“It’s liberating! We are rethinking our model in search of the silver lining.” So said Rhuigi Villaseñor in Milan at a presentation for Rhude. Villaseñor is one of fashion’s adventurers, an entrepreneur whose borderline picaresque progress has featured multiple peaks, and some corresponding troughs.
The Manila born Angeleno is currently between those two extremes. On the upside he is living in one of the most beautiful places in the world for his current day job as the chief brand officer at Como 1907, the soccer club currently establishing itself both in Serie A and as a nascent crossover luxury brand. Less glamorously, Villaseñor is also negotiating the transition mentioned above: his brand Rhude is moving towards a more efficient decentralized structure as it shifts from wholesale to DTC.
The clothes on the rail when we met reflected Villaseñor’s current restart. There was a marked emphasis on core Rhude categories; denim, sweats, and biker-inspired pieces. Knits and tees were embedded with his still powerful brand language. Sets in tie dye fleece and his signature bandanna pattern played against some great outerwear options including impeccable varsity jackets, a heroically rugged font-fronted aviator, and a lovable hooded olive bomber. New options included handsome down jackets whose price was a radical undercut to recent Rhude offerings.
Said Villaseñor: “The collection is called Rude Boy and it embraces what inspired me when I first started the brand; California, that independent spirit, prep, and skate. For me right now it’s about re-emphasizing the key points of our identity while we work to get some other factors in place. And then, once we’re ready, we fly.”
