As a 7-year-old boy growing up in Detroit, Kevan Hall dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.
“I loved designing costumes and drawing pretty girls,” he says by phone from his Los Angeles atelier.
These days he creates glamorous gowns – billows of taffeta, sheaths of charmeuse – for A-list celebrities like Felicity Huffman, Drew Barrymore and Virginia Madsen.
A soft-spoken man whose mellow style centers around trademark dreadlocks, blazer and jeans, Hall has designed wardrobes for movies like “Gridlock’d,” with Tupac Shakur, and he’s worked as creative director for Halston, rejuvenating its brand.
“His silhouettes are so flattering for a woman’s body, no matter what the shape or size,” says Kyle Acciavatti, buyer for Andrisen Morton Women’s in Cherry Creek, which will host a Kevan Hall trunk show. “You don’t have to be super-tiny, and he uses fabrics in a way that no one else is using.”
Hall will also be keynote speaker during his Denver visit at Career Day 2006, sponsored by The Fashion Group International. His advice is based on decades of experience.
Following his youthful passion, Hall studied fashion design at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, where he won first place as “Designer of Tomorrow,” which earned him a scholarship at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.
After graduating, he worked for many different fashion companies. “It’s important for a young designer to find a mentor or get into a company to learn all the aspects, even picking up pins or getting coffee, to find yourself entrenched in the industry,” he says.
In the early ’80s, he and his wife, Deborah, started the Kevan Hall Collection, selling to stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.
By 1998, he’d been hired as creative director of Halston, where his gowns were worn by such celebrities as Angela Bassett, Salma Hayek, Sharon Stone and Celine Dion.
“I felt akin to the aesthetic he had, so it was very fluid for me,” Hall says of Halston, who died in 1990 after designing minimalist, glamorous clothes for the likes of Liza Minnelli and Bianca Jagger.
The challenges of working for a famous fashion designer differ from those of creating your own line. Hall, for example, lacks the mega-million-dollar marketing and advertising budget of major fashion houses, which reportedly pay A-list women more than an ordinary woman’s annual income to wear their designs to Hollywood events.
But Hall developed a savvy strategy that allows him to get the celebrity connection for free.
“We like to spot the girls on the way up,” he says. “We’re really looking for those who are conscious of pop culture, who have great screen presence, and might have a breakout role. We reach out to their publicist or agent, to see if we can start to form a relationship early on.”
The process of selection by an A-list actress is as intricate, say, as the shirring on his celadon-green matte jersey bustier gown.
“The Internet has made everyone a fashionista,” he says. “So they all go online and they’re all looking, and often call to (request) a dress they’ve seen online for consideration for a big event.”
That’s just the start. Lots of dresses arrive from lots of designers.
“They have a rack of dresses, they’re surrounded by their people, and they do a fitting,” Hall says. “Everyone’s trying to decide what is the best look for that actress and that event.
“The right dress at the right moment can change the career of an actress, or a designer. The smart ones know these photos will be seen around the world forever, and they think how that appearance in that particular look will influence their career.”
This, then, influences pop culture through the trickle-down theory of fashion. If Felicity Huffman looks stunning clutching her Emmy award, wearing Kevan Hall’s rouge-red silk gown shimmering with Swarovski crystals, then it’s good enough for the rest of us.
Staff writer Colleen O’Connor can be reached at 303-954-1083 or at coconnor@denverpost.com.
