“Do you know the band Aerosmith?” began Chris Leba of R13 during a showroom appointment. “That first song they wrote, I remember Steven Tyler saying he was in an apartment in Boston, penniless with all his bandmates, and they wrote that song,” he continued. “It’s impossible for him to write that song again because he’s no longer that person, there’s such a purity in that.”
Leba has been thinking about the state of his own creativity. The introspection began when he started reading The creative act: a way of being by the famous American producer Rick Rubin. A chapter on rules, Leba said, made him think about the regulations he applies to his own work. “In this company we have very strict design codes,” Leba explained, “and what Rubin said is that rules in themselves are a form of constraints, and we limit ourselves with the rules that we set.”
It sounds oxymoronic to think that Leba and R13, a designer and label defined by their punk mentality and aesthetic, could have rules. But the core of a punk ethos is authenticity, and making things feel real is at the heart of Leba’s work. In fashion, authenticity is a limitation. For a motorcycle jacket to feel authentic, it must meet certain aesthetic codes. Leba built R13 on the idea that he can twist classics just enough to make them cool, but not so far that they become unknown. Before the fall, he ended his attachment to this rule book.
A flight jacket was done in military green and finished with classic enamel hardware, but the sleeve shape was exaggerated and hybridized with a knitted gusset. Aviator bombers were cut from leather and lined with sherpa, but their shoulders were broader and their waists were shorter and narrower. What would be a classic leather jacket was actually made of wool Look like beloved denim (“it’s ridiculously expensive, like all cool things”), and chunky cable-knit sweaters were overprinted with black to give the outside a rubbery, leathery texture. Even more compelling, however, were Leba’s riffs of his own R13 classics. His straight-leg jeans were flocked for a velvety texture, his favorite velvet suit was cut in a vibrant raspberry color, and the beloved flannel R13 shirt was draped in the kind of perfectly messy and cool handkerchief skirt that edgy New Yorkers would wear. outside a shop.
Leba said Rubin’s book talked about the idea of a “beginner’s mind.” There is a purity in naivete when it comes to creative expression. Ignorance is bliss, and the less you know, the more you are willing to explore. Leba has been working on R13 for a decade and a half now; he’s seen it all and knows too much about what works, what doesn’t, and what sells. Yet his conclusion from Rubin’s book in this collection, one of his most convincing books in recent times, was presented as a clear message: experience and ingenuity are not mutually exclusive.
