The life of a fashion designer

Did you ever wonder how someone becomes a fashion designer? So did I, that's why I decided to ask Bophet, co-owner of Ruff Ruff and Meow, about how he started in the biz. His story is pretty interesting, so I had to share it with you all.

After moving to the United States from Laos, Bophet was living in Indiana attending high school. His favorite subject in school was ART. He LOVED it so much, he wanted to continue doing what it, so he found a school to study fashion design. He looked through the catalogs and found the Brooks Fashion Institute in Long Beach, California. It sounded exciting, and he was adventurous, so he decided to move to Cali.

When he graduated, he started working for some great fashion brands, like Jacyln Smith, Kathy Ireland, Disney, QuickSilver, O’Neil.

His lucky streak working in fashion ran out and he was out of a job, so instead of taking some office job, he decided to continue doing what he loved and started painting. For an entire year, Bophet lived off his painting, from painting everything from exotic flowers to black and white ads to portraits.

Here are some of Bophet's signature paintings in the Ruff Ruff and Meow showroom



After painting for about a year, he decided to go back to fashion design and started working for PacSun, designing hip-hop clothes for top brands like Sean Jean, Rockawear, PhatFarm, and Kimora Simmons. This inspired Bophet to start his own surf clothing line, OC7 - which he worked on in his spare time before leaving PacSun.

Around the same time, Bophet met Caroline and they started making doggie fashions. First with the doggie steps for Bentley, and then with their first line of designer dog t-shirts and tank tops, including "I Love Bitches," "Bad to the Bone" and "Security"... and the rest is history!

Pretty interesting story, huh?