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What was your inspiration for starting Planeta? 

Hoza: I think it was about expressing ourselves and making a space for other people who wanted to express themselves. It was important for me since I've been around for so long. It was about making a space for people who felt like me back when I started, so that they’re able to come here and express themselves, and see themselves through fashion and through art. I think that was like our main thing, to create a space for expression. 

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Richie: Also in 2020, during the pandemic, when I released a mini collection, I wanted it to exist in a space where people could walk in and try things on, and I couldn’t think of a single space, even with his knowledge and people he knew. So that was always in the back of my head, I thought, ‘man, it would be cool to have a space for people to explore fashion and if they want to be a designer, ’ and see if people gravitate towards their pieces, which is why we’re so welcoming with other brands. 

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What were your creative ventures before you did this store? 

Hoza: I have a brand called Hologram City, which I've had since 2010. I was already making custom stuff, making production, doing collections. I also did wardrobe styling for like a lot of celebrities, for music tours. So I was already in that world. 

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Richie: For me, I had a whole corporate job. I was helping with behind-the-scenes for Hologram City, and then I had my own brand, The Riches, but it was a super mini collection, just like clean stuff that's fun with a lot of revamp to umf your closet. I found Hoza because he was already doing revamp. This is back in like early 2011/2012, and I would email him asking for first dibs, and he would do it from time to time. I knew when we started the store, we wanted to do vintage and revamp, and then revamp is what ended up taking off, and that’s what became our bread and butter. 

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Hoza: Through the years, I got really into sustainability and upcycling, and helping the earth. Fast fashion started happening a lot towards like 2015, so that was something that really affected my brand and my friend’s brands. So for me, if I did this, I wanted to do more upcycling because I didn’t want to be a part of that problem. 

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What qualities do you look for in designers in the store? What draws you to somebody's work to say, “Yes, we want your product in our store?”

Richie: I would say perspective. If you look at the pieces in the store, it's all very complementary, where you can piece so many different things together. 

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Hoza: For me, if it looks cool, that already catches my eye cause we’re visual first. Also, we meet designers and they’re so cool and super talented, and some of them are super young, like 19, 20, 21, so it makes me feel like ‘damn, you’re going to be bigger than what this is.’ So it feels good to help them out because I think in the future they’re going to become like this big entity.

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"we meet designers and they’re so cool and super talented, and some of them are super young, like 19, 20, 21, so it makes me feel like ‘damn, you’re going to be bigger than what this is.’ So it feels good to help them out because I think in the future they’re going to become like this big entity." - Hoza

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Are these all local LA designers? 

Hoza: No, right now we have like over 20 Mexican designers from Mexico and Mexico City. 

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Is representing Mexican designers a big part of your ethos with the store? 

Richie: Yeah, it wasn’t super intentional, but it happened organically. The way it played out, we had our pieces in the store, Wavy, in Mexico City. People gravitated to that, and we carried their brand, and that opened the conversation, and we were embraced out there, and other brands from Mexico City wanted us to carry their pieces, and our friend Eric helped make it happen. 

‍ Yeah, we had an event last year, and it took off like crazy. We brought a bunch of Mexican designers, and it was huge; we had like 500 people show up. From there, we were like, ‘This is cool, this is what we want,’ and people were excited about it too. 

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What’s exciting you about this new generation of Mexican designers and designers here in LA? I feel like there’s so obvious creative connection between Mexico and Los Angeles.

Richie: They’re unapologetic. They own their identity, and you can be with a group of friends, and every single person stands out. There’s such a character, and you wanna know what they’re about. That boldness really stands out to us of just like not being scared to express yourself. 

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Hoza: Yeah, to have the freedom to express yourself so young, because when I was growing up, it wasn’t like that. So it’s really cool for us to see that they’re allowed to be expressive with their ideas and fashion and everything. It’s cool to be a part of it. They don’t have an idea of what it was like back then, when you couldn’t be so free. It’s nice to see them unite and be like, ‘this is who we are and we don’t give a fuck.’

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What were your first memories of fashion that made you say, ‘I need to be in this world’?

Richie: Oh my god, I have mine. For me, it wasn’t until I worked in high school and gathered my money. I felt like it was important for my senior year, to invest in my closet because I wanted my senior year to be memorable, and from that, I found Hoza and Hologram City. I’m from a small city, Delano, so out there, everybody just dressed about the same. It’s such a small city, and I didn’t feel like I could express myself in a way that was true to how I felt. His brand really helped me get out of my shell, and whenever I would wear Hologram City, I would feel like I was on top of the world. It was reworked stuff, and I fell in love with it. 

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Hoza: For me, I was 10 years old and I was really into music. I grew up poor, in Southgate, with a single mom in a one-bedroom apartment with multiple siblings, but I was really into music like No Doubt, Green Day, The Offspring, and alternative bands. They were dressed so cool, and when they would do interviews on MTV and be like ‘oh I thrifted this’ and I would shop at the thrift store and think, ‘Adrian from No Doubt has a YMCA shirt on, so I’m gonna find a YMCA shirt’ and they were 50 cent and I would wear them with some dickies. Or I would find a piece and get it tailored by a lady down the street for like $3. So that’s how it started. I learned I could manipulate things. So when I was like 10 or 11 is when I was like, ‘I can do this shit.’ 

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From where you started to now, where do you see Planeta going in the next few years? Is there a specific place you want to take it, or a specific goal you want to see happen? 

Hoza: As for location, we love it here. We had rules when we started because I used to have a store five blocks away, and it was cool for what it was, but it took over my life. Like open every day, eight hours a day, so when we opened, I told him, ‘I wanted to do this, but I do not want a storefront.’ I did not want to be open to the public because it’s an overwhelming feeling to keep up with. We didn’t know what we were going to do or how things would go, so for us, I think this space is really beautiful. Our production office is upstairs, so we’re not moving. 

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Richie: I guess reaching out to bigger audiences online. We’re currently working with Shopify, so us being more intentional with our social media and marketing to connect with people who want our stuff. 

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Hoza: We’ve been working these past two, three months on building what we’re doing next online. We’re utilizing everything, apps, websites, and domains. It’s been a crazy thing, and for us, our online presence can reach anywhere around the world. 

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"You have to make time to invest in yourself, and the thing is like, you’ll never fully be ready, but that’s okay because there are people who know things. Invest in yourself and trust your instinct and trust your point of view, because your point of view is what makes people gravitate to you." - Richie

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How has your online growth been? Has it been consistent, or was it slow to start? 

Richie: It popped off this year. Once we hired Jenny — shoutout to jen4romtheblock — she’s amazing. She’s helping us with our social media. We have a lot of fun with it, and we’ve done videos that have taken off. Hoza did a silly video of getting to the shop, and it had like 150k views just on IG. 

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Hoza: That video blew up. We weren’t even going to post it, and then Jenny told us to post something that was 30 seconds. People struggled coming to the shop, and were overwhelmed with the thought of coming downtown. It simplified it so much, and people were more willing to come to the shop because of that video. 

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Richie: Yeah, social media is super hard, but it’s very necessary for you to make an impact outside of the city or place that you’re at in order to reach a broader audience or the world. 

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‍Hoza: I feel like we learned the lesson to just do whatever you want. We don’t know what pops off. If you watch that video, I’m literally like being dumb. It’s just funny, and I’m just being myself. We learned not to be so serious because it’s already serious on the business side. We know how important it is to have Jenny and how important it is to do this for social media. 

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What other lessons have you learned from this experience as creative people?

Hoza: I think Richie has learned about the business side because we work with a lot of stylists and people in the fashion world. I already know because I’ve been doing that, but he’s learned to put his foot down and be like “we’re a business, this is not a favor.’ We have to coexist together. I think he was a little bit softer with that type of stuff in the beginning.

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Richie: Yeah, I pretty much struggled with all of those things. I was big on favors, and after a while, I was like ‘wait, this is a business,’ like my money’s tied to this. This isn’t about you pulling stuff and tagging, like that’s not enough. For us, the funds really do matter because they pay the bills. It should be a mutual benefit. 

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You don’t work hard to do handouts.

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Richie: Yeah, and we’re very intentional. I think that’s why people gravitate to us. When people come to this space, they’re blown away by the intent behind it. As much as we try with social media to have it read a certain way, I think there’s a magic when you come to the shop. 

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Hoza: This is a fun place, where you're going to express yourself, and that's all that matters. If you’re into fashion, come here and hang out. We want you to come here and have a safe space to connect and bond over fashion

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So why the name Planeta?

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Hoza: For me, it was a little bit like Hologram City, it makes me think of a place. Planeta is planet in Spanish, and for me, it made it sound like an actual place or location. 

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Richie: It was also important because we’re both Latinos to have it be in Spanish. 

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What advice would you give to young creatives in the fashion industry in LA, and to your younger self as a creative?

Richie: I think it’s important to be around people who allow you to express yourself. So I would say tap into whatever you’re curious about and honor that, even if you have to branch out of your friendships. You have to make time to invest in yourself, and the thing is like, you’ll never fully be ready, but that’s okay because there are people who know things. Invest in yourself and trust your instinct and trust your point of view, because your point of view is what makes people gravitate to you. After all, that’s your perspective. Oftentimes, Hoza and I will buy the same thing and wear it differently. 

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Hoza: I would tell my younger self to be ready to work. This is not for the faint of heart, and you have to sacrifice stuff. You have to say no to your friends and family and put yourself first. You’re not saying no to people because you don’t care, but if you really want to do this, you have to sacrifice a little bit of your social life, but it’s worth it because you will see the gift of putting yourself first and making the ideas in your head, your dream you have become reality. I think money is the hard part, but I’ve learned that being older is that money is the devil in this. It kills all you’re hope to be like ‘this amount of money is what makes me successful.’ Success is based on so many different realms, but I think what matters is that you feel like you’re fulfilling this dream that you have. You also have to be happy, you have to be happy doing this, and you have to be okay putting in the work. 

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