The L.A.-based designer has discovered followers in stylists Zerina Akers and Kollin Carter for his performance-friendly customized items: "It needs to be showy. It has to maneuver."
Rey Ortiz was laid off towards the start of the COVID pandemic. On the time, he was working at a furnishings and equipment retailer in L.A. promoting bathrooms — sure, bathrooms — through the day whereas stitching designs at evening. A lot of these designs weren’t for any individual specifically, simply the outcomes of his typically overactive thoughts. However a variety had been for contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race. In Could 2020, on his birthday, he was let go from the store.
“And I can actually say my cellphone hasn’t stopped ringing since,” Ortiz says. The designer now counts Lizzo, Latto, Mary J. Blige and extra as stars who've worn his items. “I'd have by no means, ever, ever stop my job as a result of I'd have been terrified to not have an earnings. If I hadn’t been pushed, I'd have by no means tried.”
Born in Puerto Rico, Ortiz, 41, has style in his blood. With a mom and a grandfather who sewed for a dwelling, the kid, who was certainly one of 5, discovered an early curiosity in artwork and illustration. After graduating from the Savannah School of Artwork and Design with a grasp’s in arts animation, Ortiz competed on an MTV digital-skills competitors present, Engine Room, along with his workforce taking residence first place.
Televised competitions are a recurring theme in his profession. After studying easy methods to sew from a seamstress in Puerto Rico, he moved to Texas to show on the Artwork Institute in Fort Price. He stop that job when he was forged on the Mission Runway spinoff Below the Gunn in 2014. He was eradicated after his first problem on the sequence.
“There’s no approach that you'll not see Rey Ortiz once more, and there are going to be a number of surprises sooner or later,” he stated in his sign-off. Whereas the claims had been daring, the 6-foot-3 designer wouldn't contact a stitching machine for 4 months over the expertise. However the rejection grew to become gas. “I believe the explanation that I’m doing properly right this moment is as a result of I used to be in a position to do higher, not solely style technical-wise, however to be higher as an individual,” he says. “I attempted to get all the enjoyment and the popularity of designing in actual life. Not in a contest the place the folks had been there to evaluate me.”
In January 2015, Ortiz took a chance. He had made mates with RuPaul’s Drag Race star Alyssa Edwards, serving to her out with appears to be like. When he heard that Bianca Del Rio (winner of season six of the drag competitors sequence) was coming to carry out at a bar the place Edwards additionally was working, he requested Edwards if she would set it up in order that after the efficiency, he may “tip” Del Rio with a free gown he made only for her. It labored: The gown match completely, ended up being the look Del Rio selected for her season eight cameo, and kicked off a relationship between the pair that has spanned practically a decade.
Ortiz grew to become certainly one of a bunch of designers and costumers that rivals on Drag Race started sporting commonly. Some have had their creations pop up on main pink carpets in addition to on mainstream stars: Joshuan Aponte’s work has been worn by Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, whereas Diego Montoya has labored with Woman Gaga, created appears to be like worn by Shangela and Jenifer Lewis to the 2019 Oscars, and gained an Emmy this yr for his work on HBO actuality sequence We’re Right here.
Ortiz’s flip got here — a number of months after leaving the shop — within the type of a leopard-print bodysuit Kylie Jenner wore within the “WAP” video in August 2020. “That was my first style of a non-drag-queen large second,” he says.
Then it was a slew of appears to be like for Cardi herself together with her metallic showpiece for the 2021 Grammys. “[Stylist] Kollin Carter was at all times calling me for this or that for Cardi,” Ortiz says. “He advised me he was calling me as a result of I design for drag queens and the stuff that he wanted was comparable: It needs to be showy, it has to maneuver, it has to have a viewpoint.”
Stylist Zerina Akers discovered his work whereas in search of a designer who understands setting up for efficiency and may work on a fast turnaround. “He goes above and past for purchasers. He’s continually evolving,” says Akers, who has dressed Megan Thee Stallion, Jazmine Sullivan and Chloe X Halle in Ortiz’s designs.
Says Ortiz of his evolution, “I don’t gown drag queens as a result of they're my goal market, I gown those who I respect. To me, these are those who matter, which might be doing issues larger than themselves.”
This story first appeared within the Sept. 16 subject of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.