Glamour boy

Busybody Patrick Pépin wants to give men nothing but the best

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

Citing such influences as Dolce & Gabbana and the boats of Portofino, Italy (his spring 2003 collection was a lushly masculine take on Euro-yachting), Patrick Pépin is doing his best to glamourize men. “I aspire to make clothes with the most beautiful fabrics in the world, sewn by the most talented people possible,” Pépin proclaims. His fall 2002 collection was a suave and very blue twist on aviation and mechanics, with tailored takes on one-piece flight suits and the like. But unlike the chic and idle image portrayed by Pépin’s man-of-leisure designs, the man himself spends most of his time working his ass off, juggling contracts outside his main gig as assistant designer to well-known Québécoise designer Marie Saint-Pierre.

“I don’t really have a normal life, but that’s part of the game I’m playing,” says Pépin, who devotes four days a week to Saint-Pierre and three to his own collection. Perhaps all this go-getting can be traced back to Pépin’s self-starter beginnings as an aspiring teen designer in the town of Sherbrooke.

When he was 14, Pépin imagined a pair of pants he simply couldn’t find in any local shops. His solution? To whip up a pair himself. Pretty soon, friends began making orders and eventually some stores were stocking the teenage Pépin’s creations. Then came the leap into ever-popular Montreal fashion academy LaSalle College, followed by an internship at Louis Feraud in Paris before coming back to Mount Real to enlist with Saint-Pierre, where he’s been for 10 years. It was just one year ago that Pépin took the plunge into menswear.

In the fast lane
“I wanted to do menswear because for so many years I’ve been working in womenswear, that I wanted to be able to try on the clothing, to know whether I would wear something without having to ask if something is comfortable and wearable. I know right away,” he explains. This immediacy came in handy recently when he was asked to conceive of, design and produce an entire collection in just four weeks for Montreal Fashion Week. “I would put on my Ferrari baseball cap because it felt like I was driving in the Formula 1,” says Pépin. The result of this wild ride was a critically lauded show broadcast live on MusiquePlus, which Pépin presented alongside Duy.

His first collection saw the light of day exactly one year before, with Yso. “On September 5, 2001, I did a show with Yso, a local Asian designer with a three-letter, one-word name,” Pépin explains. But this strange connection is not the only reason Pépin wound up showing his collections with these two characters—all three share a certain flair for fashion-forward design.
As for the immediate future, a solo fashion show is in the works for January 2003, and in the long run, Pépin dreams of one day having his own boutique—but for now, he’s content to take it one step at a time. “Of course you have to have goals,” he muses, “but always appreciate what you have right now.”

Patrick Pépin’s fall 2002 collection is available at EBO (356 St-Paul W., 830-8125)

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