Max Alexander, 7, began making dresses at only 4 years old — and he’s already selling his work internationally and getting commissions from celebrities
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SHERRI MADISON
While most first-graders couldn’t name the founder of Gucci — let alone know anything about him — 7-year-old Max Alexander believes he has a deep connection to the famed designer.
Max, a dressmaking prodigy who has been designing and creating clothes since he was 4 years old, tells PEOPLE he was Gucci in a past life. “I actually was,” he says with confidence.
Max and his mom Sherri Madison recently chatted with PEOPLE about Max’s impressive work as a dressmaker, which includes getting commissions from celebrities and selling his clothes around the world.
Madison says she didn’t initially discover Max’s design skills, and it wasn’t until he announced his interest in dressmaking at 4 years old, that she noticed his talent.
“I didn’t notice. He told us. We were at dinner during the lockdown, and he just literally announced, ‘I need a mannequin,’ ” she recalls. “He was very serious. No laughing. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve never seen you interested in fashion. What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘That’s because I don’t have a mannequin. If you get me a mannequin, I’ll show you. I’m a dressmaker.’ ”
Max’s work took off soon after when Madison, who works as a cardboard artist, made him his first mannequin out of cardboard.
“He just started making dresses, it was the craziest thing,” she continues. “I ran and got my husband. I was like, ‘Come out of your office, you have to see what Max is doing. It’s crazy.’ ”
Though Max began dressmaking with no experience or exposure to fashion, Madison later realized that fashion actually runs in his genes. “It turns out his grandparents were in the fashion business in Montreal. My grandparents and my mom were all sewists, but Max didn’t know any of that, it came out of nowhere.”
Madison, who is also mom to two other children, says Max “started begging to learn how to sew after maybe half a dozen dresses.”
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“I thought he was too young because he’s only 4, but I got out my machine, and I sat him on my lap, and said, ‘Don’t touch anything, just watch me.’ It was probably two weeks before he was standing,” she recalls. “He was sewing very, very quickly. Quickly after that, he surpassed my skills, so I put him in a class at a local sewing shop. They really taught him a lot.”
As for the designing, draping and other aspects of his dresswork, Madison says Max has picked up everything on his own. “It’s all been trial and error from day one because I don’t know how to do that. He’s just worked that part out himself somehow.”
While many kids often change their interests, Madison says Max’s commitment to design is what continues to impress her.
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“He’s just so committed to it, and he has so much fun. It’s truly his happy place, his studio, and even just playing with the material,” she says. “For the first year or two, we said, ‘Well, tomorrow he’s going to be a cook.’ But it just stuck.”
“That’s really the unusual part that impresses me, is the commitment for such a very young child, and his true passion to want to make people feel beautiful, which he has told us since he was 4.”
“He wants women to feel beautiful and that’s the drive behind it,” she adds. “He’s never expressed any interest in wearing the dresses himself. He doesn’t make men’s wear. He really wants women of all sizes to feel beautiful.”
In just a few years, Max has already made more than a hundred designs, has sold his work internationally, held his own fashion shows and has even commissioned a jacket for Sharon Stone.
COURTESY OF SHERRI MADISON
And he still has big dreams ahead. “He wants to be the head of the house of Gucci or he wants to have his own atelier, Couture to the Max Italian,” says Madison.
For other kids who may want to get into design, Max says they need to remember, “Practice makes perfect.”
And while Max continues to practice and show his talents, Madison says it’s not the “talent or learning to sew that I’m proud of.”
“It’s his golden heart,” she says. “Everything he does is with the intent of making people happy. His whole goal with these dresses is to make people feel beautiful, he says it all the time.”
Source: people.com
