Ten-year-old American fashion designer shuttles between school and runways

LOS ANGELES- At four years old, Max Alexander told his parents he was a dressmaker. By age 10, he was showing a collection at Paris Fashion Week.

Alexander is the world's youngest fashion runway designer, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. He created garments for Denver Fashion Week in 2023 at age seven and showed a 15-look women's collection at the Palais Garnier in Paris in March. This weekend, he will attend the debut of a documentary about his life at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

Alexander said he cannot pinpoint what led him to pursue a design career at such a young age. He said he enjoys producing fashion because he can express his creativity in various ways.

"You could use any fabric, any material," he said in an interview at his studio in his Los Angeles home. "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 receives inspiration from the environment around him and always looks for sustainable materials. "Like coffee bean bags," he said. "My mom is a coffee lover, so I was like, why not make a dress out of coffee bean sacks?"

"After 10 years, you can put them in the ground and they biodegrade," he added. "It helps our planet too."

Alexander described his show in Paris, and his walk down the runway to applause, as "very fun." "It wasn't scary for me. I was like, oh, like all these people appreciate me and I should be happy," he said.

Alexander's designs for dresses, pajamas, tees, hoodies and more are sold on a namesake website. There are collections for men, women and children.

At the time of the interview, he was designing an outfit he could wear to see the Broadway musical "Hamilton" in New York.

Alexander explained his design process in steps he called "the dress cycle." "Think. Drape. Sew," he said, followed by "Done! Voila!"

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

"It sounds harder," he said. "I think it's worse because we only have 10-minute recesses but we used to have 25, which is kind of sad."

(Reporting by Matt Silverstein; Writing by Lisa Richwine; Editing by David Gregorio)