Born to Be Brad (31 page)

9. Be early. You should be waiting for your boss, not the other way around.

10. Do everything with a smile. Or at least fake a smile.

My first trip to the CFDA Awards, May 2011, full Simon Spurr look.

Photograph by Kevin Mazur/Getty

Ciao, Bella!

MY FIVE-SECOND GUIDE TO MILAN

Where to eat dinner: Da Giacomo, 6 Via Pascale Sottocorno

When you sit down for dinner at Da Giacomo, the waitstaff will bring over a fresh slice of homemade pizza. But this is more than a great restaurant (though it’s that, too): Da Giacomo is
the
hangout during Fashion Week—a place for models, designers, and photographers to mingle and be merry.

Where to stay: Bulgari Hotel, 7/b Via Privata Fratelli Gabba

An extremely modern design—an aesthetic I savor—plus exceptional service makes this the only place I’ll stay in Milan. For breakfast, allow me to recommend the pastry basket, which is full of croissants,
pains au chocolat,
and baguettes. On a warm summer night, the courtyard becomes one of Milan’s best hotspots. You can’t beat it.

Where to shop: Corso Como, 7d Via Alessio Di Tocqueville

A great shopping destination with an exceptional buy—if it’s happening in fashion, you can buy it here.

Where to eat lunch: Alla Cucina Delle Langhe, 6 Corso Como

Alla Cucina Delle Langhe is Tom Ford’s favorite restaurant in Milan, and with good reason. It’s on the commercial promenade, it’s a place to see and be seen, and the food is delicious. From squash blossoms to caprese salad and an exceptional antipasti counter—dig in.

So what. I would put the pieces of my business in place. And I would reevaluate in a year. I was getting my name out there. I was saying, I’m good at what I do. I’m proud of the work. It is a whole new beginning.

Suddenly I had one full-time administrative assistant and a part-time fashion assistant. We found an office; it was a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise building made of glass. It was a gorgeous, 1,500-square-foot space of dark wood and new appliances and 15-foot ceilings with 180-degree views of the Hollywood Hills and downtown Los Angeles. I was in love. It made me happy to have somewhere to go every day. Even though my overhead was over my head.

I might have been a nervous wreck at times. But in Milan? For Fashion Week 2011? Well, there I felt like a star. I spent the afternoon with Anna Dello Russo from
Vogue
Japan—whom I’d dressed up as for Halloween! Inside her apartment, she told me, “I have enough fruit hats. I’m moving on to vegetables.” And she did. She showed me a Carmen Miranda–style hat with all the elements of a salad on top. She is known for making music videos of herself dancing, and I walked into a shoot of her dancing to Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory.” She asked if I wanted to make a video with her. (The answer was yes. I’m still waiting!)

I bore witness to the final fittings of the Dsquared
²
show. I went backstage to see Neil Barrett, who showed a punk, ska-influenced collection that I was obsessed with. Gary joined me, and it was his first Fashion Week. He was traveling in style, and so was I. I changed my clothing four times a day.

I had an audience with Donatella Versace. We’d met before, though I suspected she would not remember me. I prepared myself for this fact. Pierre Hardy, the French designer, introduced me. “This is Brad,” he said.

“I know,” Donatella said in that instantly recognizable deep-throated voice of hers. “I hear about Brad all of the time. Brad
this.
Brad
that
.”

I loved that I was on her radar.

Back at home, every day was about finding new work. I was meeting with all of the Hollywood publicity agencies in town. These were general meetings where the celebrity publicists—the gatekeepers to the stars—could talk to me and get a sense of my style, away from what they knew from reality TV. This was my reality now, and the work followed. I dressed Abigail Spencer, a hot young actress from
Mad Men,
in Oscar de la Renta for the Comic-Con premiere of her film
Cowboys & Aliens
. I dressed the stunning Rashida Jones from
Parks and Recreation
for a premiere.
InStyle
asked me to curate a monthly page starting with September 2011. It’s called “Brad’s Buzz Board” and it’s a roundup of the things that I am loving every month, as well as the celebrity red carpet looks I am obsessed with.

It was time to take stock of my life.

Cash flow was unpredictable, but my business was up and running. On a personal note, my ten-year anniversary with Gary was fast approaching, and he and I decided to throw a party. The plans started small, of course, but then escalated into a full-on catered backyard affair. We’d have to cover the pool to create a dance floor and we decided to bring in a DJ and professional lighting. Passed hors d’oeuvres gave way to a massive buffet. My mother and sister would fly in from Canada. I had a dozen friends flying in from New York. The guest list grew to some 150 people.

“I wished my father and I could celebrate that together.”

When I came out to my sister in high school, she was unfailingly supportive. What she didn’t tell me then was the truth about her own fears, about what my homosexuality meant for
her
life. She’d looked forward to having a sister-in-law, to being an aunt. But talk to her today, and she will tell you that while Gary and I don’t have kids, she doesn’t feel she missed out on an ounce of life as my sister. Gary is her family as much as he is mine. It is not always like this for people out there, and I am grateful to have so much love in my life.

My father and I had been on very good terms up until recently. When I was in school, I was available to him. I’d go home and spend three days with my mom and then three days with him. In Alcoholics Anonymous, making amends doesn’t end with one conversation. It’s called Living the Amends. And I had been trying to be a better son. For his sixtieth birthday, we went on a two-week bus tour of Italy. I’d send birthday cards, Christmas cards, Thanksgiving cards. If there was a card for an occasion, I sent one. But around the third season of
The Rachel Zoe Project,
I stopped sending cards. I had more responsibility and was traveling and my job was consuming my life. It had only gotten worse since then.

“Yes, I dressed Jessica Alba as Crystal Barbie.”

My dad was angry at me. And he was right. We’d drifted apart and it was my fault. And sometimes I was short with him. He’d say things to me like, “I don’t understand what you do.”

“You keep saying that,” I’d say. “But there are three seasons of a television show following me, showing exactly what I do. There’s no clearer explanation of what I do than that.”

But my father shouldn’t have to find out about my life from television. I’d let my work put a wedge between us. And now I was trying to undo it. I still am. My father said that I’d changed. That I’d become a different person. What I wanted to say to him is this: I’m the exact same person who came downstairs at age eleven with a comic book scarf tied around his waist and wearing the jogging pants with the neon zippers. I wished we could celebrate how far I’d come, from the day that I called him from a street-corner pay phone in Toronto crying my eyes out, telling him I needed to get sober, to where I am now, styling fashion shoots for major magazines, filming my own TV show, and celebrating ten years in a successful, stable relationship with a man who loves me. I wished my father and I could celebrate that together. This was such an exciting time and I didn’t know how long it would last. Because if anyone knew how hard it was for me to get here, and how unlikely this journey has been, it’s my father. After months of sorting out what our relationship would be we have come to a mutual decision to let the past be the past and to move forward. We both want a relationship with each other that is lighter than it has been before. And in terms of all of the successes I’ve had this year, this could be the most important one. No matter how many miscommunications or misunderstandings you may have, your family is the most important thing and is worth fighting for.

In an odd way, through all of this, I was realizing how personal my work really is. Fashion was my savior when I was a kid. It gave me protection from the outside world. A way to announce what was in my heart when I couldn’t find the words. And it would continue to be that for me. No more so than when I dressed Jessica Alba for the 2011 Met Ball.

“My work is meaningful to me because it’s about more than playing dress-up. It’s about making people feel at home in their own skin. It’s about giving everyone their red carpet moment.”

The Costume Institute Gala, aka the Met Ball, sponsored by Anna Wintour and
Vogue
as a benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, is the fashion world’s Oscars. It is the biggest night in fashion and an absolutely impossible ticket to get. Magazines and corporate sponsors pay $250,000 for a single table. Two hundred photographers line the red carpet. Inside, meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow mingles with Gisele Bündchen and Kristen Stewart and Gwen Stefani and Jay-Z. It’s one of the starriest rooms of the year. But someone once told me that the women’s bathroom is where the real party goes down. It’s the only place you can sneak a cigarette, plus you might see Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in ball gowns in a stall next to Coco Rocha.

I was dressing Jessica Alba for the 2011 Met Ball. Ralph Lauren invited her and of course offered to make her a custom gown for the night. This was thrilling but not without its challenges. A custom gown can be tricky. The way it looks sketched on the page isn’t always how it turns out. The fit, the color—there are a lot of variables. The dress arrives, it’s not what you think, and you have to scramble. It happens all the time. That wouldn’t be an option here: She was Ralph’s guest and she’d wear Ralph.

I struggled with an inspiration for the dress. Oh, did I mention that Jessica Alba would be seven months pregnant that night? This was the Met Ball. I didn’t want her showing up in a muumuu. I wanted her to feel like she was dressed in something high-fashion. I wanted her to stand out in the crowd and get noticed.

I was flipping through a binder of recent Ralph Lauren gowns when I spotted a shape that would work for Jessica. And suddenly I had an emotionally charged flashback to my childhood. I was ten years old again and my favorite Barbie was Crystal Barbie. She had glass slippers and a sparkly, iridescent gown complete with layers of tulle. So much tulle! I remember losing one of Barbie’s glass slippers, and even though it was really just a piece of see-through plastic with glitter in it, I cried. I thought, Without the right piece of footwear Barbie is just a shoeless tramp. But that dress!

I had a vision. Jessica Alba would go to the fashion world’s Oscars in a sequined, custom-made Ralph Lauren gown with a platinum under-layer and beaded tulle. Yes, I dressed Jessica Alba as Crystal Barbie.

In a review of
The Rachel Zoe Project,
a writer for the
Los Angeles Times
suggested, “The idea that a person can get paid scads of money for telling someone else what to wear can also seem sort of, you know, wrong.” But really, it was that reporter who got it wrong. I realized a stylist isn’t a glorified personal shopper. We’re being paid because we can see something a client can’t. I’m being paid for the way my brain computes images and the way I see a puzzle coming together. My work is meaningful to me because it’s about more than playing dress-up. It’s about making people feel at home in their own skin. It’s about giving everyone their red carpet moment.

When I saw Jessica Alba step out on the red carpet for the Met Ball, looking like a dream I once had, I cried. Not just for that night, but for this journey. Because I’ve proven everyone wrong. Because I’ve overcome so much. Because I am exactly where I am supposed to be.