Evan Biddell: drama king

Moody, brilliant, and notoriously arrogant, Toronto fashion renegade Evan Biddell calls himself the bastard child of Jeremy Scott and Balenciaga. Maybe he can’t sell clothes, but he’s genius at selling himself

Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison.

“They were all 27 when they were like, Ugh, this is over,” says Evan Biddell, also 27. “They kinda get to that point and they were like, OK, this is what I’ve done, this is what I’ve put out to the world? Um, is my message really worth it?”

Unshaven head in his hands, questions writ big on his brow, Biddell is being a drama king. If you recognized his mug immediately, you know he does that well. He’s not literally seeking admission to the 27 Club. But he is, in the high-school play we call LG Fashion Week, a rock star. Albeit, recently, something of a crushed one.

Biddell shot to micro-fame in 2007, after winning season one of Project Runway Canada. Around 400,000 viewers tuned in to see an unschooled kid from Saskatoon beat Ryerson fashion grad Lucian Matis (who also went on to design and show at LGFW for several seasons) for the $100,000 prize. He’d been, he says himself, “a little brat” on the show; to this day, only one of his ex-competitors, Kendra Francis, is “cool with” him. Even in the un-“reality” world, he gets mixed reactions. Tell a Toronto fashion type you’re writing a cover story on Biddell, and she’ll roll her eyes. Then she’ll say, “See you at the show!”

That’s because no one puts it on like Biddell. A cuddly egoist and incorrigible entertainer, he delights in the spotlight. (“Well, it’s more like a laserlight in Toronto,” he kids.) He began showing (off) at LG Fashion Week in October 2007, the same week I began covering fashion in Toronto. I’ve seen it all: eco-jersey gowns for manga princesses (he loves all cartoons); “sport eyelet hoodie onesies”; neon motocross jumpsuits (after that show, he gave the audience the finger); cartoon-printed harem pants (see?); and cork exoskeletons inspired by “dinosaurs in the future.” Every season, the experiments are riskier; the failures, grander; the uncommercial artistry, more sincerely applauded.

Last season was his most critically acclaimed yet. A blogger for The Walrus called him the Alexander McQueen of Canada (a comparison that horrified him — akin to calling Kim Mimran the Coco Chanel of Canada. On that, he says: “We’re both kind of semi-overweight, constantly gaining weight, losing weight, rough, maybe swear-a-little-bit-more-than-the-rest-of-the-fashion-people kinda guys who like to shave our heads and party and do E. Maybe that’s what we have in common?”)

I called him fearless.

But the more I talk to him now, the more the talk swirls around money — not how much of it he needs, but how badly he needs to make it, period — and the more I feel he is afraid of one thing: selling clothes. Maybe, like a good rock star, he fears it’s really selling out: compromising artistry to make, god forbid, “wearable” clothes. More likely, he’s afraid of actually, earnestly trying to sell his work, and failing. Then he’d be like almost every other designer in Toronto.

Despite the fact that he hasn’t sold to a single major retailer in his six seasons of showing at LG Fashion Week, he’s managed to sell a grandiose, fascinating idea of himself. And after a rocky summer, filled with personal rejection and professional disappointment, that idea was enough to attract a serious patron: Ken Albright, owner of Seven Continents, a manufacturing powerhouse specializing in visual merchandising (think pink mannequins for Victoria’s Secret). In the days leading up to his LGFW Spring 2011 show, Biddell seems like he might have finally decided to stop believing his own hype. Like it’s business time now. This new guy is more accessible, more flexible, less arrogant — and he believes that will all be apparent in his show, humbly titled “Kingdom.”

MOST DESIGNERS will tell you that they were born to fashion; they’ve never dreamed of anything else. That’s so not Biddell. He grew up in Saskatoon with his mother, his little sister, Alexandra, and his older brother, Brett, “the smart one.” Brett has a tattoo of Einstein on his arm. Evan’s third tattoo, on his leg, is of “a beautiful Spanasian woman with roses all up in her hair.” When Brett was 14, he was studying quantum theory. When Evan was 14, he was experimenting with mushrooms.

In high school, Biddell — bored, 16, and in need of a subcultural pursuit — became “the fashion guy,” sewing “fat pants” for his raver friends. The next year, and the year after that, he did prom dresses. After high school, the Biddells moved to Fernie, BC, and Evan opened his first shop: The NuPlace. He sold cargo pants and fur-lined coats to snowboarding tomboys and, on rare occasions, sewed them dresses. “I did my first big shows in Fernie,” says Biddell. “Well, they weren’t big. But everyone in the town would come. We had one with a band and fire dancers... and then the show was 40 minutes long and everyone sat through it holding cans of Kokanee.”

Two years later, he moved on to Victoria, a bigger, chilled-out town by the ocean. He was the only one of his friends without dreadlocks. He got into organic fabrics, and he’s never really gotten out, remaining focused on sustainable design and processes. (Then again, he says it isn’t indies like him who need to go eco, but mega-clothiers like H&M.)

There Biddell was discovered by film-and-TV costume designer Ken Shapkin, who lured him over to Vancouver to make clothes for Painkiller Jane, a little-seen Canadian sci-fi show. “We did futuristic superhero stuff,” he tells me on the phone, a few days after our in-person chat. “That’s where I got a lot of my aesthetic.” It’s Thanksgiving Monday, the day before his show, and his momma’s in the background. She pipes up protectively: “No, you’ve always designed like that! Ever since you were 16.”

When the call for Project Runway designers went out, Biddell didn’t even hear it. One of his coworkers got an application and filled it out it for him. Biddell signed it and shrugged.

He won the show, then kept it going, becoming “the fashion guy” full-time. Among his early supporters is Fashion Design Council of Canada president Robin Kay, who says Biddell’s move to Seven Continents is “brilliant” and his work “beautiful.” There’s also Brian Bailey, the veteran Toronto designer and Biddell’s mentor since his Project Runway days. He calls Biddell a trendsetter and a pattern-cutting genius who could be “the first Canadian star to helm a European fashion house.”

Biddell has described himself best, though, as “a fashion designer without a clothing line.” That’s like being a rock star without singles. For a while, he seemed to want it that way.

Then came the pop idols. One of Biddell’s ex-Runway co-stars, Stephen Wong, had been quietly building Greta Constantine, the label he’d begun in 2005 with Kirk Peckersgell. The duo’s designs were the opposite of Biddell’s: they were wearable. Easy, sexy, trendy clothes; “everynight” dresses. After a hit show in 2008, held at a now-closed nightclub before LGFW, Greta Constantine became the undisputed toast of this Prosecco town. Their shows are now held in venues like a giant Audi dealership; their dresses, sold at Holts.

“They’ve got their stuff down,” says Biddell now. “It’s hot, they’re like ‘the ones to watch’”—he makes quotes in the air — “and their shows are all sexy and like....” His enthusiasm wavers. “They’re doing something else.”

They’re succeeding.

It’s not that Biddell’s never tried. It’s more, he says, that he never really thought about failure. In Spring 2009, he managed to get 40,000 striped jersey things and weird-fitting raw jeans into small boutiques in Toronto, Victoria and Kuwait. Did he make a profit? He reels: “Oh, god, no!” As if that’s the last reason to make clothes. In Spring ’10, he opened Oz, as in Ossington Ave., with photographer Joe Fuda, as both a studio space and “a beautiful space to house the collection,” even to sell it. Or, as it turned out, not.

“What’s the real girl gonna wear?” he asks himself, repeating my question. “You know, whatever. I’m not saying that I can’t [make wearable clothes]. I’m saying that I’m not right now, and I won’t with this show.”

AFTER A CIGARETTE BREAK (he is happy I have Camels, but he’s sure to say he only smokes “this time of year”), Biddell whirls me through the new collection, mostly on mannequins. It’s a mixed bag, as usual, with some highly impressive tricks: I love a torso-shaped corset made from plastic wires spray-painted silver, worn over lushly draped black jersey. That should close the show.

“And this is your favourite,” says Biddell, plucking from a rack an A-line faux-python skirt with snaps down the front and his signature car-wash fringe on the sides. He grins a little arrogantly, but he’s right.

Biddell almost didn’t show at all this season. Earlier this year, desperate to get away, to go to a major fashion capital, he’d applied to the prestigious Masters of Fashion program at Central Saint Martins, in London. Biddell sent in a book compiling his seven fantastical runway shows, his Canadian magazine editorials and creative shoots, and the mostly excited reviews he’s gotten from Toronto’s mostly excitable style press. In a stage whisper, on the Beaconsfield patio in springtime, he told me of his big move. He gave his two months’ notice at both Oz Studios and his own apartment, which he shared with his boyfriend, Colton.

He waited. And waited. And didn’t get in. Ugh.

“I was like, Colton, we’re going to go out there, we’re gonna get married, I’m gonna open a little shop in a small little town, like Nelson, BC, in the mountains, and just be like — ahhh.” He makes the open-chested gesture of a West Coast expat reuniting with fresh air. “You know? It was a total option.”

Then it wasn’t. He and Colton broke up. Oz was out of the picture. Mid-summer, he moved to “a temporary spot” on Queen East. Exile in Leslieville? Things were looking down.

And Biddell looked up — to the stars. He’s a Leo and he believes fully in his Leo-ness: the arrogance, pride, charisma, bravado and stubborn ambition. The rock-star qualities. Astrology’s probably bullshit, but under his star sign, things got brighter. By this bummer summer’s end, he’d received the call from Ken Albright of Seven Continents. Now he has an atelier there, a job created just for him — “fashion consultant,” helping design as-yet-unspecified products — and a venue to show his new superheroic spring collection. He also made up with Colton, his boyfriend; they still live apart, but look happy and playful when they’re together. He’d turned 27 and instead of saying “this is over,” he’d said the most hopeful thing in the world: “I can change.”

The question is, will he? “He’s getting better at what he does,” says Anita Clarke, a front-row denizen and popular fashion blogger. “He’s gotten a little humbler too, or maybe that was post-TV euphoria he took with him for a while. He’s proving to people that he’s serious and it’s not just because he won Project Runway.”

After three years of making dreams and not selling them, after trying several ambitious projects, like Oz, and failing out of them, after being rejected by Central Saint Martins, McQueen’s alma mater, after almost, almost quitting it all, Biddell still wants whatever “all” is. And right now, says Bailey, “he’s in the right place.” In my head I hear, “finally.”

http://www.eyeweekly.com/style/fashionweek/article/103851