Chris Leba

CEO of the clothing brand R13

Insider interview with fashion designer Chris Leba.

Learn how he started his career and the different challenges he had to go through.

He gives tips on starting out in the design field such as:

How to priotitize workoad

What gives you an edge?

What mistakes to watch out for as a beginner

Meet the designer

Chris Leba is the creative director and CEO of the fashion company R13.

When I asked who/what else influences you?

He said he loves Maison Margiela, Steve Sprous, and Comme des Garçons. These being his earliest influences. He was also very influenced by music like punk and later grunge but said that: open since 2019, coming out with a Fall 2023 ready to wear collection, and so much more to come.

It wasn’t always like this for Chris Leba. In my interview with him I asked what his education was like.

Starting out Education

R13 takes heavy influence from the punk and grunge culture. Leba’s use of distressed flannels and denim, along with he uses of very oversized silhouettes is an easy indicator of this.

The world around us and the differnt cultures we see can be such easy influences that can even easier be looked over looked. This is a great reminder of that. R13 is flurishing, having a flagship store in SoHo, New York, only being

He let me know that before he was an elite fashion designer Mr. Leba was going to school to become a doctor. He soon realized that medical school was not for him but this wasn’t an easy decision for him to make. Mr. Leba’s parent were not on board with him going to school for fashion design. Yet he didn’t let this get in his way in his words:

“I just sorta went for it, I mean I was always sorta creative.”

He soon found himself following his brother and applying to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. This ended up being the best decision he could have made. He said:

“Where I was struggling in medical school, you know, in design school I really like sort of performed above average.”

He said his education at FIT was great and he soon saw himself at the top of his classes. He really enjoyed it.

Saying:

“

It is still probably one of the best memories I have”

Job/Internships

He said “After school I naively started my business right away. You know I didn’t have any experience so obviously it did not work out. A lot of lessons were learn from failing in that first business”

He really began his design career when he got an internship at J-Crew. He went on to work for Tommy Hilfiger, American Eagle Outfitters, and Polo Ralph Lauren. When he got his first real fashion design job it was with Polo Ralph Lauren. He work directly under Ralph and he gained his first professional connection. Leba worked as a SVP with Ralph Lauren for nineteen years from 1997 - 2016. He left because ultimately he wanted to own his own company and he said:

When he relaunched his company in 2009 he was still working for Ralph Lauren and was early seen in the public and this was because he wanted to keep his two worlds separate because he had so much respect for Ralph. When he did finally quit in 2016 he shifted his whole energy into R13. R13 launched in the news show room which at the time was a very prestigious showroom. He says to just focus on your work because there is so much competition out there and you should try to perfect yours. This worked very well for him as you can see pictured in the bottom right is his fall 2023 ready to wear collection featured on the Vogue runway app.

Q&A from interview

With advice for new designers

During my interview with Leba I asked him for any advice he could give me ranging from: “how do you deal with time management” to “What do employers value most about your skills? What gives. you an edge?”. So lets get into it. Starting with: How did you get yourself out there so people noticed you or your work? He said to just try to reach out to as many people as possibly. As I said earlier R13 was launched on a news show room. This is because Leba reached out and they liked what he was doing. He really just wanted to show the world his talent and he didn’t let anyone get in his way of that. He says:

“Just focus on your work because there is so much competition out there and you should try to perfect yours.”

What he wanted most was to express himself with his work and have everyone else see that.

What kind of impact do you want your work to have? He said:

To be honest that was not something that I was concerned about. The kind of impact I was looking for was how it impacted me. As far as really satisfying myself. I wanted to have an impact on my life in that way (Getting out of corporate jobs and starting his own company) and my since of self. But not really to, in the fashion industry, I wasn’t really looking to have any impact. It wasn’t what I was focusing on”

It’s not that he didn’t care about the impact that his work had on people it’s more that he wanted to make sure that what he was doing was perfect to himself before he felt right showing it to other people. He wanted to put all his efforts into perfecting his style and technique. He was really focused on wanting to express himself with his work and showing the world his talent.

Working in the fashion design industry can be very difficult in many ways and its different for everyone. Especially when you are running your own company. Being the CEO of a company can have many challenges and be very stressful so my next question was: What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?

He said:

“As the CEO of R13 the more challenging aspect is really the people and everyone has there wants and needs and peoples performance in genreal are very inconsistent and that just part of being a human being so really just managing all of those things, I find it like most difficlte aspect.”

He says this because other things can be boilded down to just black and white or 2 + 2 = 4 but with people there are a lot of variables and people are very complex and the more people you manange the more complex it is, and in a way a team is like any other team like in sports, you have to have a lot of energy and it is a very complex process.

Other that challanges you have to be have disapline if you want to run a comapany so I asked him:

How do you deal with time management?

He said:

I sort of innately understand the big picture and then focus on one thing and then get it executed. The key is to not get distracted until you get that (first thing) done. Basically, if you have ten tasks to do and start all of them at the same time is like not getting anything done at all but if you do one at a time and get at least five done then you are halfway there and that is better to me.

He stays very focus on things telling people “Don’t talk to me I’m focusing on this” because “It is critically for me to be efficient.”

This leads into the next question:

How do you prioritize your work/workload?

For this he uses an analogy: “if you had big rocks, medium rocks, and small rocks and had to fit them into a container than you should start with the big rocks and then go down the line and you should do the same with your work, doing the hardest things first and then go down.”

If you can manage your time and workload than you should be able to manage a healthy work/life balance, right? While...

How do you manage a healthy work/life balance?

“I don’t, and I find that most CEO’s don’t”.

He feels conflicted because when he spends time away from work to hangout with his daughters he feels he is not doing enough at work but when he spends too much time at work he feels as though he doesn’t spend enough time with his family. He is still trying to get better at this and get over this guilt he holds for both.

Finally I have two more questions on advice he would give to designers just starting out

What advice would you give someone starting out in design?

“Focus on really work, work, work, practice and invest in yourself.” You cannot use what isn’t available to you, so your job is to really enrich your mind.” He uses another analogy that is “there is the pantry and then there is the cook, but the cook cannot cook what is not in the pantry”

So for young designers he says to “go stock your pantry” and by that he means educate yourself as best you can, study

The begining of R13

You maybe wondering; What does R13 mean? Well in a 2019 interview with La Grande Boutique Leba said when he was in the first stages of reshearching a name he wanted to find something that “was foundational in American history that also had an edge.” He found the “Join or Die” flag from the American Revolutionary War. He said;

“The flag represents the need for unity to create the Union, regardless of the colonies’ differences, to fight for independence. This was metaphoric for the vision I had for R13. I wanted to represent the contrast in American beliefs, opinions, and style but show that we all come together for the love of freedom of expression and ideas. From here, I came up with the name R13, which is a backwards abbreviation of 13 rattles”

He said: “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger and beginners seem to think that the mistakes that they make kill them. Its good to start out by learning off of someone’s back by getting a job so that you can learn.”

He talked about the fact that if he gave up after trying to start his company the first time then he would have never gotten to where he is now. And as much as you can about great designs and designers. Be willing to try things out and make mistakes. One of the best ways that a human being can learn is by making mistakes, like when you are just starting to walk. If you gave up the first time you fell down no one would be able to walk. He said:

“The more mistakes we make the better we get”.

If we allow every little mistake that we make in our lives make us give up and quit we would get anywhere in life. So don’t let the mistakes you make define you. Keep getting up and trying again and again. Learn from every mistake you make.

This leads me into the last question starting a business and losing it is a big mistake to make. He said that he learned from his failures and his company today is better then it has ever been.

What do you see as some of the biggest beginner career mistakes in the industry?

Chris Leba has already done so much in his life, from starting at medical school be being a great designer. These are just the opinions of others though. What else could he want to achieve? Well he says that he feels stratified with where he is at, yet if he had not started his own business then there would have been many regrets. He says that today he doesn’t really have any regrets. He says,

“It’s more important to me to have a “great” company than having a successful company”

And he means that there are so many companies out there that are successful, yet they lack the quality. He wants to produce a constant quality level of pieces and he says that is not something that can just be achieved but is something that you are constantly fighting for. He wants to be able to look back and say “that was a job well done”. And he say that his biggest accomplishment was starting his own company.