ABOUT US

Photo By Selina Pan/13 Gallons

Cecelia Perez, who also is known as Hey Ruca, is a Mexican American artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She grew up in Sacramento, drawing to pass the time in class and at her retail job, and moved to San Francisco in 2018 to pursue art full time.

She started by posting custom sweatshirts featuring her artwork to Instagram, screenprinting each piece herself at Grease Diner in Oakland. Within a week she had hundreds of orders. Those sales funded every launch that followed, until Hey Ruca became a brand in its own right in 2023. That same year Zumiez picked it up, and it now sells in more than 50 stores nationwide.

The work draws on Chicano themes and California kustom car culture, built on hand-drawn illustration with a femininity that streetwear rarely offers. That combination is what people come looking for, and it's the gap Hey Ruca fills. She moves between digital illustration and paint depending on what the job needs, a production-ready apparel graphic one week, a wall or a hero spot in a commercial and that range is why the work runs from garment prints to murals without changing hands.

Alongside her own label, she leads design and collection direction for Sadgirlz, which also sells through Zumiez and online.

Since launching, Hey Ruca has collaborated with The Hundreds, Paisa Boys, DGK and Cookies, partnered with the San Francisco Giants, McDonald's and Ford, and sold more than 500,000 t-shirts. Most recently she completed a licensed collaboration with the Minions franchise for the film's release, released through Complex. Cecelia has appeared in commercial campaigns for Modelo and McDonald's, and the Guadalajara corridos tumbados band Ladrones wore Hey Ruca on their 2026 U.S. tour supporting Bloodywood. The brand now reaches past e-commerce into retail floors, museums, commercials, stages, college classrooms and brand activations.

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