Los Angeles based Fashion designers Jose Guadalupe, Masai Payan, and Kenneth Roman recently launched their fashion brand The Tri Collective.

Years after graduating design school and pursuing their own creative endeavors, the three designers crossed paths again and conceived the idea of designing and creating pieces that breaks social and gender roles.

The designers brilliantly decided to model their collection in this shoot as a means to promote the message of unity and inclusivity in fashion.

In this exclusive interview with the brand’s designers, learn the history of the brand, their inspirations, and read on as  they talk about representation, inclusion and the latinx community.

What is the inspiration behind the brand? Why Tri? What is the story behind the name?

The inspiration of the brand comes from analyzing how fixed society has become with social roles. The brand aims to deconstruct masculine and feminine archetypes by combining both, therefore creating a look that creates binary tension.

Tri is inspired by the power of three.  Bringing together three minds to create a collective that act for the betterment of the group rather than a single entity.

Who are your target audience and who can wear the tri collection?

The target audience is anybody who wants to express themselves through fashion. The beauty of the brand is that it is gender neutral. It is very expressive and avant-garde but at the same time designed so people can actually wear it and stand out.

How did you all find each other again after graduating from fashion school?

We graduated college in 2011 and after a couple of years in the industry working for Yeezy, Chelsea Handler, Rodate, Kendall and Kylie Collection, and Kelley Clarkson, we met up at an alumni party and sparks flew. We quickly noticed that there was an undeniable connection between the three of us, our conversation quickly took a turn towards our dreams in college and surprisingly we all had the same thoughts about wanting to express something different and more authentic to us in design moving forward. That’s how tri was born.

In your initial campaign, you all decided to model the collection instead of getting models for the shoot. Why is that? And how do you think that decision impacted the story of the brand?

When we initially starting talking about potentially working together, we talked a lot about the powerful inclusion movement going on with models of all shapes and colors in the industry, we talked about the positive/negative side effects of Instagram model culture and about the power of showing confidence in this day and age by uniquely just being yourself. By combining these three ideas we felt it made sense to model our collection. It first represents our individualistic unique nature but also shows that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Doing this together for us creates a bigger message promoting inclusivity and togetherness.

How important is representation of the latinx community and sharing your own stories in this collection?

The truth is that you will most often find the Latin x community employed in sewing positions, cutting positions and production. The Latin x community especially in LA is the backbone of the fashion industry, and for the longest time it has been downplayed because of generic negative cultural stereotypes. We feel it is time to celebrate it and create a different discourse that correctly shows what being Latin is truly about; hard work and excellence. As the tri collective we have come to a full circle moment in our lives where we now truly know and appreciate where we come from, and its time to celebrate and embrace it.

How much personal influence and story do you bring to your designs?

We are each children of the internet and with that came a collective knowledge of globalization that made us design with an international yet personal touch. story is very big for us and for tri we are approaching it in a very personally way by always making ourselves the protagonist of every season,  creating a narrative through the clothes and through video and photography to create a very personal story.

Whenever you create clothes, do you usually think of the audience/the market or do you think of yourself first?

It is a mixture, it’s very important to have a general sense of what is going on in the world, but our foundation always comes from checking in with ourselves first and what personally inspires us. Through this lens we collectively create clothes that fits all of our vision with no ego or predispositions, we act as a government.

Can you walk us briefly through your creative process. How do you come up with the designs, how’s the production like, all the way to the release.

We collectively choose a theme and discuss what the core message will be for that particular season. designing usually starts with a bottle of wine and multiple evenings showing each other inspiration videos, design and fabric ideas. once that is established, we create patterns, graphic designs, and sewing plans. What sets us apart is that each season we will present a video that features the three of us modeling the collection telling a high fashion editorial story.

What do you expect to get out of this experience?

When we got into this industry the curtain was pulled back and we collectively felt that it wasn’t what it was all glamorized to be and it was ultimately about ego. We are thankful we got to see it so young because it allowed us to really dive into ourselves and really ask bigger social questions. for us it’s now about creative fulfillment in a way that impacts society and makes people question what identity is all about.

There’s thousands of aspiring young entrepreneurs and designers out there. What advice can you give to anyone who wanted to jump into creating their own collection and releasing it?

Stick to your guns and keep dreaming. Examine from within and express authentically.

What is success to you?

Success to us is to be able to express ourselves in a creative way through an authentic lens, its about being inclusive and being universal without compromising our collective vision.

If you were a book, what book would you be and why?

When we first started researching and bringing ideas together “The Velvet Rage” by Alan Downs collectively kept coming up. The book is about the shame that gay men develop as kids because of society and how this shame is taken into adolescence with a mixture of positive and negative effects. This book was instrumental in making each of us question how we approach our lives personally and professionally, thus becoming the foundation for the narrative that we are trying to create with the tri collective that identity is not fixed.