Victor @victor.renna and Chris @chrisp3o from Rhino Dick Pill @rhinodickpill Photographed by Abby Lorenzini @abbylorenzini Interviewed by Jess Abene @212212212.212 Video by Jaamir Brown @hystericjamm3r
There are a few brand names I have a lot of fun saying. Ann Demeulemeester, Aime Leon Dore, Super Goop and well… Most importantly.. Rhino Dick Pill.
RDP for short.
This brand—true to its wildly unserious name—might be the least serious label I’ve ever seen. I say this with genuine affection. RDP has a chaos to it, with a tad of nostalgia, that makes anyone familiar with technology smile with recognition.
Their boxers showcase cartoons peaking from pockets, pixelated labels and fake belts that look straight out of fucked up animation.
The sweatshirts feel like they were designed in a basement, lit by the glow of a tube TV while the air holds that unmistakable mix of Fanta and weed baked into the furniture. Rhino Dick Pill offers unfiltered anarchic joy that is culturally specific to the Internet’s adolescence.
Rooted in video-game lore, meme DNA, character skins, loading screens, and pop-culture ephemera, the creators of RDP have perfected the art of delighting two demographics simultaneously. We were lucky to visit their studio and talk about their process.
VFiles: If yall wanna just start off with your names
Victor: My name is Victor
Chris: My name is Chris and we do Rhino Dick Pill
VFiles: Do you guys have specific roles?
Victor: Ehh we don’t really have specific roles, we kinda just do everything ranging from marketing, manufacturing, production and design+ graphic design. For the most part it's just the two of us and photoshop :)
VFiles: Do you make most of your stuff here?
Victor: Yeah - we started here and then occasionally I’ll make something from my apartment.
Vfiles: You guys have a ton of Japanese influence throughout your brand, how often do you guys go?
Chris: Once a year usually
Vfiles: You guys are really popular there right?
Victor: Yeah but I don’t really know what to attribute it to… maybe because we have spent time there or because of our Wake Up Filthy collaboration, I know he's quite big in Japan.
Chris: Well there was also that DJ, I think his name was Necro, that wore it... There are just a lot of cool people that are wearing it which makes it grow organically.
Victor: I don’t know if they see the characters that we are using and buy it because they identify with it. We also put Cocaine Ketamine on the waist band of our boxers.
Chris: Oh yeah that was sick. We basically did a Calvin Klein boxer waistband but wrote Cocaine Ketamine on it instead. I feel like if I saw it I would have bought it so I glad we made them.
Vfiles: Are the boxers your best seller?
Chris: Yeah people definitely like it the most - I mean they also like the necklaces but not everyone wants to spend $120 on something
Vfiles: How much are the boxers?
Victor: $65 for a 3 pack
Chris: We try to keep it affordable while still making it profitable
Vfiles: Who would you say is your main demographic?
Chris: Uhh like 93% boys hehe.. well some girl just got a tattoo of our design which was really hard
Vfiles: Your brand identity is soooo strong - how and when would you say it developed?
Chris: We just kinda grew up on the internet and things like Fortune, New Ground and Tumblr. I also just have been playing video games since I was a kid where I fell in love with the unhinged culture. Even before discord, I was on Ventrilo and Skype with my homies.
Vfiles: Were you the same way? (Turning to Victor)
Victor: Not really, I mean we used to play Counter Strike together in 2014 but then I quit cold stop. That's when I started selling clothes. I’ll play here and there like when we are at an internet cafe in Japan.
Chris: Vic is also sober so whenever I pitch to go to a bar it usually translates to us going to an internet cafe until 6 in the morning.
Victor: I also don’t have video games here so when I am on vacation I am more drawn to it.
Vfiles: Are you guys good at CS Go?
Chris: My rank is 24K
Vfiles: What's your rarest items on CS?
Chris: It was worth $1000 but the market just crashed so I think its now $900 (pulling it up on his screen)
Victor: What's crazy is that there are items on this game that are worth 1 million dollars
VFiles: REAL HUMAN DOLLARS???????
Victor: Yeah there are almost like the original NFTs in a way
Chris: (Pulls up a butterfly knife) My homie gave it to me with a lil RDP engravement on there. Here are my gloves, they are green. It's like having a nice Balenciaga shoe, like I don’t really need this but it's a luxury for me.
Victor: We also have skins that we designed
Vfiles: You guys have an insane network of people that are wearing your stuff
Victor: It all comes from doing it for a long time. I also have an archive and there is a ton of cross over. One of the first big people to wear our stuff was Lil Nas X and that was because a good friend of ours was his photographer. Shout out David Dickinson!!!
Vfiles: Has that been the craziest pull?
Chris: Yeah because it was also so early on. He had posted us on his IG story and it changed a lot of things
Victor: Uzi having the chairs is pretty crazy too
Vfiles: How do you guys avoid the pressures of social media?
Victor: We DEFINITELY feel the pressure from social media. At the same time I understand that it is just a numbers game and you just have to keep putting shit out there and seeing what sticks. Everything I put out, I obviously want it to do well but if something doesn’t perform, you can definitely feel defeated.
Chris: Also Instagram has a lot of weird rules and regulations. They will take shit down out of the blue.
Victor: They HATED the Cocaine Ketamine waist band. They thought we were selling drugs. It was crazy. I feel like they have no real people working there. It is all just AI scanning everything
Chris: Instagram just plays with you I guess
Victor: I also feel like when Filthy reposted it - that's when it got crazy attention and maybe people reported it. He has such intense fans
Vfiles: Filthy has a CRAZY reach and demographic like when I think of him I think of fish tank
Chris: He has DIE HARD fans
Victor: He definitely dives into a bunch of different fields. If you are doing something that he thinks is cool, he is always down to try it
Chris: He is also just a really good dude. He also got Faze banks wearing our underwear
Vfiles: Do you guys plan on doing more pop ups?
Chris: All of the pop ups we’ve done have come super naturally. We never really planned any of them… its always just homies that reach out and usually we are always down especially if it makes sense for the brand. We ended up having a booth at a concert one time. Its always nice selling to people face to face and watching them wear our stuff immediately
Victor: We would look out in the crowd and clearly see everyone wearing our hats - it was sick
Vfiles: What are your favorite designers?
Victor: A brand we really like is called Final Home or Swagger Phenomenon or Undercover.
Vfiles: What is the process of designing your hoodies?
Victor: We kinda treat it like placing a sticker. It has no specific process, once we think it works - we heat press whatever character in
Vfiles: Can we see your tattoos?
Chris: Wait, I need to show you the Wake Up Filthy underwear. It has Filthy’s and my tattoos printed onto the boxers
Vfiles: Why are you called Rhino Dick Pill?
Chris: Hahahaha its kinda a long story.. But it starts with those vapes over there (points to a bag of around 100 empty vapes) . It was my finsta name for awhile but it came from when I would go to a deli and try to become friends with the guys that worked there to get a discount on vapes. They would always have these Rhino Dick Pills hanging up behind the counter. I would always joke around with them asking who was buying them and they would just start laughing. People just kinda reacted really well to it whenever I brought RDP up. It was then my finsta name.
Vfiles: I love it - did you ever try out any other names?
Victor: Nope Nope just instantly RDP
Vfiles: Where did you guys grow up?
Victor: We grew up here in Forest Hills Queens, I grew up just 10 minutes away from here. We went to the same elementary school. My mom has pictures of us together when we were 3
Vfiles: AAAWWW thats so cute - wait Victor how much do you work for Sick Boy Archive?
Victor: That's my other brand
Vfiles: Ohh you ARE sick boy archive
Victor: Yeah that's what I was doing before this - I would buy and sell clothes
Vfiles: Your pieces are FIRE
Victor: Thank you thank you :))) I really appreciate that
Vfiles: When did you start that?
Victor: Umm I was buying clothes in probably 2013 and then made the IG in 2016. I didn’t have socials before that. I was just posting clothes not really thinking much of it. I used to just collect pieces that I knew were kinda rare. It started because me and Chris used to go to Soho and run around the streetwear stores. Vfiles was lit!!!
Chris: We were all broke but it was so fun to window shop. Occasionally you would see the guy dripped out in full Rick and say to yourself damn.. just wait til I have money. There was the old BAPE store and the BBC ice cream store
Victor: That was crazy. They really made their whole brand all encompassing
Vfiles: If Rhino Dick Pill had a store what would it be like?
Chris: Probably a big bouncy house…
