THE STUDIO
Clothing comes with a surprising amount of instruction: who it belongs to, how it should fit, what it should reveal, and what it is supposed to say about the person wearing it.
RIVEL Studio is interested in what happens when those instructions stop being rules.
The work draws freely from silhouettes, materials, proportions, and details traditionally divided between menswear and womenswear—combining them, contradicting them, or ignoring the distinction altogether. Masculine and feminine become design languages rather than destinations.
A garment can hold both. It can belong to neither. It can change completely depending on the body that inhabits it.
RIVEL Studio isn’t interested in creating another box to replace the old ones.
The point is to leave more room for contradiction, experimentation, and the possibility that clothes can simply be clothes.
THE PRACTICE
RIVEL Studio was founded by designer and maker Levi Rodriguez as an extension of a larger creative practice centered on queer expression, identity, and self-definition.
That practice often begins with transformation: cutting something apart, changing its proportions, reclaiming an existing garment or material, and putting it back together in a way that asks something different of it.
That instinct takes two forms within RIVEL Studio.
RIVEL Works is the hands-on side of the practice: one-of-one garments, limited handmade releases, reconstructed and upcycled pieces, and custom commissions. Here, the statement can live in the silhouette, the construction, the fabric, or simply in a garment refusing to behave the way its original category says it should.
RIVEL Goods carries the same point of view through graphic apparel, accessories, and objects. The language is often more direct—sometimes playful, sometimes confrontational, sometimes saying exactly what it means.
One speaks largely through form. The other often speaks through language and image.
Both come from the same belief: what we wear can say something about who we are, without telling us who we’re supposed to be.