Born to Be Brad (30 page)

Authors: Brad Goreski

Jasper and me in Malibu, September 2009.

“It’s funny how something can sound so real in print when the day-to-day is still so uncertain.”

It’s funny how something can sound so real in print when the day-to-day is still so uncertain. I had some big-name clients and a camera crew following me to shoots for a reality series called
It’s a Brad, Brad World
that I was filming for Bravo. Yet, while I might have been the twenty-second-most powerful stylist in town according to the very smart, very beautiful people at the
Hollywood Reporter,
I was also still working out of my garage. UPS and FedEx men came to the house all day. Gary was writing from home some days and he was driven mad by the constant buzz of the doorbell. But I didn’t have an office, and so I had no choice but to do fittings at home. When David Dean Portelli, a manager at Precision Entertainment, whom I know from Toronto, threw a job my way, asking if I’d like to style Shay Mitchell from
Pretty Little Liars
for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I jumped at the chance. Shay is not only gorgeous but she’s also Canadian. Yet I had to invite her over to my house for the fitting. Shay arrived late at night, coming straight from the set of
Pretty Little Liars.
Gary locked himself in the bedroom with the dogs. He wanted me to seem like a professional. Still, during the fitting, you could hear Jasper, our fifteen-year-old black miniature schnauzer, scratching and crying on the other side of the wall. We tried gowns and cocktail dresses from J. Mendel, Jenny Packham, Phillip Lim, and Marc by Marc. The fitting didn’t end until eleven thirty, and I was so exhausted I couldn’t bring myself to clean up the living room. I just left the racks set up and the boxes open and splayed about. Gary wasn’t angry. He was incredibly patient. But when he looked at the fashion detritus, I knew he thought I could do better.

“He knew something I didn’t yet understand: It takes money to make money.”

I hosted a New York Fashion Week event in February 2011, dressed in a Givenchy bomber from their spring 2010 collection. Kanye West wore this jacket right after me to Paris Fashion Week, and it turned into a major Who Wore It Better moment. I think I won.

Photograph by Michael Buckner/Getty Images

Every year,
Us Weekly
has a Hollywood’s Hot Style party and in 2011 they named me the Sartorial Show-Off. And so, for the party, I showed off in a finale look from the Dolce & Gabbana Fall/Winter 2011 collection, which they shipped into Milan for me. This is my Diana Ross/Liza moment. Those sequins are everything.

Photograph by Jeffrey Mayer/Getty Images

He knew something I didn’t yet understand: It takes money to make money.

It was time to take it up a notch. I hadn’t been fired from a job yet. Actually, my work was getting noticed and people were starting to see me as a stylist more than a TV personality. If I was still working overtime to prove myself, so be it. I had to accept that some people would see me as that guy from TV and let my work speak for itself. In some ways, I realized, I would always be that kid on the school playground, that fat kid the bullies all tormented. There will always be naysayers. But what good is it to add your own self-hating voice to that chorus? I needed to trust myself.

The King of Cool

WHAT MEN CAN LEARN FROM STEVE MCQUEEN

Steve McQueen was masculine but fashionable, which isn’t easy to do. It was the way he carried himself. There’s that famous shot of him, carrying a cup in his hand, dressed in a turtleneck, a blazer, and a pair of pants, and he just looks so effortlessly put together, with this air of masculinity. From suits to leather jackets, he never made a mistake, and he’s a constant reference for photo shoots because he walked that fine line.

“There will always be naysayers. But what good is it to add your own self-hating voice to that chorus? I needed to trust myself.”

I got a call from an editor at
Details
magazine, Andrea Oliveri. The magazine wanted me to put together a few ideas for possible fashion stories. It was a great opportunity to showcase my editorial voice, and when I was out to dinner with Joe Zee later that week I ran a few thoughts by him. The ideas were good, he said, but he pushed me to pitch something more personal.

“I’m trying to stay away from bow ties and glasses,” I said.

That wasn’t what he meant. He told me not to be so literal and pushed me to think of something that would reflect my passion in menswear. I looked down. I was wearing a pink suit. I thought of Jil Sander’s new collection, which was all about color. I was loving pops of color, I said. You can wear a bright blue shirt with a suit. There is real takeaway knowledge there.

“Pitch that!” he said. “It has to be personal.”

I pitched three ideas to
Details.
That was the one they took.

I could do this. It was time to invest in myself. I was convinced: If I gave off the appearance of success, the work would follow. If I took my business seriously, others would, too. And so I needed an assistant.

I found her behind the desk at the Mercer. Or rather, she found me. For years, whenever Gary and I traveled to New York, we stayed at the Mercer Hotel. It’s very chic and timeless, and the people-watching in the lobby is a-
mahzing.
It’s also a nostalgic place for me: It’s the first hotel I ever stayed at in New York, when Gary took me there shortly after 9/11. Lindsay Myers had been a staple at the front desk of the Mercer for three years. She’s what my grandma Ruby would have called a spark plug. Lindsay is from Hilton Head, South Carolina, and she came to New York after having a vision: She was backpacking through Fiji and Thailand after college when she saw herself surrounded by culture. On the strength of that vision, she moved to New York. I liked this girl. I liked that spirit. She was a problem solver.

Everything Old Is New Again

MY FIVE FAVORITE VINTAGE SHOPS–AND WHAT TO BUY THERE

1. New York Vintage, 117 West Twenty-fifth Street, New York

From Gianni Versace to Alexander McQueen, from headdresses to amazing costume jewelry, Shannon Hoey has one of the most expansive vintage collections and one of the best for vintage couture. It’s a go-to spot for designers, stylists, and models.

2. Decades, 8214 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles

Cameron Silver is not only a shop owner but also a historian and a wonderful resource for the fashion world. He specializes in vintage couture, including Valentino, Balenciaga, and Dior. Being in his store is like being in a museum. He has a fantastic collection of vintage Birkin bags and Chanel bags, and I’m always pulling from Decades for the red carpet.

3. Mint Vintage, 20 Earlham Street, London, UK

Whenever I am in London, I stop in to Mint at Seven Dials in Covent Garden to get bow ties. There is a bowl of vintage bow ties and they sell for six pounds each. Velvet, brocades, satin—it’s a fantastic assortment.

4. Rose Bowl Flea Market, 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena

On the second Sunday of every month, the crowds descend on the Rose Bowl Flea Market. It’s a mixed bag, and you’ll need to spend a fair amount of time sifting through. But I found a vintage navy Givenchy blazer here for $35 and a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk in perfect condition ($1,200), and it’s also where I get my vintage T-shirts, sometimes ten for $10. You can’t beat that.

5. Didier Ludot, 20–24 Galerie Montpensier, Paris, France

This is one of the most famous vintage stores in Paris and the place where Reese Witherspoon got the Oscar gown she wore in 2006 when she won for
Walk the Line.
I bought a cream leather Christian Dior trench coat here. It’s really two separate stores—one side for the general public, and then one side that’s more like a museum, with mint-condition vintage Christian Dior, Balenciaga, and Balmain. But what blew me away was the sixties mod pieces—the Courrèges dresses, the patent-leather sleeves, the dress made of discs. This is the real deal.

I was checking out of the hotel one day before heading back to L.A., and I was complaining out loud. I had packages to pick up, and Gary was calling the front desk, wondering where I was. I was missing important conference calls. I was missing meetings because I couldn’t keep my schedule straight.

“You’re all over the place,” Lindsay said. “You need help. You need
me.
” She had no experience in fashion. She was, however, a doer. When you’re the concierge at a chic Manhattan hotel, you never know what the day will bring. You’re making the impossible possible every day. “What’s the toughest assignment you’ve had?” I asked. She was discreet. But told me about a hotel guest who needed to charter a helicopter in Africa to check in on a friend in a remote village. Lindsay got that done. I thought, She can certainly handle anything I throw at her. She moved to Los Angeles on May 23. And I didn’t realize how much I needed her until she was sitting next to me in my house, laughing at the disarray that was my life.

“You’re a stylist,” she said. “Go style. Give me the reins.”

Part of me felt this was completely ridiculous. I felt like I was playing dress-up yet again—but the kind of dress-up where you don’t know if your outfit is a hit or a miss. I mean, I had an assistant? I was going to look at office space? When my sister and I were little, we’d play a game in the basement that we called “Store.” It was basically a pretend Sears. This is what life now felt like. Was I acting too quickly? What if I wound up back in the garage?