Born to Be Brad (2 page)

For Milan Fashion Week 2011, I was in love with the Jil Sander men’s collection. I wore this orange suit on the first day, and it caused quite a storm. People were following me around all day taking my picture.

Photograph by streetfsn.com

Against all odds, I am living a dream. After college, I worked as a fashion assistant at
Vogue
magazine’s West Coast office, helping out on a dozen high-concept, high-end photo shoots with world-class photographers like Mario Testino. Me? The kid with buckteeth who used to tap-dance in talent shows? The kid who hung a commemorative Marilyn Monroe dinner plate on his bedroom wall? Believe me, I was as surprised as anyone to find myself there, and then on television, in your living room every week, frantically looking for the perfect dress for an A-list celeb. Especially since I’d made some serious fashion faux pas myself over the years. Like that terrible Von Dutch phase I went through when I first moved to L.A., when I thought it was OK to wear a pair of oversize Dior shield sunglasses with novelty T-shirts and cargo shorts. I had blond highlights, and my hair was all nappy with split ends.

There were other fashion mistakes, believe me. Like the time I went on a cruise with my boyfriend, and I wore Tom Ford for Gucci raw denim, flared Western jeans with a Gucci logo belt, pointy suede Dolce & Gabbana boots, a white shirt, and a Gucci handkerchief around my neck. I had a Sears-catalog blond haircut and I looked like Ellen DeGeneres dressed as a cowgirl.

And yet my story has all the elements of a fashion fairy tale—with trips overseas and celebrity clients and the chance to work with some of the most beautiful clothing in the world. But what’s less known is that, at its heart, mine is also a survival story—of too much partying, which I used to dull the pain of a sometimes difficult childhood. In my early twenties, I came to a fork in the road and I had to make a choice: Would I continue to abuse myself, or would I listen to the voice of those women in my life, the ones who told me I could be so much more?

This was harder than it may seem. People from Port Perry don’t just pack up a U-Haul and leave town for New York. Most of the people stay and take over the family business. And for them that’s enough. For them, that works. As a kid, I may have been in the basement with my mother adding plaid borders to the bottoms of my jeans and gluing sequins on everything in reach, but no one had any idea I’d make a career of this. That you could even
make
a career of this. Even I didn’t see it. (I wanted to be a plastic surgeon, actually.) But reading fashion magazines, taping the Tony Awards off the television—it was a window to another world, and it made me realize there was something more out there for me. That if I listened to that same voice that told me Barbie should wear her hair off her face, I’d make something happen for myself. I didn’t always know where I was going. That’s part of the reason I loved fashion. I knew you could play dress-up and be whatever it is you wanted to be that day. And throughout my life, I tried on different personalities, different careers, trying to listen to my voice and see where I was heading. You don’t need to be locked into one look or one strict personality; that much I know.

I have more to offer in this book than advice on how to get the perfect wardrobe, though there will be plenty of that, too. (Five must-have accessories every woman should own: a great closed-toe pump, a large day bag, a vintage clutch, an amazing pair of sunglasses, and a cocktail ring.) What I am offering, through my story, is proof that you can be your best self, whoever that may be. That you can change your life. That if you listen to the voice in your heart, you will succeed.

Look, I know: Age thirty-three might be a little early to be writing a memoir. I get it. I’m not Jane Fonda. (I wish.) The stories here may not be entirely unique. An overweight gay kid pursuing musical theater and obsessed with fashion? Shocker! But it is what we do with the information in front of us that is vital. How do you get from point A to point B when the steps in between seem like such a mystery?

On the beach in Malibu, I’m dressed like a cross between a trucker and Tom Cruise in
The Outsiders
—and not in a good way.

What I know is: I got this far. I am a stylist working with clients whose talent I respect. I am ten years sober as of May 3, 2011. This was not some rocket to stardom. A lot was put in my way. My resources were limited. I didn’t have connections. I wasn’t born into this world. I just told anyone who would listen that I wanted to work in fashion. That I had a point of view. And when an opportunity presented itself, I did the work. I rolled up my sleeves and dug in my heels. It took sacrifices. There were times I wanted to quit. There were times where I got so close to the party that I could taste the mini-burgers, but even then it all felt like too much. My sobriety has a lot to do with pushing me forward. I didn’t believe that I got sober to be miserable.

Canada’s Wonderland, 1982. A ringer tee and jeans? I still wear this look. Incidentally, we’d get season passes to the amusement park. But my mom never wanted me to go alone. She was convinced that I’d die on a roller coaster or that someone would offer me drugs in the bathroom stalls.

What I want to say is: Thank God I didn’t change. Thank God I didn’t compromise who I was, because I would not be here today. Being yourself comes with a price. I know that. It comes with a lot of adversity. You will run into people who want to bring you down. Especially when you become successful. I am telling my story here—in bold detail—because I want you to know that you don’t have to change. That there is a world out there just waiting for you, exactly as you are.

What I’m offering is part style guide, part inspirational story about allowing yourself to fail, about listening to your heart and seeing where it leads you. That’s the message of this book. Ignore the bullies, whether they’re from the playground or the office, and find out where your passion lives. Look around and engage and take notes. And when you’re ready, make it happen. This story is divided into three distinct sections: “Listen,” “Look,” “Leap.”

I will take you to the red carpet at the Oscars, to photo shoots in far-flung locations, to the European runway shows, and to my childhood bedroom, where you’ll find the purple faux-fur jacket I wore to the prom still hanging in the closet. This is the inspirational story of a kid who didn’t fit in. A kid who left a small town in Canada and somehow made his way to the offices of
Vogue
magazine and then into your living room. Get ready. Life hasn’t been all bow ties and glasses. It’s been glamorous but also rough at times.

“Ignore the bullies, whether they’re from the playground or the office, and find out where your passion lives.”

1

The bullies may be loud. But your heart can beat louder.

I WAS TWELVE YEARS
old when I started reading
Vogue
. Even before that I was always watching
Fashion Television
, a Canadian TV show that aired Sunday nights after the local news and was hosted by Jeanne Beker. She was Canada’s answer to Elsa Klensch (still is) and I was obsessed with her. I can still hear the theme song in my head
(“I have an obsession…”)
. Ask any Canadian why they got into fashion and Jeanne Beker’s name will come up. She reported from the fashion shows in Milan and New York with such intensity–as if she was a war correspondent reporting from the front lines. Except these were the front lines of fashion. Needless to say, as a kid living for
Fashion Television
and fighting with his sister over the remote control—so he could watch
The Sound of Music
again—I wasn’t a big hit with the other Canadian boys in my school. I didn’t care. I was sitting at the kitchen table flipping through junk mail catalogs addressed to my mom and picking out outfits for her. When she was getting ready to go out for the night with my father, I’d go into her closet and grab a pair of denim stirrup pants and a mid-thigh-length T-shirt for her to wear. I’d pester her: “Don’t you have a bracelet for that outfit?” In department stores, I’d walk by the women’s shoe department and shriek, “Mommy, those shoes!”

It’s important to visualize where we are: I grew up in Port Perry, a small eighteenth-century town on the banks of Lake Scugog in Ontario. Don’t ask me what “Scugog” means. I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that the buildings in town had gingerbread trim, a faux country aesthetic that went nicely with the penny loafers and starched oxford shirts my mom dressed me in as a kid. My hometown looked like the setting for a movie with Meredith Baxter Birney, and my childhood was about trying to fit a round kid in a square town.
Fashion Television
was like some dispatch from a foreign planet. A place where I belonged. And for the first of many times in my life, I became aware that there was a party going on somewhere, but I was hopelessly on the outside looking in.

“My childhood was about trying to fit a round kid in a square town.”