Designer, 25, Is ‘Still a Big Kid,’ but the Kid Produces

Estevan Ramos hunches over a booth in Gorky’s downtown, wearing the brooding expression of a Brando and the tight T-shirt too.

He may look the image of arty L.A.--but Ramos has more than a pose.

One year out of L.A.’s Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), Ramos, 25, is sole designer for L.A.-based Steel Sportswear, which expects to gross $3 million for 1987, its second year in business.

In September, he’ll be a featured “rising star”--the only one from L.A.--at the annual Hispanic Designers Fashion Show and Benefit, in Washington and Los Angeles--sharing the runway with such names as Adolfo, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera.

A Paris-based journalist, Hebe Dorsey of the International Herald Tribune, wants to introduce him to her friends in the French couture.

To all this, Ramos shrugs.

“I guess I don’t understand what I am yet,” says Ramos, who lives with his parents in Echo Park. “I’m still a big kid.”

But the kid produces.

At Steel, he’s invented diverse collections, including “urban cowgirl,” Chiquita dresses and “frilly Spanish-dancer” styles.

Pin-Up Girl

“In ’88 I’m going more toward the ‘50s pin-up girl look: Ann-Margret, Gina Lollobrigida--in gingham,” he says.

Ramos says he can concoct entire collections in a day. But he also knows when to stop. For example, he relegated one idea for a “lumberjack goes to Paris” collection, in plaid corduroy, to his sketch pad.

“Ramos is actually too forward,” says Danny Lee, the president of Steel Sportswear who hired the FIDM student 18 months ago. He liked Ramos because “he wasn’t a typical designer. He’s flexible with ideas,” Lee says.

“I’ve got a feeling in the next 10 years, he’ll go on to very big things. He’ll be like a Claude Montana,” Lee says.

Montana, as well as couturiers Christian Lacroix and Karl Lagerfeld, attract Ramos because “you can tell they’re enjoying their jobs,” he says. “They bring out all their eccentric ideas, and make them sellable.”

Eccentric also describes Ramos. As a child, his idea of fun was to take a pen to the comic strips. “I’d give Blondie dark hair and makeup.”

At FIDM, he’d pass hundreds of hours reading and sketching in the library.

“He came in one day, sat down and started to live with us,” recalls Kaycee Hale, executive driector of the FIDM resource center. “We used to wonder if he went to class.”

Most Creative

Judged most creative designer in his advanced-study program at FIDM, Ramos sees fashion as a medium for humor. When asked to design a friend’s wedding gown, he offered to make it in leather. Request withdrawn.

“I could never do evening dresses,” he says pensively, “I’m not a debutante designer.”

Ramos wants to continue designing for teen-agers and college students, because they’re so mercurial, he says. “They want something new every month.” He makes rounds at nightclubs for ideas--usually in T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots--but Ramos thinks he’s more influenced by just living in Los Angeles than by the clothes he sees here.

“The only thing that influences me is being streetwise. My design philosophy? I want to be with the masses. I understand the street--people in general. You have to understand people to be a designer.”

For all the street talk, Ramos courts the wholesome life. He drives his mom to work each morning. He lifts weights at night. On Saturday, he goes to Mass.

It’s a comfortrable pattern--but it can’t hold forever.

“I’ve lived a somewhat simple life,” he says. “I don’t know what to expect yet.”