For Inspiration, This Designer Goes to the Mattress

Miguel Adrover, who has become the fashion world’s most buzzed-about designer since who knows when, is eager to see L.A. The real L.A., not this glitzy Sunset Strip/Hollywood Make-Believe/Hipster Scene at the Chateau Marmont where he has been camping out the last few days.

Adrover, 34, the son of a Spanish almond tree farmer, is in town for the first time, preparing for a trunk show and hot off the success of the Spring 2001 collection he showed two weeks ago in New York--probably Fashion Week’s most forward-thinking line that included the reinterpretation of American design genres: western, nautical, military and hip-hop. Not one sequin, not one feather, not one bead was paraded on the catwalk--a glam look that Adrover gladly passes on. Instead, daring--and beautifully tailored--design, inventiveness and wit came down the runway in his third collection, which was influenced by what Adrover sees on the streets of New York. Which is why he can’t wait to pound the L.A. pavement.

“I want to see the gangs, the Mexican gangs. I want to go there, where they hang out, but I’ve been told that it’s very dangerous.” No matter . . . “I still want to go because I look around here and everything is so clean and so nice and I say, ‘What is this?’ It looks fake to me. There has to be another L.A. with other kinds of people,” says Adrover, in a homeboy look of his own: his long, dark hair tightly pulled back in a ponytail, his navy blue check shirt unbuttoned over a tank top and pushed-up-to-the-knees sweatpants, the elastic waistband of Ralph Lauren briefs peeking out and sockless Nikes. He smokes and sips bottled soda as he talks about his show last Wednesday at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and how he wants to explore gangland--uptown and downtown looks he often blends into his collections.

“I’m kind of tired, you know, of seeing all these glamour gowns and dresses with sequins. Not everybody is connected to that, not everybody dresses like that,” he says.

Adrover thrives on taking risks, giving his craft a conscience, if you will, especially on the runway, where he expresses his views on society “because I want to take fashion to the level that will make people think that nobody is more or less than anyone else.” Indeed, his clothes don’t just make fashion statements, they make political ones. And, rarest of all, they make you feel.

His first collection told the tale of a woman who makes her way through a revolutionary war and ends up in New York’s East Village wearing a miniskirt salvaged from Louis Vuitton luggage. His next included a much talked-about coat crafted out of a stained mattress because he wanted to make a statement about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s campaign to get the homeless off the streets. Adrover, cash-poor at the time, didn’t have the money to buy the mattress ticking. But when he saw an abandoned mattress on the street, he dragged it into his basement, removed the ticking and washed it by hand, careful to keep some of the dirt on it, and created a chic town coat.

Of course, when it was learned that the mattress belonged to Adrover’s neighbor, writer Quentin Crisp, who died last year, the coat took on another dimension--evoking feelings from sadness to “I’ve gotta have that coat.”

Next year’s spring line includes a stunning backward dress made of four deconstructed military shirts he bought at a secondhand Army-Navy store. The shirts were worn by soldiers in the fields of Vietnam. Adrover hand-stitched the dress, which took him a month and a week to finish. He covered it with clear shoeshine wax to make it look “sweaty, like a soldier in the jungle.” Like the mattress coat and Vuitton miniskirt, the Vietnam dress won’t be for sale because “it was about sending a message on the runway.”

Adrover says it’s difficult for him to imagine that just last year at this time he was eight months behind in his rent, pleading with his landlord, “Hold on, hold on, because it’s gonna happen for me.” When he had money, he couldn’t decide whether to spend it on fabric or food. Fabric, of course, usually won out.

He credits his parents, Maria and Miguel, for supporting his passion. And for teaching him to always remain honest to himself and humble--especially now, as his star rises.

Just five months ago, Adrover, a former janitor who swept and mopped floors for $6 an hour, joined the New York-based Pegasus Apparel Group, one of several companies, including Paris fashion houses, hot for the designer barely 48 hours after his fall show. Pegasus bankrolled his current fall 2000 collection of polished looks such as delicate blouses, tie-dyed deconstructed halters, high-necked bias-cut dresses and immaculately tailored suits. All were manufactured in Italy with expensive fabrics, a big change from his makeshift factory in a windowless basement apartment in the East Village. There, friends helped him stitch together samples mostly made from donated fabrics and garments from thrift stores he would tenaciously take apart and refashion, then hang over his bed on a clothesline.

Adrover never went to fashion school or college. At 12, he dropped out of seventh grade to join his brother, Tony, three years older, picking almonds and tending to the cows on his parents’ farm on the island of Majorca. “I needed to help my family,” he says. Besides, he says, “meeting people and seeing the world has been my education.”

He recalls how, as a teenager, he liked clothes “even though in my village there was no fashion at all,” and he had but a few garments that he’d wear inside-out or layer, unknowingly experimenting with style--and on a farm, no less. He and his best friend, Caty Adrover (no relation), who is one of the muses for his collections, liked punk music. “In the village we had a lot of problems with the way we looked,” he says, referring to a mohawk he sported back then.

He left Spain nine years ago after compulsory military service. While on a vacation to New York with Caty, he vowed to return and make a life there because of the freedom of expression and, as he puts it, because “the street belongs to the people.” A year later he took an apartment in Queens. He landed odd jobs, cleaning the floors of two 12-story buildings. Later, he and another friend operated a boutique called Horn that catered to new designers who sold their garments on consignment. The shop closed last year because there was no money to keep it afloat.

He threw his attention on his fall line, and with the help of friends such as Mae Zou, who worked full time at a factory from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then worked for free for Adrover after work, the line was completed and shown to rave reviews. When Adrover joined Pegasus, he gave Zou 5% of his company.

Now, he is learning about the business side of fashion “because I am in this to make money,” he says, adding that a tailored suit will retail from $1,500 upward.

And there’s the rub, for the once-fledgling designer who these days flies first class has moved above the basement and has a 6,000-square-foot studio to work in and 19 staffers to help, including Zou. Nowadays he can buy fabric--and food.

“It would be really easy to lose contact with society right now because I have much more money than before,” Adrover says. If he wanted, he could just sit in his comfy studio and design, never venturing out into the streets where his creative juices percolate, where freedom of expression begins. But that ain’t gonna happen, he says. “Without the streets, without freedom, I cannot do anything.”

Michael Quintanilla is at michael.quintanilla@latimes.com.