SENE owner and founder Ray Li knows that life is like jazz. Your life’s music and best improvisational riffs spring from your understanding of the transformational qualities of creating anything with strong intent. You want your life to be jazz? First learn about the 4/4 meter of a typical jazz melody, the syncopation that your own life’s “backbeat” offers and most importantly, learn that trial, error and persistence are what distills your life’s melody into its sweetest form.
The word “bespoke” perfectly describes Ray’s unique, Los Angeles based custom-made fashion line and design firm. Derived from the old English verb “bespeak,” the modern word ‘bespoke’ actually means to order or to arrange something in advance with an intention to greatness. Great art and great music are therefore always bespoke. So too, Ray Li believes, is good fashion.
Li’s background speaks to his values, vision and work ethic as key. A classically trained violinist and long-time advertising executive, he has always appreciated ‘bespokeness’ as a life attribute that doesn’t require a huge wardrobe or great wealth. It just requires a good intention for the song one wants one’s life to be.
Li believes
“When we invest in reasonably priced, individually fitted classic designs, we dress with the confidence to approach life as if every moment is an opportunity to be present, to be fully seen in the scenes of own lives.”
When Sterling K. Brown of “This Is Us” fame appeared on the Today Show to announce his hit TV show’s season premiere, he was glowing with confidence in a well-tailored SENE suit for which he had personally chosen the suit’s material and its sporty plaid pattern. His appearance provided a primer on how to confidently improvise one’s public persona as jazz riff. It is a great example of the product, the audience and the sophisticated lifestyle that binds the two.
SENE’s unique focus is on affordable, fitted custom design that is “Size You”. Li believes:
“Clothing made for everyone doesn’t mean as much to anyone. Therefore we over-consume it and the fashion industry is fast becoming a sustainability nightmare. When we invest in custom pieces, each piece has more personal value.”
SENE’s business model focuses on a sleek, practical, ever-expanding line of designer clothing in its novel, ‘per-demand’ supply chain. The line also offers items that have never been custom-made before or that have been specially added to SENE’s line of custom clothing. One example is the leather shoe created by an Adidas shoe designer for extreme comfort. According to Li:
“Elegant clothes should also be comfortable.”
Li uses a lot of Japanese materials and fabrics because of the pride that Japanese material manufacturing companies take in the quality of their products. They have the same work ethic as a Japanese sous chef who first must take the time to master the lowly job of washing rice well. Those top sushi chefs and Japanese businessmen and women work their way up a corporate ladder slowly, with lots of experience in collaboration. It is significant that Li learned from the experience of his manufacturing partners and therefore has developed innovative relationships with them.
Li believes:
“In a Western culture known for its conspicuous consumption patterns, it might be considered risky to invest deeply in the future of custom clothing. Brands are able to add value to themselves by incorporating intelligently elevated living styles and beautiful design, not from delivering mass-produced, meaningless bulk product.”
Li exports his work ethic and lifestyle message through a social media presence that is innovative and sophisticated, with a lifestyle magazine vibe. SENE’s Facebook presence boasts beautifully edited videos and photos of celebrities wearing his clothes as confidently as if the garments were a second skin. The video of jazz drummer Bryan Carter is a stand-out. Looking natty as heck in his uniquely grey-blue colored SENE suit, his philosophical voiceover opining about jazz traditions and the jazz greats that are the sources for his own innovation inspiration. As those sticks of his whip into those drums they provide an example of effective brand ambassadorship, coolness and design which this kind of social media messaging delivers. These messages communicate the idea that we can all intentionally create bespoke versions of our own lives.
An additional source of support for SENE is its exceptionally visionary and successful Board of Advisors who offer valuable tactical advice to help guide Li and the growth of SENE. However, Ray’s parents are his most cherished advisors. Both are medical doctors who live on Long Island and who escaped the Cultural Revolution in China, after surviving a traumatic life experience in the process. They support Ray in all of his goals and raised him to see that creative genius emerges from a consistent syncopation of effort.
Before launching SENE Li worked for eight years at New York City’s Innerbrand, a digital advertising company. Li knows the world that his audience inhabits, how to inspire it, how to use digital marketing to better inform it and how to understand unit economics as futurist business management practice.
At Li’s flagship store, customers come in for their initial fitting in the LaBrea area of L.A. with its already established and compatible high-end niche design houses. The store has the clean design look of an art gallery. Hi-tech tools like A.R. further identify the perfect fit for customers on-line. SENE’s turn-around time on custom-design clothing is extremely fast because it utilizes a “dynamic pattern algorithm” converting body measurements into a technical clothing pattern for each individual client. SENE clothing is made of top quality performance materials like wool, silk, cotton and Japanese denim. At SENE Hi-tech and tradition work well together.
Li already has plans to expand his SENE business model to New York, Chicago and possibly internationally. SENE enhances our ability to consciously design the scenes of our lives in which we can all be seen, wearing SENE.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Leonora Francesca Flores
- Image courtesy
- SCENE Custom Clothing
