to her youth, Dorfman found political, news and culture separation in media, but said she knew there were amazing global queer and trans artists with global works across all mediums.
“Many of them have found success but also the barriers of entry for queer and trans artists are significantly higher than that for our cis counterparts,” she said, noticing a distinct lack of a curated collection of queer and trans joy. Thinking about what she could do with her platform in the spotlight, she fueled her gifts and love of editorial and fashion into Club Curran’s digital lifestyle platform and zine, which quietly launched in summer 2023. The name Curran comes from Dorfman’s middle name [her mother’s maiden name] and represents the ideas of queer family and chosen family.
“To be queer and to be trans is really the most autonomous way to live I think, and so our art should mirror that,” she said. “Perhaps we don’t have the most resources yet, but we will and will continue to grow as we have. That’s really why I started with a zine — I wanted to be introduced to the worldview of other queer and trans artists, and more emerging talent that we haven’t seen as much elsewhere.”
A few months later, Club Curran expanded with the brand’s first holiday e-commerce shop, with 3 percent of the shop’s proceeds supporting the Ali Forney Center.
Currently, the platform is modeled like a house, with different “rooms” including: Shop, Armor, Library, Intimacy, Spirit and Culture, with editorial and submission-based content in each section. Dorfman said the goal is to expand each room throughout the year and offer the growing community a way to create immersive profiles.
Dorfman said through her experience working in retail, specifically at Dover Street Market, she admired how the company celebrated and invested in young talent, so she’s doing the same with Club Curran’s online shop.
“I thought it would be so special to have a one-stop shop for those who want to shop from queer and trans designers,” she said. “Yes, we have brands like Urbody, which are specifically tailored to folks who need different type of undergarments to support and affirm themselves, but we also have brands like Collina Strada, Kim Mesches and Noto [Botanics] that are very expansive and everyone can shop them.”
For the holiday shop, featured brands and collaborators also included BoySmells candles, GoodLight skin care, Dorfman’s shoe collaboration with Simon Miller and Fluide makeup, with prices ranging from $8 to $525.
“I think being trans, obviously things that can support me in my transition is so great, but I also think there are cis people who need all of these things as well and these narratives can be related to as well in some way, because we’re all transitioning,” she said, later adding, she’s “thinking of Club Curran as a by-queer-people-for-everybody space.”
For 2024, she’s working to onboard new brands across all categories from emerging, queer and trans-founded brands, while expanding collaborations and working on an internal Curran product. Branching out into more ready-to-wear and accessories is key for the year; with intimate and sex health products in sight for the future. In addition, Dorfman plans to share narrative-driven editorial content alongside each curated product and thematic launch (such as a February Love Stories narrative) to help support and share each brand’s story to the wider Club Curran community, as seen through her holiday shop video and campaign imagery.
Long-term, Dorfman’s bucket list includes expanding Club Curran to a brick-and-mortar and a non-nightlife-driven physical space for queer and trans people. For now, she’s busy expanding the world of Curran with her newly launched Curran production podcast, “My First Time,” where Dorfman interviews queer and trans people and allies, such as Julia Fox and Dylan Mulvaney.
In addition, Dorfman’s directorial debut for feature film, “I Wish You All The Best,” starring Alexandra Daddario and Cole Sprouse, will debut at the upcoming SXSW, where Club Curran will also be holding a roundtable discussion.
“As a person who’s kind of multihyphenate — it’s hard to pin down what I do exactly because I do a bunch of different things to varying levels of success — I have that same expansiveness when approaching Curran and that we don’t need to be limited, because art itself isn’t limited to other mediums,” Dorfman said. Although she founded Club Curran, she sees it as a much larger community.
“As a media platform, community space, store and brand, it’s to stand for being a hero in your life and armoring yourself, whether it’s intellectually, spiritually, intimately or in fashion, makeup and beauty with the tools that you need to succeed and thrive, whether you’re queer or not. That’s really what we look for at Curran. I love stories, and the stories I’m getting to tell as a filmmaker are amazing. I’m so grateful for those opportunities, but again, those barriers of entry can be really challenging and I’m coming out from a space of extreme privilege. What does it mean to start, at this stage, helping people build security and safety in their art? It’s not to say that we would be the exclusive tool for queer and trans people to find that it’s just that we are another option and avenue that you could go down in a world with pretty limited advocacy,” Dorfman said.
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