Meet Elias Lopez of El Silencio in Santa Monica

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elias Lopez.

Elias, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico but had a lot of family in California, so I spent a lot of time visiting them. While growing up I got into arts and culture, my first approach was music, and that gravitated into fashion and architecture. I moved to Los Angeles in 2012 to look for opportunities where I could express myself while I picked up my first retail jobs, a lot of modeling and styling gigs came out and had the chance to work with amazing people.

Since 2014, I’ve been hanging the Mezcal El Silencio cause my best friend works for them, it’s an amazing company that always treated me as part of the family, in early 2018 they offered me a gig as a Casting/Stylist and Creative Director, I brought all the people and ideas into the table and worked amazing, after that I continued doing special projects with them which eventually turned into a full-time position as an Art Director for the company.

I’m currently still working with the company while I started my music project called Cruz Madre, a personal approach to latino modern music and culture, with this concept we are trying to build a community that is an open door for art and culture to have a platform curated by us, we are big fans of Latin America sounds like Cuban, Mexican, Brazilian, Peruvian, etc. So we trying to bring that all together while merging it with Los Angeles sounds.

Since I was a kid, I was taught to question everything around me, that allowed me to find my own way of developing things, from finding how much alike blues music to how much I enjoy building outfits, I want people to feel the same way about their craft, whatever you love to do has a greater purpose in this world.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There have been many struggles on the road, like being far from your family and friends, also starting from scratch and balancing your economy.

Eventually, I found how much we still need to work in race and culture issues, I’m proud of my roots and that always gonna compromise gigs and people that don’t allow those kinds of platforms in their companies yet.

Please tell us about El Silencio.
In my current position, I focus on solving any creative task, from casting the right models, to design merch and come up with campaign concepts.

What I’m proud of the most is keeping an honest eye and opinion while building a project, that helps me get together something that I can feel comfortable sharing.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I wouldn’t do anything differently so far.

Contact Info:

• Website: silencio.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_eliaslpz/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/mezcalelsilencio/

Image Credit:
Marta Mandryto and Julian Burgueno

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