In the Studio with Alex Rivière
Working day and night in the industry you love is a dream that most of us clutch to as we rest our heads on our pillows at night. For Alex Rivière, digital content creator and fashion designer, this dream has become an intense and fulfilling reality. According to Rivière the fashion industry has always been in her life’s path, and from a young age, her drive and passion for the realm of all things designer have reigned supreme. Now, in today’s fast-paced online world, Rivière is ready to launch her line, Alex Rivière Studio, and we at Bode are eager to ask her all about it.
Barcelona bred and brunette beauty — Alex Rivière — reminisces fond times flipping through Vogue Magazine as a child and rummaging through her mother’s closet to style outfits and stage mini “fashion shows.” Originally French, Rivière now holds the professional title — creative director — producing content for fashion brands and publications across the globe. After Rivière graduated college, she embarked in the industry at the helm of a Spanish fashion brand producing their campaigns and launching their e-commerce and social media platforms. Rivière showed much gratitude, stating that the company “believed in [her] and gave [her] huge responsibilities from the beginning.” She went on to form amazing relationships with the team, and with well-known photographers like José Manuel Ferrater. Finding success in her line of work, “It’s easier to be successful when your work is your passion,” reveals Rivière. “Your work becomes your hobby, and spending countless hours on it is much closer to pleasure than sacrifice.”
On this note, Rivière was deliberate and generous to offer her loyal community of protégé’s these tried and tested words of wisdom: “every challenge brings an opportunity and the bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity.” Certainly, this advice rings true in today’s unpredictable global climate, and Rivière says that it has helped her to overcome many difficult moments in her life. “If you strongly believe in something and work hard, it will eventually happen,” the designer wills; and happen it has for Rivière. With only months left before the launch of her label — Alex Rivière Studio — the designer is gearing up for some major success and celebration. “To have my brand under my name has always been my dream,” divulges Rivière, “and so I’m excited for that dream to be coming to life.” Building the brand with friends and partners Beatriz Villarroya and Ana Thielen, Rivière plans to intermix hints of elegance and feminine strength into her collections. “When thinking about which category, to begin with, I thought about what women look for in garments,” explains the influencer-designer. “We want to feel good, strong, self-confident — but at the same time elegant, attractive, and timeless.”
This minimal yet beautiful style is Rivière’s known-niche. Her wardrobe is “built out of good basics and timeless pieces,” investing in items that she believes she will always love, not just like for a short period. Soon, her followers will be able to replicate this clean and iconic style in their closets as her label intends to offer the best of clean, tailored, and high fashion-feeling garments that women can wear and feel confident in again and again. As if that were not enough, in addition to Alex Rivière Studio, the designer also debuted another Rivière exclusive. Her capsule collection with a Spanish tailor brand took the industry by storm and was a huge success due to its unique pieces. Rivière said that the overall theme of the collaboration was to showcase “being masculine and feminine at the same time,” lending a collection “built out of good, timeless tailored pieces — in black and white.” The Spanish brand in question, Tot-hom, is a very old and renowned house in Barcelona, glorified for its use of tailored and high-quality fabrics. “My grandmother used to be and still is a client, as are my mother and myself, so our history with them dates back,” Rivière says. She continues, claiming that she and the brand, “share similar values and a love for exquisite pieces.”
With so many designs and projects in development, we were eager to uncover her secret to balancing her daily life with the bustling pace of her online presence. “I’ve always tried to keep my life very private, and only show parts of it,” shares Rivière. She has found that over the years her excessive traveling and ambitious works have meant less time to invest in family and friends, but she is deliberate to organize herself this past year to improve that. “Also, having relationships can be very difficult at times,” Rivière states, “but luckily now I’ve found my other half, and we manage to travel together most of the time, as his business is perfectly compatible with mine.” Of course, as a designer and content, creator Rivière’s day-to-day is unique. As her daily routine can change drastically, she always tries to keep certain staples the same: an 8:30 am wake up call, then a forty-five-minute workout followed by a shower and healthy breakfast. After that? Rivière works all morning and schedules meetings in the afternoons. As a modern-day influencer, a lot of Rivière’s work is online, and she says that “social media platforms are amazing tools to boost your exposure as a brand. They showcase you to the world and by constant, consistent work you can build a very targeted audience.” When the content creator posts online she strives to give her audience exactly what they see: “I wear what I post, I post the brands that I love and believe in, and I shoot in my own house or in places I travel to. I don’t like to pretend I’m someone I’m not, and I believe that success has to be built on authenticity.”
Staying true to her mission for genuine transparency, the designer aims for her namesake label to do the same. “This new platform [Alex Rivière Studio] aims to get closer to my audience,” says Rivière. “[To] allow them to know me better and for me to learn what they want to know about my experiences in fashion, beauty, and travel. I want to offer useful tips and support to all of those brands and places I believe in and love.” Seamlessly switching gears, Rivière displayed her forward-thinking regarding her brand and the fashion industry as a whole during this unpredictable time in history. Seeing as many fashion and beauty companies are becoming more environmentally friendly, sustainable, and conscious, we asked Rivière about her thoughts on this trend in the industry. “I believe that improving this world means starting by all of us making decisions and being coherent with them,” advocates the designer. “I’m very strict when it comes to food, for example, making sure everything I eat comes from a legitimate source. For fashion is kind of the same, as I consume brands with which I share values. When it comes to beauty, I’m extremely careful with the ingredients used, which already reveal a lot about the kind of product it is and its origin. Truth to be said, we are very far away from an ideal world, where everything is ethical, but arising awareness and small making decisions on what you buy can make a big difference in the long run — for you and the planet.” On that note, Rivière leaves us with a positive thought. She says to expect “the unexpected” from her soon-to-be-released self-titled label, and to “be passionate about what you do and never stop fighting for it.”
