Following recent chat on Kitmeout about RVCA clothing and RVCA jeans inparticular, this is the official brand profile by RVCA:

The concept of RVCA was conceived by the company’s founder and designer, PM Tenore. For over a decade, PM’s vision has been to create a design-driven brand without compromising its roots in an active lifestyle. Somewhere between contemporary and active, RVCA is free from the passing trends of the surf, street, skate and snowboard industries. RVCA designs appear as natural on the shelves of boutiques as on those of a local skate shop. Disenchanted with action sports branding and design constraints, and acutely aware of the “legitimacy barriers” confronting mainstream sportswear companies, PM created RVCA to be a more organic brand that didn’t have to follow industry rules. RVCA Clothing takes its roots in American workwear and adds function and fashion for every day… every situation. Wearability, Nature, Industrialization. Today. Tomorrow. Life.

Enter Conan Hayes. PM and Conan became childhood friends when they met while surfing the north shore in 1988. Later in 2002, they met up in New York, where PM shared his vision of RVCA—a brand that represents balance of opposites and how they coexist: water, oil, air, land, destruction, industrialization, art, science, foreign, domestic, order, anarchy, past, present.

Conan, an established professional surfer, found himself doing something he would have never previously imagined: declining a lucrative pro surfing contract to pursue PM’s vision. Conan recounts the decision as “one of the biggest of my life.” As RVCA grew, so did the RVCA’s Artist Network Program—an ongoing program to showcase the talent of establishing as well as unknown artists who inspire our generation. Artist/Pro Skater, Ed Templeton (whom ten years previous to RVCA’s beginning, would show his art in PM’s skate boutique) became the first artist to participate in the Artist Network Program. Donating his proceeds to The Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, Ed paved the way for other artists to use their works to help raise awareness and benefit the community.