Fred Foster Talks Creative Connection With Future and History of Cease and Desist Brand

Creative designer Fred Foster is the mastermind behind the clothing brand Cease and Desist as well as Future's Freebandz line and tour merch. Most recently, the 31-year-old, who serves as the rapper's Creative Director, lent a helping hand to the design aspects for Reebok's capsule collection with Freebandz. Thanks to talent, hip-hop and tenacity, Foster continues to expand his brand in the world of fashion.

Cease and Desist, founded by Foster and his partner in 2014, originally began as a line of graphic T-shirts that later evolved into a full range of clothing. Counting early supporters such as Mike WiLL Made-It, Future and Trinidad Jame$, the brand eventually caught on in the Atlanta area and quickly made its way to online boutiques and Instagram pages. The success of the brand was not only acknowledged by stylists and fashion heads around the country, but also day-one supporter Future. The rapper took notice of Foster's hard work and decided to reach out to the young creative director, offering him a job as the creative director of his Freebandz clothing line and tour merch.

XXL recently chopped it up with Fred Foster to discuss the direction of his brand, the future of the Freebandz line and the upcoming collaboration between Reebok and Future.

XXL: How did you get involved in the fashion industry?

Fred Foster: I always had a design background. You know, I grew up in a design family. My dad is an architect so at a young age I always had that influence on me, but I never knew I was going to go into fashion design. I was just trying to use my talents to survive and not work for anyone so I started making T-shirts and graphic tees and people started gravitating to the stuff I was doing. I ended up elevating it from tees to more cut and sewn pieces and now everything that I do now for the people that I work with. It really just came out of necessity and me finding a hidden talent that I wasn’t aware of.

When did you print out your first tee?

I started with T-shirt designs around 2008, 2009-ish, just doing graphic T-shirts and it wasn’t even like for production; it was just basically shit that I can wear. I would have an idea and I taught myself how to use Illustrator and Photoshop and all that shit. So ,I made the T-shirt, I wore it and I gave it to my brother. He wore it and my friends started asking about it and then and since people started asking about it so much, I decided to make it bigger.

How did your brand Cease and Desist come into the picture?

During the process of me making and designing my tees, I was elevating myself by studying fashion and trying to get better because I was never satisfied with just making T-shirts. I always wanted to elevate what I was doing so after a couple of years of making tees and getting a good response, I talked to my business partner and she actually had a concept for the brand Cease and Desist.

We partnered up and I told her I would do the designing for the brand and we started off with one T-shirt, which was called the extend tee. It was a shirt and I attached a bandana to the shirt and we had the Cease and Desist print on there and that was the first piece we ever created. We just wanted to test out the market and it went crazy. That was the summer of 2013, and it just started a wild trend and everybody started wearing it. All the rappers, all the Instagram boutiques were selling fake versions of it. So it was crazy.

Who was the first rapper to support your work?

Well, the first person I made a custom piece before I went to production, I made it for Future. I made a custom piece for him and he wore it, I think in the "Love Me" video with Drake and Lil Wayne. I think that was the first person to wear it. But before that, the first rapper to ever support anything that I was doing was actually Trinidad Jame$ and this was like right when he was really popping and he’s still one of my good friends. He really supported me and did a whole commercial for me. Mike Will was also one of the first people to support me back then.

The brand really grew organically and it wasn’t about giving shit to rappers like that because we didn’t have money at the time, so we just made it and sent it to the right boutiques and stores and we just had a few key people tag us on social media and everybody was wearing it like Chris Brown did a BET performance and his whole team had on Cease and Desist. It was crazy!

So the brand started in 2013?

Officially, we registered the company and everything in 2014, so officially Cease and Desist started in 2014. But in 2013, we were just doing our thing. I think we actually started before then so I would say 2012, but the first Cease and Desist release was around 2013. At that time, we were just planning it out and we had no idea where we were going with it. Just trying to make something.

Future is one of your main supporters. How did you connect with him? And how did you establish that close bond with him?

It was interesting because I used to make custom pieces for artists so I had relationships with stylists so they would hit me up when they had video shoots and one day I brought the stuff over to a video shoot Future had and I think at that time he was shooting the video for "Love Me," so the stylist introduced me to Future and told him that I was the one who made the pieces he [Future] was wearing and from there the relationship organically grew. He kept inviting me around and we just became friends. He seen my growth and my work ethic.

He seen Beyonce wear Cease and Desist and he's told me, "Yo, I see you got Beyonce wearing your clothes! How did you make that happen" [laughs]? The funny thing is I never even spoke to him about it. I have never came up to him and asked him, "I need you to do this for me." He just respects the work ethic because that's the type of guy he is. He works very hard at what he does and he motivates me to work hard in what I do.

You're also the mastermind behind Future's merchandise. How did the talks for you to work on his merch begin?

It really just happened by him trusting my vision, my ideas and what I do. It really built over time and it wasn't something that we rushed into. It was just Future trying to do something right because you know he's very into fashion, but at the same time he's very dedicated to his music. So, he didn't want to half-ass it when it came to his merch, so, for him it was all about the timing. Having me around gave him that confidence in putting the team together to be able to make decisions. So, for the last two years we've been working on building it and everything we're doing right now is very much beginning stages, but we're definitely going to take it to another level with his stuff.

So you're responsible for all of the current Future merch items seen at the different pop-up locations as well as Future's tour merch on the Summer Sixteen Tour?

Yeah, for most of the stuff I do, but I also work with other designers too. My job is also creative director so I like to collaborate with different artists and different brands and so we've done collabs with John Varvatos, which featured art from a number of artists and painted jackets so everything we do for the pop-up I've had a hand in it. Giving directions and my creative input. I try to steer the ship in the right direction. I would say 80 percent to 90 percent is designed by me.

And you also oversee the Freebandz line?

Yeah, I'm also overseeing the Freebandz stuff. I love being able to be creative every day.

Future announced his deal with Reebok over the summer. Are you part of the creative team working on the capsule collection?

Yeah, I'm definitely very much a part of that. We sat down to work on some of the designs concepts for his exclusive sneaker release. So it's the first time I'm working on a shoe. It was exciting and I designed all of the collaboration pieces that they have out now, which they only made exclusively for the tour, but I think they going to offer them on sale later down the line at certain stores.

Can you tell me what sneaker you guys are working on?

Unfortunately, I can't [laughs]. I gotta be tight-lipped on that, but pretty sure people will find out soon.

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