Whenever an outsider finds out I make clothing, they always ask "So what kind of clothes? Hip-hop? Skater?" It's always difficult to explain what exactly it is that we do, and that our clothing isn't necessarily hip-hop, nor strictly skateboarding-influenced, punk-inspired, or high-end-fashion-related. Usually, my answer goes something like "Um, we make streetwear." Which of course, doesn't mean much at all.

Meet one of, if not THE, founding fathers of "streetwear." His name is Rick Klotz, and he is the creative genius behind Freshjive. Perhaps you can recall back in the early '90s when his bright cartoony t-shirts exploded in the youth fashion market, or when his custom-made shirts ignited a firestorm of copycat clothing lines. You may acknowledge Rick as a veritable subculture demi-god in Japan, or you may have just heard of him as the underdog who's being sued silly by Stussy.

Either way, if you're in the "know," your life has been touched in some way by this man right here. From his downtown L.A. headquarters, Rick still sits and works everyday, surrounded by the industry's most skilled young designers (whatup Keerst!), cascading rolls of fabric, and yes, even rows upon rows of old-school sewing machines. Outsourcing, what's that?

After a brief respite from fashion (which included a surf-trip-gone-bonkers in Mexico, which is the subject of his current traveling photo exhibit), Rick has returned to Freshjive with a vengeance, in pre-production with 3 new labels, the second issue of his acclaimed magazine, and has even managed to fit in a lawsuit with "the other guys." Meet Rick Klotz.

 


[THE FIRST FRESHJIVE ADVERTISEMENT]


The Hundreds: So first things first. I want you to tell me about "The Propagandist," Freshjive's very own magazine (which is more like a coffee-table book, I'd say)..

Rick Klotz: About 4 or 5 years ago, we did this bonkers-colored catalog for one of the Jive lines. Half of it was all our ideas and influences the public doesn’t really see. And then we bounced it into its own project a year and a half ago – a creative outlet beyond the clothing – to have an outlet for all the influences we can’t express in a piece of clothing. That was the first one, it was really nice, we had a book distributor…

Did you sell it in stores?

Yeah, we sold about 3,000 copies. Our first account was the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles. They were really behind it and let us do a 1,000-person party in January of 2004. It was kinda ghetto, but nice party…The first one looked kinda like how I wanted it to look like but I’m excited about going forward with the second one because I spent about a year researching the stories and images we’re using in the next one. It’s a very personal outlet for me to express things I’m into.

 


Dope, we'll I'm lookin' forward to the next issue. You also mentioned a TV pilot the other day.. what's up with that?

There’s a new network called Current, that Al Gore has something to do with, coming out this fall and the demographic is 18-35…

Yeah, I’ve heard about that.

So one of the guys under the head of programming got in touch with me about some of the stories in Propagandist and asked me to put together a pilot based on these unique stories that I’ve researched. So they gave us some funding to do a pilot, they accepted it.

Is it documentary-style?

Yeah, it’s kinda like documentary style, short, 6 to 10 minutes, for TV. I wish it was longer, because “documentary,” you wanna get into a lotta shit, but unfortunately it wasn’t, but it’s still cool. They accepted the pilot, so now we’re just talking about how many episodes to do.

Okay, so everyone wants to know what’s up with this new line, Gonz!

So basically when I took a lot of time off from FJ, I took up surfing a lot more, which I always loved but never had much time to do, hanging out with a lot of friends that surf and are also younger than me so they had a lot of free time on their hands so we were just fucking around for a year. And we started thnking about how much A) we love surfing but B) we hate the current state of surf culture, the industry, and all that crap.

 Me and my friends wanted to start something new that was real influenced by where we’re from and what we’re into. Where’re we from? Hollywood, San Fernando Valley, beach area, Malibu, whatever. So it’s this whole local inspiration thing. Also very influenced by the people we looked up to from a younger age, surfing and...Another influence was the band The Surf Punks and their whole attitude towards the industry, and the surf culture for their time which was the late 70s, early 80s. At first it was me and a bunch of kids going “Lets start this little surf clique that’s the opposite you’d expect from a surf clique." And let’s come up with a name that no one can figure out, and would bum a lot of white people out at the beach, so we decided to come up with “Black Motherfucking Jesus” with the image of Ike Turner, who’s the baddest fucking motherfucker ever, and we did this photo at the beach with a bunch of silly props and silly people and some of our friends – that’s Mickey Door’s grave – an ode to Mickey Dora, which was a rebel surfer from the 60s – and it says "Rip the Motherfucking Cat," because that was his nickname, and a big black thing coming out of the grave.

Just little details throughout here about what we’re into. That’s how this photo came about at the end of last summer. (That’s also my punk-rock jacket I painted in 1981 that I still have… ) After a couple months, we were like “Yo, let’s do this clothing label – let’s try to do something, we came up with the word “Gonz!,” originally wanted to call it “Gonzo’s” but we couldn’t do that, so we had to shorten it, called it Gonz! with an exclamation mark…and we’ve been printing some stickers to promote…



This one’s a spin on the Sex Wax logo? (pointing to a Gonz! sticker-graphic resembling the surf wax company)

Yeah, “Bashing Lips and Waxing Chicks – TOTALLY SPOILED.” (laughs)

We just wanted to bring a little bit of fun… right now, the state of everything is just sooo fashionable (then mocking other designers in a quasi-European accent) "You know I grew up in Newport Beach, and went to boarding school in New York, and it’s kind of an influence of California and the life I led in New York, making casual clothes..." (Rick shakes his head) Keep it true man! Keep it true to what you grew up doing. So that’s what I believe about anybody doing anything – if you’re not true to what you’re really inspired by, it’s gonna show. So that’s a neat thing we’re spending the year promoting. Another big thing about this is we’re not selling this to surf stores. We don’t want to run that game, deal with that side of things, hopefully it’ll be cool to get some boutique shops, the Japanese are always good – they always understand something different. So I can’t quite figure out where this is gonna be placed, when u start something new, you just do it and see where the cards fall, as far as business-wise. 

Another project you’re working on is Delicious Vinyl clothing.

Yeah, at the time I started Jive, I was working at a West Coast hip-hop label called Delicious Vinyl – Pharcyde, Tone Loc, Young MCs, Def Jeff, Brand New Heavies. I was in college, and started doing some graphics for them, few album covers, some other shit. That was a great time for me – I was young, hanging out in clubs, doin’ club fliers, just got to know that whole crew. The people at DV were really down with me at the start when I started Fresh Jive. So anyways, years and years go by… it’s funny, the Pharcyde and Del were the first rap acts to cross-promote in the Action Sports Industry, and that was with Fresh Jive. We took them to the trade shows in ‘92, ‘93, and had ‘em rapping in the middle of the show, and had some parties.


I bet everyone was like “What’s going on?”
Yeah! There were a couple companies that were comin’ from an urban angle, or whatever you wanna call it, but we were definitely the first company rocking turntables at shows, before one single urban company existed, and we were definitely the first ones to take hip-hop acts and bring ‘em to the action sports arena… but now, fuck this! You go to the trade show, everyone’s got a fuckin’ turntable and an emcee on the mic, and someone breaking in front of the booth, so we totally stopped it. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea, but…

So anyways, the new project is…I got with my friends at Delicious and obtained the rights to do products under the “Delicious Vinyl” name. We’re doing big product releases, - I mean big as in publicity, but not distribution – again, never start something to blow out. Right now, I’m really into the aesthetics of the late ‘80s, early ‘90s clean, hip style that was relevant to hip-hop culture. Clean. Black pair of jeans, pair of fuckin’ locs, black and white varsity jacket, or just a fuckin’ windbreaker and a black hat, and just that cleanliness.


For me, this is an opportunity – even though we’re doing similar looks in Jive – this is a segue-way to promote that look through this. Even though there’s gonna be a lot of obvious logo-heavy stuff like t-shirts, CD cases, record bags, whatever, also moving into cleaner stuff that’s not so logo heavy.

So it’s a full line?

Yeah, but we’re not gonna do anything that doesn’t really fit in the line. We’re not sure if it’s appropriate to start off with jeans. But definitely really-good qulity t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and jackets. Everything custom, little unique items, and that’s it.
That time period, for me, was fun. It wasn’t so heavy and hard and fucking money-oriented, like the culture is today. Back then it was like…

Like party hip-hop…

Yeah, there was this kind of naïve innocence, although there was some pretty hard music at the time also, like NWA, Public Enemy, that was the golden era. DV’s side was a little more lighthearted, but man, the posse they had behind them at the time. It was like major heads that formed the cultural scene in LA. Matt Dike, Mike Ross (those 2 were the owners), his brother Rick Ross who went on to produce the Z Channel documentary recently, to Orlando (Big O), Mario C – the Beastie Boys producer got his start doin’ a lot of stuff under DV.

This is very tied into Fresh Jive because its similar to what we’re making. Gonz! is boutique, surf-only, …the last one is Very Mental. Let’s go upstairs...

And this is the 3rd new line you’re starting up. You know, I think you told me about this a few years ago, but at the time I thought you were talking about taking Jive into this new direction.

Yeah, we were doing graphics in the Fresh Jive line that were kinda…Middle Earth inspired. Rock culture inspired. And they did good, we were all stoked doing it. But trying to do so many things under the Jive label was a problem, because you buy a label for what you get used to them doing. It was great that we were trying to flip it, but at the same time, there’s only so much you can do. This whole Very Mental thing we decided to spin off into a higher-end brand. Again, this is focusing on …you know how I describe this line? Death and Destruction. Chaos and Anarchy. Doom and Gloom. So that’s pretty much what this is about. We’re just trying to do something very Satanic, something very evil. Just trying to be elusive with the graphics, trying to work on imagery that looks weird and scary, that you can’t quite figure out, but makes you nervous.

I see you use 2 types of fabric for t-shirts…

It’s all custom bodies, its not like we’re doing anything too basic. It’s really about a lot of layering, of fabrics, and washes, and textures and applications. Just weird shit. As far as bottoms, we’re only doing one fit of stretch, narrow-fit jeans…