We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cesar Rodriguez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cesar , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

From my standpoint and what I’ve noticed and this is no knock on others in there creative atmosphere in the world of fashion, designing and such. I feel as though I create no middle man, in terms of doing my own printing, designing and networking to grow the brand. Everything I do is all me and that’s how I like it to be. Not to say the work ethic and overall scope is better than others I just feel as though this is my way of competing and standing out amongst larger brands and such.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

For people who may know me, they kind of seen this grow from a hobby to my life. I would say it started at a young age for many reasons, such as being in the graffiti and street art environment most of my young life. Being so interested in the art scene I developed a network of artists and from there drew a lot of inspiration and also learned skills along the way. What I’ve learned is that you have to showcase every and any skills you may have, not to mention be disciplined enough to keep learning and growing. Being uncomfortable is something you get comfortable with. Over the last couple of years I’ve been so proud of where I’m going and the fact that people mention my brand within the same breathes of others means I must be doing something right. This is what you love to hear and see, as a designer the attention of others and people you do not know just to love your work is among the best feelings, this isn’t like working for any other job and getting some value out of it, this is completely you and the validation is tremendous.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Most of all I think it is being personable, being able to be someone that others can talk to or confide in for future aspirations within there own life I believe is truly a game changer. People then talk about you in other creative spaces and with networking being of huge value in business this is definitely a key to success I think that is under appreciated. The reputation I’ve built is someone of that nature easy to talk to and most of ready to learn.

What do you find most rewarding about being creative?

There is so much that I feel give me so much life and even more love for what I do. Most of all is people knowing my work, telling me they’ve seen growth, telling me they love my work. These little bits of love given everyday oil the machine for artists. Not saying this is all we care about but when people take notice and appreciate what you do, it makes it even more enriching.

The rewards usually come with the same amount of work you put in, you can’t expect to have people rocking with you or supporting your brand if you’re not relentless and productive. It’s crazy to see now people wearing clothes I’ve made that came into my head, that was just an idea, just an idea that I’ve made for them to wear and now I see it around my own adventures around the city, that reward to see someone literally walk into a place of business or somewhere you’re at is a feeling that sends tingles into your spine and for me that will never go away.

Contact Info:

• Website: Imaginethreadsco.bigcartel.com/
• Instagram: @imaginethreadsco
• Facebook: Imaginethreads

Image Credits
None.