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From top: THE PRIVATE TRAINING CENTER AT RVCA’S HEADQUARTERS OPENED IN 2009 TO SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL UFC MMA FIGHTER BJ PENN. FOUNDER PAT TENORE IN HIS OFFICE. RVCA EMPLOYEE CAM KRUGER ON THE SKATE RAMP.
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RVCA founder Pat Tenore says “long story short” a lot. When we meet in his corner office, inside the lifestyle sports brand’s 70,000-square-foot Costa Mesa headquarters, he introduces the tale of his unlikely career trajectory this way, nodding to the “nerds and misfits” on his high school wrestling team, the Beastie Boys, the Chanel logo and Bruce Lee’s yin-yang-rooted philosophy. The disparate references eventually dovetail into his role as founder and president of an internationally beloved, distinctly Californian brand (pronounced ru-kah), launched when he was only 26. The brevity of the anecdote is relative; Tenore’s aptitude as a raconteur is fairly irrefutable. As he sinks into a leather chair, the air permeated by the scent of Kuumba incense burning in a lump of ivory surf wax on his desk, he confesses he’s running on two hours’ sleep—just off a flight back from watching a surf contest in Hawaii and already a half-hour late for an appointment with his renowned Japanese-Italian tattoo artist Koji Ichimaru, to be followed by a meeting with skateboard legend Christian Hosoi, with whom he is working on a touring exhibition of one-off painted hammerhead boards (Hosoi pioneered the shape 30 years ago). Still, Tenore is chill
WRITTEN BY MELISSA GOLDSTEIN. SAM FROST.
More than a clothing brand, RVCA is a model for an eclectic way of life