Chris Porras is a production manager, artist manager, and creative consultant for several brands and artists. He's been living in LA for two and a half years, moving from the East Coast having lived in Brooklyn for three years before moving.

Initially, Chris grew up in New Jersey in a small one-mile town where everybody knew each other. He would skate every day after middle school and would venture to other towns to meet other skateboarders and eventually found himself taking trips to NYC going to LES Skatepark and Brooklyn Banks and then hitting up clothing stores and skate shops at an early age.

Chris has always been around other skateboarders who started their own brands, made their own videos, and basically created stuff with their own friends - they would create, film and shoot everything at a quick pace.  A lot of his inspiration, perspective on life and what he does now all stems from this time period looking back. Chris eventually moved to NYC  as soon as he could find a job that funded a clothing brand he had started in college.

"I hand screen printed tees at a friend's shop to keep costs low, whether it was for my own brand or an artist I connected with from reaching out on social media. I saved up enough money from screen printing jobs and doing artists' merch drops to fund my drive across the country. Moving out here opened more opportunities to connect with people I've always wanted to work with and slowly I became a part of their different teams. I've always had multiple things going on and got used to it, even to this day I'm constantly working on several projects at the same time."

"It's kind of refreshing because I can tap into all these different worlds and contribute my skillset and creative ideas as well. It feels very collaborative being on all these different teams and I feel appreciated for the ideas I'm bringing forth. I hope to keep things pushing and help teams execute big ideas. I want to get farther and make something new I haven't made yet, no limits this year."

Our recent chat with Chris discusses his favourite campaigns and talks about the overlaps between visual creativity and music.

I’m currently working on putting out collections for EYEDRESS, Paranoia, The Simps, Praying, Emonite, SALEM, POLO PERKS, and 60JUNO just to name a few. Yep, it's a lot! But it's fun to tap into all these different worlds every day for me and I feel very blessed to be connected with these individuals in these teams. 

I'M LOVING

Creatively at the moment, I’m loving 3D animation and how everyone is mixing nostalgic Play Station One type graphics into music videos and clothing releases.

I think the pandemic made everyone delve deeper into animation and everyone has just been feeding off the energy of one another, dropping insane animation video projects. I grew up heavily influenced by my two brothers who totally got me into that stuff, so it's super nostalgic and timeless to me.

FAVOURITE VIDEO

My all-time favourite music video is EYEDRESS LIES TEAR US A PART/WHEN THE PLANETS ALIGN Directed by Julius Valledor.

I remember the first time I found out about Eyedress, before I even started working with him and I saw he was making these insane types of videos in my home country. It was just so special to uncover that the subculture he was cultivating even existed in The Philippines. 

BEST ARTWORK

I’ve always loved the album art for Punk Goes Drill by POLO PERKS.

The album artwork is by Evilgiane he snapped and I was blessed with the graphic to do the merch for that campaign too. It is one of my favourite pieces of merch I printed and own. 

RECENT CAMPAIGN

The most recent campaign I’ve enjoyed working on has been production managing for Praying on something insane I've been working on for the past year with one of the highest fashion brands you could possibly think of.

Stay tuned to find out as I don't think anyone's expecting this one. 

COLLAB

The most recent brand collab that caught my eye was the Carhartt x Stray Rats collab.

The leather label of that collection is so good. It's inspiring to see a streetwear brand achieve collaborations with a cult classic workwear company such as Carhartt. 

GO FOLLOW

The one artist you should follow on Instagram is Bad_Buzz.

His stuff is so cursed in the best way possible, it's insane. I've been working with Bad Buzz on a new collection for The Simps Siblings project and we're just getting started on the samples this week. It'll probably be out by the time this feature comes out so go check it out.  

ICONIC

The most iconic music photograph is Eazy E on the cover of The Source.

It is one of the hardest photos of all time, sheesh!