Rivers McCall is an American fashion designer, artist, and musician known for her handcrafted crochet, rope, and chain-based wearable art, as well as her eponymous clothing and accessories brand, Rivers McCall (formerly known as Uppleva). Raised in Utah and based between New York, Los Angeles, and Utah, she has designed for and collaborated with a wide range of musicians, celebrities, and fashion brands, and has shown work in galleries, magazines, and runway presentations across the fashion and art worlds.
Early Life
Rivers McCall was raised in Utah and spent much of her childhood outdoors. She learned to crochet at age nine, inspired by watching her father loop climbing rope and tie daisy chains for storage, and later taught herself to sew. She was raised Mormon, and her family eventually settled in Midway, Utah, where they still live today.
McCall attended Wasatch High School, where she met Josh Harmon, who gave her her first professional graphic design job designing the cover art for a Backseat Lovers Spotify release. During her sophomore year, she joined a band and began selling merchandise she made herself, embroidering designs onto blank T-shirts. The proceeds from those sales, along with money raised through battle-of-the-bands competitions and local shows, helped fund the recording of the band's first album. Around the same time, she opened an Etsy shop selling her original designs; one of her earliest supporters was actor and former Disney Channel star Yasmeen Fletcher.
Alongside her design work, McCall pursued solo music, performing at venues across Utah including Velour, Kilby Court, and WhySound. At 18, she shaved her head, dropped out of Utah State University, and moved to New York City without a concrete plan — a decision driven in large part by a desire to step outside the more rigid expectations of the Mormon culture she was raised in and pursue artistic freedom.
Rivers playing bass at Velour, Provo, UT 2019
New York Years
Early Struggles
McCall initially intended to focus on music in New York, but the COVID-19 pandemic had shut down most venues by the time she arrived. She worked as a swim instructor and a hotel concierge to make ends meet, and lived for a time on the Lower East Side in a room she found through an unofficial listing, later moving to an apartment in Two Bridges that she described as having no heat and a broken refrigerator. She slept on an air mattress that would deflate within an hour, often waking up on the floor.
To supplement her income during this period, she launched an online shop, Uppleva (later renamed Rivers McCall), selling original accessories and clothing. What began as a way to fund her music career soon became something she loved in its own right, and her social media following started to grow. She eventually moved to Brooklyn, signing a lease with a friend she'd made after building an early presence on Instagram.
Bedroom / "Studio" 2021
Building a Fashion Career
Her Brooklyn roommates recognized the potential of her brand before she fully did, modeling her clothing, helping plan photoshoots, and encouraging her to pursue fashion seriously. To break into the industry, she listed herself as a student at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) on her résumé in order to qualify for fashion internships. A roommate connected her with Lulu — now the frontwoman of Frost Children — who at the time was in a relationship with Hillary Taymour, the designer behind Collina Strada. McCall sent her portfolio to the Collina Strada team and was brought on as an intern from September to November 2022, assisting with their SS23 runway show.
Collina Strada SS23 Backstage
During this period, McCall worked multiple jobs simultaneously: mornings at 6 a.m. as a concierge at the Arlo Hotel, afternoons as a stylist for WKND Nation under Sofia Carvela (a former assistant to Patricia Field), and nights at the Collina Strada studio in Chinatown, where she bedazzled pants, assisted with pattern-making, and embellished shoes. Working closely with a small, sustainability-focused fashion label gave her firsthand insight into how an independent brand could operate, lessons she later applied to her own business.
On the day of Collina Strada's SS23 runway show, a production manager was unexpectedly unavailable, and McCall was pulled onto the production team to manage models through fittings, hair, makeup, nails, and lineup. She was hired by the production company running the show, Steichen Studios, that same day, and left her other jobs to freelance under Monica Cuevas. The new schedule gave her the flexibility to take her own brand seriously; she began posting to social media once or twice a day and started developing a crochet balaclava collection.
Freelancing in production — for Steichen Studios and later Barlow and Sons as well — gave McCall an inside view of New York Fashion Week, exposing her to the industry's production side and helping her build connections. She worked events ranging from MasterClass film shoots and Adidas pop-ups to Kehlani concerts and runway shows, and often took home leftover set paper afterward, which she later repurposed for her own photoshoots.
The first "Uppleva" Photoshoot
The V Magazine Breakthrough
While developing her balaclava collection, McCall was contacted by Trishna Rikhy, then a writer for V Magazine (and formerly of Vogue and Paper, now an editor at GQ), who featured McCall's "Heart Face" balaclava in a Valentine's Day gifting guide. McCall was on set at a MasterClass shoot when the article went live; she quit that job the same day to keep up with the wave of orders coming through her Shopify store.
The feature accelerated her social media growth and brought attention from celebrity stylists. Clients and collaborators who wore or requested her pieces around this time included Christina Aguilera, Caroline Polachek, Brittany Broski, Anna Delvey, FKA twigs, Rebecca Black, Latto, Coi Leray, Julia Fox, Tom Daley, Stefon Diggs, Selma Blair, and Tyshon Lawrence. Harper's Bazaar and Cosmopolitan also reached out about potential cover features.
The Heart Balaclava worn by @tringsby
2022: A Turning Point
At 19, following the V Magazine feature, McCall shifted her full focus to fashion design. Between August and December 2022, she was featured by ten publications, including Vogue, Dazed, The Cut, i-D, and Complex. She collaborated with Lourdes Leon (Madonna's daughter), Eartheater, Queen Blackwell, Jeffrey Campbell, and Chinese Kitty during this period.
Her early balaclava collection expanded into a broader knitwear line incorporating body piercings into the yarn work — hats, earmuffs, hand warmers, and more. She refined her video editing, personal style, and overall brand aesthetic, and worked with her roommates to shoot dozens of photoshoots in their apartment using an set stand she found on the street and leftover set paper from her production jobs. As her profile grew, aspiring models, photographers, and fashion students began reaching out on their own, and she welcomed the collaboration.
McCall also began experimenting with unconventional materials sourced from her neighborhood: donated climbing rope from a local gym, excess yarn from friends leaving the city, and clothing left behind in the lobby of her building at the Bogart Lofts.
First Runway Shows
On March 6, 2022, McCall received a call from a mutual friend inviting her to present a collection at an event space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Within a week, she designed 15 looks, scouted models from bars and Instagram, and put out a call for makeup artists, hair stylists, and coordinators. She presented her first in-person runway show on March 12, 2022, just after her 20th birthday, hosted by Spiti Costa on Greenpoint Avenue. Two weeks later, on March 26, she presented a second show in SoHo with 10 new looks. Her sibling, Rue McCall, who had recently moved to New York and been scouted at a Whole Foods, walked in the show.
First Fashion show, HMUA, Behind the Scenes 2022
In the summer of 2022, McCall had also begun working extensively with rope, and process videos of her rope bags gained millions of views online. A rope dress she created was worn by Lourdes Leon in the music video for her debut single "Lock and Key," styled by Lee Xmas and Eartheater; the piece was later covered by Louis Laverne for Vogue Netherlands. She also created a rope dress for drag performer and climate activist Pattie Gonia, beginning a collaborative relationship that has continued through multiple tours.
In September 2022, McCall connected with Jason Thompson, then working with Pace Gallery, and presented a third runway show in the Financial District alongside artists Matthew Stone, SiiGii, Giovanni Leonardo Bassan, and Nereida Patricia. The show featured 15 looks and a live rope performance by Jocelyn Lojacono and KD Poehlman. It was photographed by Matt Weinberger, with images later published in Dazed and Office Magazine and included in Weinberger's "Soap and Water" exhibition at Bolda's Choice.
Unfashionable by Pulse NYC, HMUA Behind the Scenes, By Matt Weinberger
Chain Work and Continued Growth
In 2023, McCall turned much of her focus toward crocheting with stainless steel chain, after earlier experimenting with rope, wire, and found objects. Videos of her chain-crochet process went viral, with more than 40 individual reels earning between one and twelve million views each. She created a wearable chain dress for Brazilian pop star Anitta, featured in the music video for "Bota Nina."
With a growing reputation in New York, McCall began appearing on PR lists for the same Fashion Week shows she had once worked behind the scenes. She took on creative projects with larger brands including Lacoste and Ray-Ban, and increasingly directed her focus toward wearable art and the gallery world. She also joined the band Double Standard as a bassist, playing her first New York show with the group at Bowery Electric.
In the summer of 2023, McCall re-enrolled in college online to complete her degree in Human Experience Design and Interaction, graduating cum laude on scholarship in 2025.
Return to Utah and Focus on Health
In the summer of 2024, after a period of intense stress and neglected health issues, McCall moved back to Utah to prioritize her physical and mental health. She continued producing more abstract, wearable art while finding balance through mountain biking, canyoneering, rock climbing, and hiking. During this period she began working with outdoor-sourced materials, including a bag made from old mountain bike wheels sourced from a local shop, and continued to push her practice into new mediums.
Body brush, 2024
Los Angeles and the Art World
In 2025, McCall moved to Los Angeles, signed with an art dealer, and participated in her first gallery exhibition, hosted by Live Studios alongside artists Leeann Huang, Cen Freedan O., Jiaqi Peng, Jesse Brown, and Taylor Bringhurst. While enrolled as a full-time student, she continued working as an artist and took on freelance graphic design and social media projects to fund her art practice. Her work was featured in Voyage LA's "Local Artist Spotlight" and in a piece by Jacob Bonifacio, and her sculptural wearable pieces were the subject of "Modern Forms in Aged Frames," a feature by The Find Lab. During this time, she also released a collection of multi-use chain objects and continued developing chain as a core medium in her practice. She split the following year and a half between Utah and Los Angeles.
Recent Work
McCall's health declined again in the following period, and she returned to Utah in the summer of 2026, where she was diagnosed with endometriosis after months of being largely bedridden. She has since had an excision surgery in hopes of restoring her quality of life.
She continues to work across disciplines, currently developing a new single, "Frankie," and building a portfolio that spans fashion, art, video, and sound. Recent collaborations include a capsule collection with Chaco, a project supporting an H&M influencer activation, and a custom look for Meredith Duxbury.
Studies in Chain, Stainless Steel, Plaster, Stone, and Resin, 2026
