His most famous phrase is “you live even with little”. And if the designer Joel Alvarez says so, a native of Miami, who has a long past as a homeless person, you have to believe him. It’s more difficult to digest the clothes he sent to the stage of the New York fashion week: mini strips of black tape applied like stars on women’s breasts to be able to overcome Facebook censorship. The show of his – let’s call them that – clothes at the fashion week staged overseas caused quite a scandal. More than a show of elegance, a porn number poised between bondage and punk, which many insiders, however, have not defined as “brilliant”, peeling their hands for applause. Others, however, have labeled him as follows: «little genius and a lot of recklessness».
The story of Joel Alvarez: From homeless to New York Fashion Week designer with his “duct tape clothes”
His previous life in the car
In 2008, Alvarez was living in his car and struggling to feed himself at what he described to reporters as “the nadir of his life.” And he added: «Most of my relatives had died and I inherited from them a small dilapidated property that is not habitable. The house smelled like wet dog. It had pink water that came out of the tub when I flushed the toilet and there were holes in the roof the size of a microwave oven.’ At that point she preferred to go to sleep in the car.
Now «the King of tape» as he was renamed in New York, thanks to his «Black Tape Project», can afford the «Four Season».