Well-Fitted Clothes, Good Design, and Hard Work with David Rivera
Growing up highly influenced and inspired by well-fitted clothing, good design, and capturing moments with a lens led David Rivera to climb up the ranks of two creative worlds: clothing brands and photography. When David isn’t overseeing Special Projects (aka the awesome collaborations) over at legendary streetwear brand The Hundreds, he is helping brands and people tell their story as a freelance photographer.
David hasn’t only actualized one of his most significant daydreams (to design clothes for The Hundreds) but he’s also gone on to shoot look-books, run the Headwear and Accessories Department and design visual communications for the brand.
In our conversation with David, he shares his earliest influences that had a hand at shaping his interests, moving on from creating a streetwear brand with friends, balancing work and more!
Tell us a little bit about your upbringing.
I am a first-generation kid. Both of my parents are from Michoacán, Mexico and moved to the states when they were twenty-one and twenty. They moved here to Los Angeles and have been here ever since. I was born in Compton. I was raised in the life of them trying to figure out their own lives while starting mine here. My dad is a computer engineer, and my mom was a daycare/foster care mom my whole childhood. I was an only child but I’ve had literally fifty different siblings coming in and out of our house as I was growing up. That helped me see a lot of different perspectives. I learned empathy at a very young age where I was always trying to help even though I was younger or I couldn't. I would always try to feel what they were feeling just to try and help them out. I feel like that has come to my advantage now as an adult... knowing how to speak with other people who are going through something or at least hearing someone out.
We lived in Watts for a bit, then Compton and stayed there for most of the time. When I was around thirteen, my parents decided to move because the school I was going to wasn’t the best, so we moved to the city of Fontana, in the Inland Empire. At the time it was still a developing suburb. I went to school and my mom continued to do her daycare/foster care business. I always saw how hard of a worker she is so I feel like I got a lot of my work ethic from her. I learned about working hard regardless of your circumstances. I finished high school in Fontana and as soon as I graduated I planned to move back to Los Angeles and have been here since.
My parents got divorced when I was in middle school and I had to learn how to live a new way. They were dealing with their problems and I had to figure out my own. I learned to be more independent. I was around my friends more and was able to act more freely. That helped me learn what I wanted to do and how to move. It was interesting for me because I had two different families. My dad remarried. My mom remarried. I no longer was the only child. My mom had two children with my step-dad. On top of that, she adopted five kids. My dad had a child with my step-mom who also had my step-sister. That became my family. I went from being the only child to the oldest of nine siblings.
You touched on how you feel your upbringing and your parents influenced who you are today. How did they feel when you graduated high school and decided not to go to college?
Well, I tried to keep them happy. I graduated high school and I tried pursuing college. I wanted to keep my mom happy in order for her to feel like it was worth moving to the states to give me better education. I went to the Art Institute of California for about a year and a half. Most of what was being taught, I seemed to have already known through experience and doing my own research. I was working with a clothing company that some friends and I had started, called CLSC. I think that is where I started seeing that I can do this.
They were all a little older than me. They were in college figuring out their lives. I was inspired by the drive and hustle. I realized that if I can do this and we work hard enough we can make this a successful brand and if we can figure that out, I don’t necessarily need school. Now that I think about it, I see that finishing school would've been important for me. Whether it be learning something new or seeing new perspectives. Now that I’m older, I see why school can be necessary when it comes to learning and working with other people, but I was lucky enough that I had good people around me.
I was shooting a lot of photos back then for the brand. I picked up a camera in high school and started shooting all my friends and always wanted to work in that field. So when I went to college, I pursued graphic design and photography. I wanted to embed those two interests of mine and see how I could make it work. But then there was an opportunity for me, I had an offer that I couldn’t turn down which made me want to drop out of college.
An opportunity with the CLSC brand?
No, actually. At the time I had an internship with The Hundreds. I started October of 2011 as a photographer for e-comm photography. Shooting products for the website. I had friends around the brand that mentioned they needed help at The Hundreds and said they could put in a good word for me and it happened. I interned and maybe three months later I got hired part-time. I went from part-time to full-time in just a few months. I learned how to work with a variety of products and organize myself. I worked under Scott and he showed me the ropes on how to work in such a fast paced work environment. That was my initial job after dropping out. When I told my mom that I was dropping out and that I wasn’t going back to school to do photography, she didn’t take me seriously. She thought I just worked for a t-shirt company in a warehouse packing boxes, so she was kind of bummed. I had to sell her my dreams and my ideas of what I wanted to do. She’s been very supportive to this day and she gets it now.
“At first I was hesitant about being that guy in school always carrying a camera but then I became that kid. I immediately fell in love with it.”
I was interested to know if the photography or interest in clothes and design came first for you.
For clothing, that started when I was a kid. I was about five or six. My parents always kept me very well-dressed, even if it wasn’t the nicest clothes they always had me dressed nicely. I always had my hair done, always tucked in my shirt and always kept clean. When I was eight years old my dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said I wanted clothes.
I had a lot of friends growing up in Compton and I was influenced by their style. My older friends would have Air Forces and Foamposites. Back in the day, they would be wearing Rocawear, Sean John, mixed with stuff from the Compton Fashion Center, like No Name Jeans (a denim brand that everyone would wear in my neighborhood). I wanted to be like my older friends. I was always in a hurry to grow up and I don’t know why. So, I started with clothes. I always wanted to wear the nicest clothes, whether I could afford it or not. For my birthday, I’d tell my mom to take me to the mall to pick out a Rocawear outfit. I was inspired by rappers and music videos and wanted to dress like them. I think that’s where the creativity started... when I would put outfits together. I don’t know any ten year old that would plan outfits for the week. I would be like, “On Monday I am wearing a white tee with this denim and Air Forces. On Tuesday I will wear this black tee with this denim that has yellow thread and some Timberlands that match the yellow thread on my pants.” Stuff like that. That’s what got me on the creative side of how to put things together and I feel like I have loved clothes since then.
In high school was when my interests developed into more than just clothing. My step-dad got me a camera and suggested I start shooting my friends. At first I was hesitant about being that guy in school always carrying a camera but then I became that kid. I immediately fell in love with it. I always had a camera around my neck in school. I would shoot in class, shoot during passing periods and shoot my teachers. I think it just kicked off from there, people asked me to pull up and bring my camera. That’s where I got started with photography.
Since I had my camera with me all the time, I became the e-comm/lifestyle photographer for CLSC. Whenever we’d prepare for shoots or designs, I would be behind-the-scenes documenting everything. I got pretty good with the e-comm photos, that I started doing it for our website and that’s how it kicked off my studio photography. I feel like e-comm and working in studios helped me learn about lighting, stylizing a shoot with no models, and figuring out how to get creative with the product photography. I was fusing two things I love, which was photography and clothing.
I am curious to learn more about this CLSC brand because it seems like it was a foundational moment in your life where you began seeing the possibilities of working with a brand but also getting to exercise your creativity.
It was my senior year in high school. I was checking blogs daily and eventually discovered The Hundreds blog. There was always something new, something that was bubbling but not to the masses yet. Like if you knew about it, you knew some secrets and I think that’s why I loved it. A lot of people started meeting each other on the internet because of the same interests. I was into shoes and clothes. There were a couple people I met on MySpace. I ran into someone that said they were starting a brand called DOnUt (Do You Not Them) and when I looked into it... it happened to be in the city I was living in, Fontana. I became interested, reached out and asked them to let me help out. They put me on the street team and it was really just me hustling for them. They had real jobs and were in college.They were doing dope shit. I was in high school telling people I work with this brand. (It started because one of the owners had a donut shop and he had unlimited pink boxes. So we would sell our t-shirts out of donut boxes.) I’d be at school selling t-shirts to all of my classmates and they’d say I was working with a sick brand that nobody knew about. That lasted for about half a year and then the brand broke up.
Some of us that came from DOnUt, started a new brand. A member of that group was Joshua Vides, who co-created CLSC with his partner Nelson at the time. They were a little older than me and looked out for me. They told me DOnUt wasn’t happening anymore and asked that I help them out with CLSC. I was down for that. So I started helping out wherever I could. Josh was the designer, Nelson was the marketing guy, and we had four other guys on the team. Slowly but surely we started building that brand. We would take day trips to Fairfax and put the brand out there. We would invest in making sure people knew what the brand is. We would stop by Diamond, Huf, Flight Club and The Hundreds. We became friends with these brands and little by little, they became curious about who CLSC was and thought it was cool.
We threw this crazy house party in a mansion in Rancho Cucamonga that put our name out there. Being that we were friends with some of the guys at The Hundreds, they were able to support us. They drove out forty-five minutes and came all the way for a house party. That was one of our more iconic parties because we had Overdose (a rap group from LA) perform. Dom Kennedy performed in the living room on a pool table. This was right after a Paid Dues show in San Bernardino, so from there they came straight to our house party. After that, CLSC built a name for itself. The brand grew on its own and then slowly but surely things started getting a little more serious. The owners needed to make some cuts in order to continue to grow. I was part of that cut. They thanked me for my help but couldn't find a reason to be paying me for what I was doing for them. Everything was good, we are all still homies, they just didn’t need that position any longer. That was my ending with CLSC. I worked with them for almost two years and after that the brand blew up. They did everything they could. They were in all the stores, had wholesale, and even a physical store at one point. Josh did a great job with that brand. Once I was no longer a part of CLSC, I had to figure out what I wanted to do. At this time, I was still going to college and I got the opportunity to work for The Hundreds and that’s how it all started. I was taken in by The Hundreds because some friends were looking out for me.
“It’s always a group effort, never just me with anything we do. I love to involve everyone because it just makes it that much stronger.”
You’ve been with The Hundreds for almost nine years. Tell us about that. What positions have you held and what did you learn from them?
I started at The Hundreds in 2011 as an intern. I did e-comm photography under Scott and eventually hired me officially. It was just me and him running product shots. He would direct me on what we needed to do. Sometimes he would shoot the look books and I would be steaming clothes making sure everything was ready. Sometimes I’d be shooting and he’d be editing in his office. About eight months in, our visual communications designer quit. Bobby and Ben said I was able to achieve what he did with photography and editing, and I already knew the aesthetic of the brand. They asked me how I felt about taking over visual communications. I would still help with photography, but I’d also be creating banners with the website, creating headers for Twitter... Instagram was brand new at that time so we were still learning how to develop that. Basically, I’d help with the identity of the brand from the outside perspective. Anything the public eye saw from The Hundreds, I would create. I’d create a magazine ad or be given assets and create something from that. I had a Creative Director, Patrick Hill, who led me in that role.
A year later, the same guy who had quit actually came back. Then I was told they needed help in the headwear and accessories department and asked if I was down to help out. Me designing headwear? Of course. I love hats. I’ve been wearing hats since I was a kid. I worked at Hat Club at the mall for a couple years. They were like, “ Cool you’re going to be working under Vito.” - an OG at The Hundreds. So I went from e-comm photography to visual communications to headwear and accessories. I worked under Vito for two years as an assistant. I sourced anything we needed to make. I helped him with the technical designs. I brought up ideas on what we should make or how we should make it. We’d design a year out. It’d be summertime right now and we’d be working on Summer/Fall of next year. I learned a lot of the brand ethos through that because I became a part of the design team.
I started to think beyond headwear. It was cool to see my work being used in multiple ways. I started embedding my DNA with The Hundreds, with Bobby and Ben. Eventually I started running the Headwear and Accessories Department and I worked that for three/four years. I still oversee it. I then jumped into doing Special Projects, which is overseeing collaborations. The Hundreds does so many collaborations that they solely needed someone just for that. I worked on designs with Bobby and Patrick for collaborations. We worked with the rest of the team on bringing the ideas to fruition.
So I’ve had four positions with The Hundreds. That’s where I am at now, I’m the Special Projects Manager and still oversee headwear and accessories.
It sounds like you have your hands in a lot of baskets!
Yeah but everyone in the company does. Everyone thinks The Hundreds is this huge company with two to three hundred people, but it’s like fifty people max. Our design team is five of us and that’s it. Our marketing team is like six/seven people. We are a small team and everyone wears a lot of different caps.
Which project at The Hundreds that you worked on is personally most special to you and why?
Man… there’s so many. I think I’d go with one of my first projects because it was my first time doing it. We did a project with Friday the 13th (the movie). This was my first time doing an official design collaboration where I got to work with the graphic team, the creative director, and Bobby. It was my ideas on paper and obviously not everything was perfect. I had to show it to the guys and they tightened it up for me. It’s always a group effort, never just me with anything we do. I love to involve everyone because it just makes it that much stronger. I think that’s one of my most memorable projects because I got to shoot the project as well. I got to bring in my other creative side, which is photography. It was fun to design and shoot a collaboration for The Hundreds. The project was perceived well and was a success.
Throughout this whole time that you’re working at The Hundreds you’re still pursuing photography as a freelancer. How has balancing those two been for you?
It hasn’t been that tough because I’ve learned to manage my time. I’ve learned to separate both things completely. I work for The Hundreds Monday through Friday. For my photography, if I want to give it my undivided attention and my focus, I usually wait for the weekends to do that. Luckily, whoever I’ve worked with has been okay with weekends. A lot of the people I work with also have other jobs, so weekends usually work perfectly. I try not to get both jobs intertwined or step on one another. It’s not good for you, it’s not good for the work, and it’s not good for the people you’re working with. So my balance has been Monday through Friday I work for The Hundreds and weekends I try to do other things I like to do. I’ve done a lot of editorials for brands. I’ve shot a lot for The Hundreds and it’s cool that they trust me with that platform too.
There’s been certain jobs I couldn’t say no to and I’ve had to be like, “Yo, I have to head out for two days.” For example, a friend of mine asked if I could shoot something for Native Instruments, a music production equipment company, but it was going to be in North Carolina. I asked what the shoot would be for and she said a feature for 9th Wonder. My answer, “Wow. Yeah I’m down. When?” It was a Tuesday through Thursday deal. They let me know ahead of time so I was able to move things around and I flew out, did the shoot, and came back Friday. It’s just time management really. Lucky enough Bobby and Ben have been supportive enough to give me those days off to work on something else, it’s been nice.
I’m sure that managing your time has also made you become more selective of the clients you shoot for.
Yes, very much. I’m a bit picky when it comes to who I am working with. If I know you or it comes through a friend, that helps a lot. I have to have a story built into a project I am working on. It has to be relatable and have a good reason to do it, not just because it’s cool. When it has those details, I feel the shoots end up being much better on both ends. If I don’t see an alignment, I’ll try to help out by recommending someone else who I think would do a good job shooting it. Regardless, I want to help the person out whether I’m shooting it or not.
What freelance shoot has been most special for you?
Flying out to North Carolina to shoot 9th Wonder in his home studio and seeing the history. He gave us a tour of North Carolina Central University, where he teaches Hip-Hop History. He took us to Duke University because he’s good with the basketball team there and Mike Krzyzewski. We interviewed him at Duke to show his involvement with students in basketball and how it affected him. That was very special because I’ve looked up to 9th Wonder in music as a fan. I just always knew his name. That was very special to me... shooting an icon in music.
Another highlight was YG. My friend owns a brand called Chrle. and he works for YG’s brand 4Hunnid. Charlie and I shot a look book with a couple of friends and posted it on social media. YG saw the photos and said he needed a sweatshirt from the collection. Charlie asked if he can shoot him in it and YG agreed to do it. Charlie and I drove up to YG’s house at 9 a.m. We walked in, his family answered the door and we were hanging out waiting for him. He was getting dressed, came downstairs and was a super nice guy. He gave me a tour around his house to get ideas on where to shoot. In my head I was like, “Damn I am really at YG’s house.” He’s from Compton. I’m from Compton. It was a good moment for me and I couldn’t believe it was happening. When we went to his backyard I decided that’s where I wanted to shoot it. He said “Oh like on some art shit?” and I responded, “Exactly. I would love to show people through my perspective on how I see you in this sweatshirt.” He liked the ideas we were throwing at him and the photos came out great. I was happy with everything. Charlie helped me out big on that one. It was a good project, a good way to work with an artist who’s established and humble, easy to work with. It was a dream come true.
credit: David Rivera
“It’s not that I wasn’t okay with that, I am just learning that is who I am. I am here to make other people better. I am here to spark the idea for someone to run with. I am here to help.”
What do you imagine being the next big step in your career?
I was hoping when you’d ask this question I would know the answer. I don’t know the answer to that. I just want to keep creating. It’s crazy because I’ve been at The Hundreds for almost nine years and I feel like I am just getting started. I like what I do, I like what I’m doing right now. I am one of those people that loves to work and create good products, make good storytelling, show visuals people can relate to. If I am no longer with The Hundreds one day then I will probably keep doing what I am doing just at a different level or with a different perspective. I know now that I would never want to start a brand, although I thought I did in high school when I helped start CLSC. I know what and how much it takes to build a clothing company. You have to come correct with a story and I don’t think I’ve found my story to tell through products.
Some people are okay working for others and some people want to be in the limelight, work for themselves, and be the face of a brand. I’ve learned that that is not me. The older I am getting the more I am okay with it. It’s not that I wasn’t okay with that, I am just learning that that is who I am. I am here to make other people better. I am here to spark the idea for someone to run with. I am here to help. That’s what I tell friends and family. Whatever they need I can help them get there or maybe lead them the right way.
What daydreams have you had that you feel have already come true?
I mean... I was a junior in high school when I told myself I was going to design for The Hundreds. So the fact that it happened years later, I think I am living my dream to be honest. It’s fun to do and I still love it. It’s crazy that I’m actually doing it. I love learning, coming up with solutions and constantly being creative. I’m living a pretty good daydream.
