Conversations with David Louis Klein

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Louis Klein.

Hi David Louis, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My Mom’s family moved to LA in the early 1900’s. She was born in Hollywood and I was born in LA I grew up in West LA and in my Grandparent’s home in Hollywood.

I had a negative experience in High School. I “turned those lemons into lemonade” when I wrote a feature length screenplay entitled “untold stories” inspired by my experience in High School which you can read about on my acting website at www.DavidLKleinActor.com.

I moved to attend SFSU to study Filmmaking. I started acting in my early 20’s. As much as I wanted a life as an actor I wanted a family. I was in a relationship with a woman in my 20’s who wouldn’t support me to be a professional actor so I made a choice to marry her, have a family, and work as a Realtor.

My marriage had deteriorated into a non-marriage in the mid-90s but I stayed living in the home with my kids. I finally moved out in 2006. I had met a woman with an artistic background in 2001. In 2006 I re-started my artistic life by taking photo classes. In 2007 the woman I had met in 2001 moved in with me and we were married. I finally became a free man when I married my current wife – free to follow my artist path.

In 2007 I took studio art classes. I went to a fashion show to take photos and met two painters who had printed their abstract art on fabric and had the fabric made into dresses. This encounter led me on my path to making clothing/fashion with prints I design using my photographs.

Over the past 15 years, while continuing to work as a Realtor I took classes in acting and clothing production and I’ve been acting in both the Bay Area and in LA, creating fine art photo prints for interior spaces, designing prints for fashion and making fashion. Read more about why I ended up making clothing at https://louisklein.io/makingfashion

I originally created fashion under the Brand name Wild Beautiful Clothing which is “on hold”. Over the past few years I’ve been making clothing under the Brand name based on my middle and last name: Louis Klein. I’ve been focused on designing and working with dressmakers to make the clothing, not on marketing/selling.

Last year I decided that in order to continue to making clothing I would need a business to focus on marketing so I hired a business plan writer to write a business plan and a pitch to get investors and business partners so I can focus all my energy on designing prints, fashion and acting.

The plan was finally finished in early April. While my main residence is near San Francisco, and my wife and I have a room at her sister’s house in San Jose and her best friend’s home in Saigon, Viet Nam, I still consider Los it my real “home.” I hope to have a permanent residence there soon and focus on making clothing with production in LA as well as in Hong Kong and Viet Nam. And now I’m in the process of reaching out to potential investors and business partners.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I had to laugh when I saw this question. I have a print of the Hindu God Ganesh who I understand is the God of Obstacles as it seems that the more the obstacles the greater the chance for overcoming them!

The biggest obstacle is my coming to understand that I am an artist and how an artist thinks is in itself an obstacle to knowing how to do “marketing”.

I had a choice in 2006 when I was 50 years old. I had moved out from my home with my wife. I had taken two semesters of photo classes and wanted to start acting again. I was considering moving to LA to start again again but I knew I needed to get back into classes and it would take some time to get cast. And I STILL wanted to have the family I thought I would have when I married in my 20’s. I knew I would have that family if I married Le, the woman I had met in 2001. So I made a choice to marry her and support her so she could support me as an artist.

Back in 2007 I had no clue that I would eventually want to start a fashion brand. I had an inkling I was an “artist” but didn’t realize it until after I had taken a studio art class and that acting was just one of the arts I do. So what I thought was an obstacle – that fact that I love both acting and creating visual photo art/prints for fashion – is in fact just a fact about myself. And I’ve thought many times that if I just STOPPED doing one or the other it would be like cutting off one arm expecting the other one to grow double the size. Not going to happen!

The other obstacle is learning to think like a “designer”. I’ve come up with a line I’d like to put in a script some day: “art is from the heart, design is from the mind”. After I learned how to design prints for fashion I learned all about the “print design/surface pattern design” business. After I took classes in clothing production and worked with a fashion designer who made her first collection with my prints I decided that I would “design” clothing myself. So over the past 10 years, for making clothing, I’ve gone gradually from being 0% designer and 100% artist to 50% artist and 50% designer.

Now, my biggest obstacle the obstacle every artist faces. How to earning a living from their creative work.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
What comes to mind first and foremost is that I think I may be the only “print designer/surface pattern designer” who uses only photography to design prints. I know many print designers will use photography. I saw a dress made with a collage of women’s mug shots which inspired me to use the portraits I’ve taken of women at events to make a collage which I have used to make dresses.

What sets me apart is that I use photography but I think like a painter. I joke that when people see me with my camera and ask if I’m a photographer I tell them that that I’m not a photographer, I’m a painter and the camera is my paint brush.

I know for me, for most artists, the bottom line is that I’m a story teller AND I have an eye for universal beauty. And I have a deep interest in people. I think art stems from compassion. I have a deep interest in helping people feel what is good about being alive, about being human.

A clothing designer I know of I recently talked with at fashion event about how like many other artistic people I do multiple arts. He said that the thing to focus on is to take the three things you do best and and where they converge is your sweet spot. That was so reassuring to me as I move forward with wanting to build my fashion brand. As what makes my fashion unique is that it converges three skills I have – The artist – finding beauty and capturing it. The actor – being able to tell the story of when a where in the real world the image was captured. The designer – learning how to combine these elements into both something beautiful for you to hang on your wall but to also wear on your body.

At a recent fashion show one of the models was so exuberantly happy wearing one of my dresses! One of the pictures she posted inspired me to write to her “I create with love in my heart so you feel it on your body”

I’m not following trends. I’m just creating something I hope you will want to hold onto for forever and leave it for your heirs. That’s why I call my clothing “fashion for forever” and I create for women of all cultures and countries who appreciate beauty.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
See the last frame. It’s the combination of my artistic talent as an actor/story teller, as a visual artist who uses photography combined with my new talent as a designer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.DavidLouisKlein.com
• Instagram: @LouisKleinFashion
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidLouisKlein
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louiskleinfashion/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@louiskleinfashion