Luxe Colore Designer Interview: Claire Ortiz of Ortiz Industry

Luxe Colore Designer Interview: Claire Ortiz of Ortiz Industry

1) What or who inspired you? Not an easy questions to answer as so many people places and things inspire me. I will give you my simple elevator answer, but trust me, I am a deep deep thinking person with philosophical, emotional, historical, spiritual, visual, analytical, environmental, societal inspirations…depending on the day, the year, where I am, and what I have had to drink (or not).

What inspires me: Life. All things that are living and/or built from things that are living. My environment and the people in it inspire me. That might sound corny and cliché, but it is true. From friends and family, to colleagues and people on the street to great writers, artists, and philosophers, historians (Khalil Jabran, Copernicus, Henry Miller, Alexandre Dumas…and countless others). Real life and what happens in it everyday is an amazing adventure. I am inspired by the madness and constant ingeniousness that comes from the simplest things, like seeing, listening, and taking in life. It is a forever changing canvas of creative energy. It never gets boring.

Who inspires me: My mother #1 for her insightfulness in all things philosophical, emotional, historical, spiritual, visual, analytical, environmental, societal, political and fantastical. She was a genius disguised as a mulatto woman with a gang of badass kids. She is my singular inspiration and I work every single day with a constant mission: waking to her teachings and falling asleep to her approval. Outside of that, my daughter, close friends and small children inspire me. Oh and finally Coco Channel, Frida Kahlo, and the people who build the original temples at Angkor Wat.

2) What was your first big break? Really? Are you going to ask any easy questions, like what my shoe size is? I have had so many big breaks. I have a novel where each paragraph begins with the “Big Break of the Year”…. Ok. I will try to answer swiftly and to the point.

My first big break in life: I was 7 years old and my mother woke us up in the middle of the night, put 5 kids and my grandma in a station wagon and left south Texas headed west. A day and a half later I arrived in East Los Angeles, California. Echo Park to be exact. I was a little ashy Texas country kid, all of a sudden hanging out on Sunset Blvd, talking to very nice and very pretty ladies with dark brown skin, long blonde hair, and bright blue eye shadow, buying us Orange Julius’s in front of the car wash. At the point, even as a little kid, I knew I was in heaven. I was smack dab in the middle of a new world and was filled with white, black, yellow and brown people who displayed happiness, glitz, glamour, and all things possible. At age 7, I did not know they called this the City of Angeles, but I felt something special here. Thus my early hustle began to develop.

My first big break in the biz:
I was about 20 years old; I had no background, no education, and no experience in apparel or design. But, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a designer, So, I educated myself. I read everything, I learned as much as I could on my own in the industry from the business to the art. I had a bicycle, and lived in a furniture-less studio ghetto apartment. I used to steal books on technical design from FIDM and Parsons libraries, pretending to be a student. I read voraciously, and worked myself to sleep trying to learn what I could. I finally had the audacity to apply for a ‘design assistant’ job from an ad in the California Apparel News. I applied. I was interviewed. And, long crazy story short…. I found myself a month later living in NYC, Tribeca to be exact, working as an assistant designer to a designer who made custom gowns, and who lived in Indonesia and needed an assistant to run her NYC showroom. They chose little ol ME? A nobody, nothing kid from Cali wakes up in a ridiculously fly Tribeca loft, running samples up and down 5th Ave, and going to swank ass events with Pat Fields and Betsy Johnson (in their heyday)? What? My dear mother had no idea what the hell was going on…New York was like Oz to us little nobody’s in Cali. I felt like a brown Dorothy in a crazy fashion OZ… True fricken story….

I have had many a big break in my career…I went on a few years later to win the Young Designer of the Year Award” given by Major of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley: I was the youngest Design Director to ever hold the position at Esprit De Corp history (a 27 year old takes the helm of a $400million brand), and then I went on to design and develop businesses at huge corporations such as Nike, being hand picked by Michael Jordan to be his Design Director for Brand Jordan, Underarmour, Wilson, and personal start ups in between. There were so many breaks within each of those chapters…its really difficult to break it down to just one or even two. I am still getting the big breaks, and celebrating each.

3) Look into your crystal ball, what will be the next big trend(s) in fashion? Why?
People pay me big money to answer this question. What’s your budget? Seriously though. I don’t do crystal balls. I do deep research in socio-economics, consumer habits, global analytics (societal shifts- demographic/cultural/economical) that begin the groundwork for purchasing trends. After this we go into key category trends including consumer goods, which is a vast area to cover. Bottom line is, we do not look into any crystal balls. We take a scientific approach to determining trends. We take that information and add in the socio-economic insights, and personal “fly on the wall” info and finally add in a personal gut instinct to it. It is essential to know the stats and be able to dissect them correctly in order to determine what is actual fact. However, spreadsheets don’t tell the future, the tell the now.

4) What’s the best compliment you’ve received about your work?
Tears.
I have had lots of lovely compliments throughout my career. But, a person who is transformed and sees themselves in the mirror, and has a in disbelief in a way that gets them teary, is something incredible to be a part of. I have had people tell me deep personal stories and how a garment I created literally changed their lives.

The emotional connection to the human experience is what gets me juiced about this work. Being able to add value to a person’s life is the most incredible feeling in the world. I have worked with high profile athletes, and celebrities, been in some crazy amazing company. But, the people who come to me with tears in there eyes, overwhelmed by emotion because what I did changed their lives, is by far and away most unbelievable compliment I could ever have. These experiences are why I got in this madcap business to begin with. I wanted to be MLK, Malcolm, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, JFK, Mother Teresa, Marcus Garvey, and so many others. The problem is I wasn’t’ them, but I knew I wanted to make a difference in peoples lives. For me, it doesn’t matter if it is one or two people or millions. It’s all the same. If one person on this planet says, “Claire Ortiz helped change my life”, I will for sure have accomplished my mission. I am still going, working hard to manifest this in the world, one human at a time.

5) Do you consider what you do to be more of an art form or more as a craft?

You tell me what the difference between an art form and a craft is? Shouldn’t they be one in the same? In the olden days, before shit got all verbally complicated, the craft was the artist. There was no middleman, no agent, no producer, no cad artist, and no app. The artist had to be able to visualize and creatively concept a design. He then had to build it. He was both the artist and the craftsman. I do not believe in anyone who calls him or her an artist but cannot manifest the art. I also do not believe in the craftsman who cannot visualize that which he must build. The nature of this question brings me to a sad state. Knowing that there in fact is a difference between art and craft is a confirmation in societal change. Today, one can simply manifest the 2D idea (in most cases electronically and not by human mechanics), but not be able to execute that vision in a tangible 3D object. Too bad, so sad. I can’t solve that problem. I can only say that anything I ideate, then drawn by hand, and then draw electronically, must be executable by production engineering. That is to say, I don’t believe in concept. I only believe in execution of concept. That is real design.