Most 9-year-olds are focused on recess, Roblox, or what’s for lunch, but Max Alexander has a slightly different obsession: couture. And not just any couture. This pint-sized prodigy says, with total conviction, that he was the founder of Gucci in a past life.
“I actually was,” he tells PEOPLE, completely matter-of-fact.
Max’s journey from toddler to trailblazing designer began at just four years old, during a family dinner in the middle of lockdown. Out of nowhere, he turned to his parents and declared: “I need a mannequin.”
His mom, Sherri Madison, recalls the moment with a laugh. “He was very serious. No laughing. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve never seen you interested in fashion. What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘That’s because I don’t have a mannequin. If you get me a mannequin, I’ll show you. I’m a dressmaker.’”
And so, she did what any creative mom would do, she made him a mannequin… out of cardboard.
“He just started making dresses, it was the craziest thing,” Sherri says. “I ran and got my husband. I was like, ‘Come out of your office, you have to see what Max is doing. It’s crazy.’”
From there, the sewing didn’t stop.
Sherri, who is also an artist, says Max’s desire to learn snowballed quickly. “He started begging to learn how to sew after maybe half a dozen dresses. I thought he was too young because he’s only 4, but I got out my machine, and I sat him on my lap, and said, ‘Don’t touch anything, just watch me.’”
It took just two weeks before Max was sewing on his own, and very soon, sewing better than his mom. “Quickly after that, he surpassed my skills, so I put him in a class at a local sewing shop. They really taught him a lot.”
But even with technical training, Max’s creative process remains all his own. Draping? Designing? Patterning? “It’s all been trial and error from day one because I don’t know how to do that,” Sherri says. “He’s just worked that part out himself somehow.”
His talent is impressive, but it’s his dedication that takes people by surprise. While most kids bounce between hobbies, Max has never wavered. “For the first year or two, we said, ‘Well, tomorrow he’s going to be a cook,’” Sherri jokes. “But it just stuck.”
“That’s really the unusual part that impresses me,” she adds. “His true passion to want to make people feel beautiful, which he has told us since he was 4.”
Max doesn’t make menswear. He doesn’t make dresses for himself. He makes dresses for others, with love. “He wants women to feel beautiful and that’s the drive behind it,” Sherri says.
And he’s not just playing dress-up. Max has created over 100 original designs, held his own fashion shows, sold garments around the world, and even made a jacket for Sharon Stone.
Max’s career goals are clear: “He wants to be the head of the house of Gucci or he wants to have his own atelier, Couture to the Max Italian,” says Sherri.
Fashion may be stitched into Max’s soul. Though he’d never met them, his grandparents and great-grandparents were in the fashion industry in Montreal. “My grandparents and my mom were all sewists, but Max didn’t know any of that, it came out of nowhere.”
Or maybe… it came from a past life?
Whether reincarnated designer or just a kid with big dreams, Max has a message for others chasing creative passions: “Practice makes perfect.”
But what makes Max so magical isn’t just his talent, it’s his heart.
“It’s not the talent or learning to sew that I’m proud of,” says Sherri. “It’s his golden heart. Everything he does is with the intent of making people happy. His whole goal with these dresses is to make people feel beautiful. He says it all the time.”
And thanks to Max, the world is just a little more beautiful every day.
