occupation: student, founder of Triple Major, and curator of Project White T-Shirt

“I think the most inspirational place is the shower. It’s the most inspiring location I can go to if I lack ideas. I just take a shower, and when I come out, [my mind is exploding] with ideas. The entire idea of the Project White T-Shirt and my company was thought out in the shower.” Ritchie Chan

Ritchie came to the US from his native Hong Kong for college, to expose himself to a less restrictive way of thinking. While in LA attending USC, he majored in business, pop culture, and international relations, and he has evolved into an explosively industrious and out-of-the-box thinker. Ritchie is taking a shot at redefining popular culture and fashion by organizing thought-provoking events through his studio Triple Major (named after his three college majors). One of his current projects is to explore what would happen if designers were not restricted by the commercial pressures of the seasons and the cycles of buying and selling. His idea: to give designers all over the world the opportunity to transform the identity and utility of the white t-shirt into whatever they wanted it to be. The results speak for themselves, like the white t-shirt as a “cultural connector,” where the bottom attaches two T’s together into one. In his travels to Scandanavia as a finance intern and fashion columnist (since sixteen-years-old for M.Style magazine), Ritchie felt encouraged to get away from the the “intense focus on labels [that he grew up with] and has been more into experimenting with texture, structure and how you wear things as a way of shaping your personality.” His quirky, humorous twist on the classics are the result, with lots of details making the difference like the touch of a unique sock and notable for me, the mix of pale pink desert boots with a vintage orange messenger bag and APC‘s capelet over a Mundi Breton-striped shirt. A subtle but “noteworthy” testament to his burgeoning status as Renaissance man is the Ann D. mini notebook worn around his neck with handwritten notes in multiple languages from his travels around the world.

To learn more about Ritchie, go to the detailed captions page.

If you like Ritchie, you might also enjoy Shane Tison, Shaun Stewart, or Milton Puzy.