Golden touch

>> Designer Clayton Evans turns
the ordinary into the complex

MAN OF THE CLOTH: Evans

by SACHA JACKSON

Designer Clayton Evans never had any formal training. “My grandmother used to make clothes for me. She would spread out newspaper on the table, throw whatever piece of clothing I wanted on top and trace it,” Evans explains. “It seemed so easy, seeing it done that way.”

To see Evans’s label, complexgeometries, you wouldn’t expect him to be self-taught. The line, which incorporates pieces for both men and women, is simple and clean with nuanced detailing—a hoodie, with only the hood, a t-shirt with an attached silk scarf—it’s these variations on classic pieces, their uncluttered elegance, that sets his work apart.

Growing up in northern Alberta Evans didn’t dream of becoming a designer. “I never wanted to be a part of the fashion industry, or what I thought was the industry,” he explains. It wasn’t until a stint at art school (“I didn’t last very long,” he laughs) that he realized he was interested in making clothes. “It was the one thing I enjoyed. It wasn’t just about the finished product it was about the process. Being able to get inside the garment, figuring it out and seeing it through to the end.”

Evans started seriously pursuing design while living in South Korea. He bought himself an industrial sewing machine and again began exploring the mechanics of clothing. “I came back to Montreal with the intention of starting a line,” he says. “My skills still weren’t that good but I became part of the Arterie co-op, which gave me the opportunity to make what I wanted and sell what I wanted, at my own pace.”

Three years later, he’s got a full-time design assistant, a part-time seamstress and a line that is distributed across North America and Japan.

This past autumn, he visited Paris for the first time and showed his spring/summer ’08 collection during fashion week as part of a group show organized by international design collective Surface to Air. “Paris was amazing. It was fucking awesome,” he says with a flash of excitement, but it wasn’t what he was expecting. “I didn’t think I would like it as a city because everyone says, ‘It’s so snotty.’ But if you love clothes, there’s no other place in the world to be.”

It also provided him with the opportunity to meet many of the designers he’s followed for years, and of course, there were the buyers. Evans walked away securing distribution in both Copenhagen and London for the upcoming season. Which means he’ll be busy for just about as long as you can imagine.