10-year-old American fashion designer divides his time between school and the catwalk

LOS ANGELES, 11 June (Reuters) – ⁠At the age of four, Max Alexander told his parents ⁠that he would be a seamstress. At the age of 10, he already presented a collection at Paris Fashion Week.

Alexander is the youngest catwalk designer in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. He created pieces for Denver Fashion Week in 2023, at the age of seven, and presented a women’s collection with 15 looks at the Palais Garnier in Paris in March. This weekend, he will attend the premiere of a documentary about his life at the ⁠Tribeca Festival in New York.

Alexander said he can’t pinpoint exactly what led him to pursue a career in fashion design at such a young age. He stated that he enjoys creating fashion because he can express his creativity in many ways.

“You can use any fabric, any material,” he declared in an interview in his studio at his home in Los Angeles. “You can make a dress out of pickles. You can make a dress out of spoons. You can make a dress out of hangers. It’s, like, crazy.”

The young designer said he is inspired by the environment around him and always looks for sustainable materials.

“Like bags of coffee beans,” he declared. “My mom loves coffee, so I thought why not make a dress out of bags of coffee beans?”

“After 10 years, you can put them in the soil and they will biodegrade,” he added. “It helps our planet too.”

Alexander described her show in Paris and her walk down the catwalk to applause as “a lot of fun.”

“It wasn’t ⁠scary for me. I thought, ‘Oh, all these people appreciate me and I should be happy,'” he said.

Alexander’s designs for dresses, pajamas, T-shirts, hoodies and more are sold on a website of the same name. There are collections for men, women and children.

At the time of the interview, he was creating an outfit to wear when watching the Broadway musical “Hamilton” in New York.

Alexander explained her creation process in stages that she called “the dress cycle”.

Between choosing ⁠fabrics, draping mannequins and figuring out how to work with models, Alexander has the normal concerns of ⁠someone who just finished fourth grade. For example, both recess and lunch breaks will be shorter in fifth grade.

“It seems harder,” he said. “I think it’s worse because we only have 10-minute breaks, but before we had 25, which is kind of sad.”