On this episode of FashionTalks host Donna Bishop chats with designer Alan Anderson. Alan has been designing his eponymous line since 1997. His fashion history (and British Royals) knowledge is deep and vast. Alan and Donna discuss:

• how he began his line (an inspiration for anyone)
• the history and importance of costume jewelry
• the fascinating story of where he sources the vintage crystals he used in his designs
• his connection to Elizabeth Taylor
• the lost art of every day dressing up
• and more

Alan Anderson - @jewelsbyalan | alananderson.design

Donna Bishop - @thisisdonnab

FashionTalks - @fashiontalkspod

CAFA Awards - @cafawards

TRANSCRIPT:

00:01.27

Donna Bishop

Alan Anderson, it is so wonderful to have you here on Fashion Talks. Thanks for being here.

00:05.81

Alan

Thank you, Donna. Thank you for asking me.

00:08.02

Donna Bishop

And look at you in your beautiful atelier. I know we'll get into, you know, kind of your your work and all sorts of things about crystals and costume jewelry, but I love that you're in your workspace.

00:20.06

Donna Bishop

It's so nice to get peek behind the curtain that way.

00:21.36

Alan

I am. I'm actually in the workroom. The atelier, of course, is in this historic mansion on Jarvis Street in Toronto. And we we like to say it's one of the last Gilded Age mansions.

00:33.61

Alan

There's just this little stretch between Carleton and Isabella where we've they've saved these beautiful Victorian buildings.

00:34.83

Donna Bishop

Thank you.

00:40.33

Alan

So we've been here now. It's weird to say we've been in this space over two years and we just signed the new four-year lease, which is kind of exciting. And we're going to be expanding. We're actually renovating this summer to make the showroom bigger.

00:53.43

Alan

But the workspace is, this would have been one of the principal bedrooms in this beautiful house. This house is This half is 1891. The showroom half is 1897. It was built for Edward Blake, who was one of the first premiers of Ontario.

01:09.10

Alan

And it's Elliot Knox, one of the foremost Victorian architects in Toronto. And 1900, Jarvis Street was the most fashionable address in Canada, which is really funny to think. Like this was the Gilded Age show. This was the Gilded Age.

01:28.93

Alan

And then the history of this building is so intense because not only do I work in this room and I pulled the blinds down cause it's so sunny out. Um, but Ben Wicks, the famous cartoonist, we all grew up with Ben Wicks.

01:42.29

Alan

Be nice, clear your eyes for 20 years.

01:43.65

Donna Bishop

Absolutely.

01:46.21

Alan

This was Ben Wicks cartoon studio and where my work bench is in the window was where his cartoon bench was. And I've actually had people in the neighborhood that are old enough to remember him.

01:58.34

Alan

Say they used to look up and seeing him, seeing him, him drawing it as bench and they see me working. And I think that's so amazing. I will say it's the creative energy in this place. It pulses with amazing energy.

02:11.37

Donna Bishop

Well, and Gilded Age is such a perfect um aura to bring into your work, and we'll get into it. But first, I want to start a little more personal, because I love starting off with this question.

02:16.94

Alan

Absolutely.

02:22.72

Donna Bishop

i believe that all of us who love fashion, especially those of us who work in fashion, we have a moment when we realize that clothing and fashion is something that carries far more power than just protecting our bodies from the elements.

02:37.44

Donna Bishop

And I'm wondering what memory you have of that moment for yourself.

02:41.24

Alan

I can actually pinpoint my love affair with jewelry. And I guess this is that aha moment. So my mother's family, my mother was English, my mother's 97 in a nursing home and she had three sisters and all of her sisters were interesting and eccentric and funny, but my mother's oldest sister, Auntie Marie,

03:05.89

Alan

and you used to, we we, we, as kids, we went and back and forth between England and Canada. And I always say England's my second home, but Auntie Marie was the oldest, very strong, very clothes centric, glamorous into fashion and was lifelong friends with Norman Hartnell that designed all the queen's clothes and Auntie Marie loved jewelry.

03:30.60

Alan

And you know, the old, the old adage about put it on and take something off. Well, Auntie Marie would have added another piece. And as a kid, she used to always, every day of her life, she wore brooches and pearls and rings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

03:47.36

Alan

And she wore 10 carat emerald on her hand that her and uncle Eric bought in Istanbul. And when I was a kid, they'd visit

03:56.73

Donna Bishop

wow

03:59.74

Alan

And she would always pull it off and let me play with this big emerald ring. And I was absolutely amazed by that and all of her other jewelry. And it's so funny because now, you know, as a 58 year old man, still every collection I make emerald.

04:18.95

Alan

And, you know, as you know, green is my favorite color. Emerald green is my favorite color. And I really think. And I think Auntie Marie, because I believe.

04:30.05

Alan

that had she not let me play with her jewelry, I don't think I would have been as turned on and as into it. And this, so there's, that's one story. Then the other story that's very funny, and it's just, it's, I think it's really foreshadowing of how your life is gonna be.

04:47.97

Alan

So when my mother was pregnant with me, um they were living in Montreal. And my mother, you know, like in and the 60s, everybody packed a little suitcase to go to the the hospital.

05:01.08

Alan

And the morning that she discovered that I was on route, um my father was terrible in crises. My father would always panic and meltdown in crises. And instead of picking up her suitcase that was packed to go to the hospital, he grabbed this train case that was on her dressing table and spilled all her costume jewelry.

05:19.03

Alan

across the floor of the bedroom en route to the hospital. And I laughed about that and said, well, if you didn't know that I was going to be into deciding jewelry, cusdy it's that's I love that story.

05:27.56

Donna Bishop

Destiny.

05:31.61

Donna Bishop

what kind of kid were you, Alan? Like, were you someone who, like, were you into fashion as a young person? Do you have that history of poring over fashion magazines, even, you know, as a, as a, like, pre-teenager even?

05:42.84

Alan

Yeah.

05:46.39

Alan

Catalogs, you know, we all grew up in the age of the catalog. which nobody even remembers anymore. The Simpsons catalogs, the Eatons catalogs that were like phone books. And I loved color. I've always loved color. And, you know, I have brown eyes, so I was always dressed in brown. and My late brother had blue eyes, so Andrew was always dressed in blue.

06:07.94

Alan

And I hated brown. and I always wanted color. So when did we got, you know, you get into your teens, my very first job was my paper route. And I remember my mother got so upset because I'd spent the entire summer cutting grass and weeding gardens and my paper route.

06:27.78

Alan

And I went out and I blew my, everything I had on a pair of Valley of Switzerland loafers, which is so funny. They were a huge brand. Valley of Switzerland was like the Rolls Royce of shoes in this going back into the seventies.

06:41.85

Alan

And Eaton's used to have a department called Timothy E. It was a young man's and I bought, a bright turquoise and green shirt.

06:53.12

Donna Bishop

Well, it's no surprise to me how you ended up working at B.B.

06:53.33

Alan

And

06:56.72

Donna Bishop

Bargoons if your love of fat of of color was a driving was a driving force.

07:00.30

Alan

yeah.

07:02.33

Donna Bishop

Was that one of your, it was another early profession, no?

07:02.70

Alan

Yeah.

07:05.78

Donna Bishop

Yeah.

07:05.94

Alan

Yeah. And it was BB Bargoons was one of the most fun, outrageous places to work. um we We still like the carpet that's in the showroom. I just, that I got this year,

07:17.84

Alan

ah My friend Amy works in the carpet industry and she worked at BB Bargoons. And my friend Scott, you met Scott at Christmas, was here. And we've all stayed in touch. We call ourselves Bargooners. And this is, we haven't worked there since 1993.

07:31.01

Alan

But it was ah the most creative environment. Everybody was prized for their creativity. It was social. It was fun. um It was the excess of the 80s and 90s. So when you were opening stores, I opened at least 10 BB Bargoons.

07:48.40

Alan

We had 24 corporate stores. I did all the windows for them. And there was never, you know, somebody saying you can't spend as much on the window. It was always, oh, it's fabulous. Let's do it.

08:01.13

Alan

And that's where I got a taste for textiles and fabrics and color and Passamontri trims. And so it's it's, I guess it's in my DNA.

08:11.15

Donna Bishop

Well, it sounds like even if fashion with a capital F wasn't something you were consciously seeking out, so much of the world that fashion exists in, in terms of color and creativity and texture and layering and possibility was very much a constant.

08:29.57

Alan

It was. And in high school, um i wanted to go to Ryerson, and which it was Ryerson then, ah TMU. I wanted to go to Ryerson and take fashion design.

08:40.96

Alan

And my father, being a very hard-headed Scotsman, was like, literally his words were, there's no bloody way a son of mine's designing bloody dresses. And they said no.

08:52.82

Alan

And if you, when I, like a couple of years ago i had to clean up mom's place before she went into a nursing home and i found things from high school and all through my high school there's sketches of dresses and i was a doodler and it's so funny that you know cyclically so i worked in the late 80s got my real estate license sold real estate for two years joined bb bargoons because i hated real estate worked at bb bargoons It unfortunately suffered in the early 90s and disappeared. And I moved to the Hudson's Bay, Queen Street, where I was there for over 15 years. And I was their senior technician with 26 people in a display department. And I built props and I've done windows and you name it, I've done it.

09:36.32

Alan

And here I am, you know, I started my jewelry business at nights and weekends while I was working at the Bay. I taught myself to build jewelry at my kitchen table and through flukes of how your life at the minute changes, um I got an opportunity to to do my very first trunk show at Holt Renfrew just because friend was wearing a brooch on her coat and the buyers were on the floor.

10:02.43

Alan

The great Pat DiBrato and debor Barbara Atkins were on the floor and they got my phone number from Evelyn and they brought me in and I did a trunk show over the holidays. So I would be working at the Bay all week, building the jewelry at night and weekends, getting it plated and then on the weekends over the holidays, every Saturday and Sunday, I would get dressed up and go up to Holt Renfrew, Blair street with Mary, the jewelry fairy, Mary Morgan, who's legendary. She has flaming red hair and glasses and she ran the jewelry department and I would sell jewelry on weekends. And that's how I started my first retail experiences as a designer. And, uh,

10:43.43

Alan

Then got an opportunity to show at when Robin Kay was doing fashion week down on King street in those tents, those amazing Toronto fashion weeks on King street that were. Unbelievably fabulous and international and what Toronto should have as a fashion week.

10:59.15

Alan

And, uh, I showed jewelry down there for a week and I wasn't able to take any time off to do it. And I took the plunge. My manager at the time, she wouldn't let me have the time off, even though I had the vacation.

11:12.14

Alan

So after 15 years, I quit. I just quit. That's it. And I said, this is an opportunity I can't miss. And I made enough through the experience to pay my rent for three months. And that's how my business started that and and a credit card.

11:27.38

Donna Bishop

I want to go back to the time when you are working your day job and also building your jewelry at night, because this is this is you know this is the moment of just push it forward, just do it.

11:40.23

Donna Bishop

What inspired you to buy the soldering iron and and teach yourself how to build?

11:48.00

Alan

Well, i have i have a ah very dear friend who's a mentor, a best friend. His name is Robert Sorrell. He lives in New York. And Robert Sorrell is sort of legendary in the jewelry world. In the 90s, he was doing all of the runway jewelry for Terry Mugler's Parisian couture shows.

12:06.01

Alan

Those big pagoda headpieces and the sea serpent bracelets and all that 90s excess Mugler that was so fabulous. And I met Robert through a fluke at a fundraiser.

12:18.00

Alan

I was sat next to him at a fundraiser in Buffalo. It was an AIDS fundraiser that we'd gone down for. And we started talking and I was going to be in New York the next month just for a trip.

12:32.10

Alan

And he said, you come to New York, you know, come over and see what I do. And he was very kind. I said, I'd love to. So I went to New York the next month and Robert took me to a wholesaler.

12:43.41

Alan

And he was going that day to pick up some stones he needed. And he said oh, you might find this interesting. So I went with him and I walked into this warehouse in the middle of Manhattan and an old office building packed with boxes of Chris to the point you heard them crunch underfoot as you walk beads and crystals. It was, and i was just gobsmacked and mesmerized by what was there.

13:09.72

Alan

And so at the time, It's so funny. You think this is going back and this is 1996. bought, I think there was like $1,300 room on my visa card and I maxed out my visa card and I bought a huge box that he had to set ship back to me with like UPS.

13:29.64

Alan

And I came and he also very kindly at his apartment showed me the soldering wand and the torch he used. And he literally said, well, this is how you do this and this and this and this. And I'm like a sponge. And he said, go home and play and have fun. So I came back to Toronto.

13:44.97

Donna Bishop

And what inspired, like you'd never built jewelry before. Like, was it just sort of a feeling that you had?

13:48.44

Alan

No.

13:50.18

Donna Bishop

Like, what were you thinking?

13:50.84

Alan

It's like, oh, I think I want to do that. I was like, I just think I want to do this. You know, um I always laugh. I'm the sort of person like in the in the early 90s, I needed a new couch. And instead of buying a new couch, I took my old couch apart.

14:05.33

Alan

used it as a pattern, bought the fabric from BB Bargoons and reupholstered it in the opposite. And it looked like it was professionally done. And I guess I have one of those brains that I can pick something up and think, how is this, you know, it's, it yeah, Donna, I don't know.

14:21.98

Alan

You know, it's, it's one of those weird things. So,

14:25.21

Donna Bishop

But you must have had a sense that it was possible, right? Like there was something, there was a little inner voice that was saying, you could do this.

14:28.53

Alan

well, it was possible.

14:32.94

Alan

Yeah. And the other thing is, and I think this is the freedom with what I do is I've never had anybody in a class say to me, you can't do that.

14:45.06

Alan

Nobody's ever given me a parameter to say, you can't do that. You can't do it this way. I've always had to figure out when you're building in 3d and three dimension, you have to figure out how does it move? How does it act? How does it feel? How does it sit?

14:59.35

Alan

You've worn my jewelry. You know how it sits and feels and it's flexible and it's fluid. So because I've never had anybody tell me no, I'm just it is.

15:09.66

Donna Bishop

which is very blessed.

15:11.69

Alan

So I've just played and experimented and learned and perfected my craft. and you know, there is that what's it called? It's um the 10,000 hour rule.

15:23.31

Donna Bishop

Mm-hmm.

15:23.49

Alan

That if you do something for 10,000 hours, you master that, whatever skill it is, if it's writing or whatever it is, baking. Well, I started doing this in 1997 was 1997 actually would be. And, uh, so when you think from 1997 till here we are 2025, probably done the 10,000 about seven, eight times working, you know, six, seven days a week, sometimes 12 hour days.

15:45.13

Alan

i've probably done the ten thousand hours about seven eight times working you know six seven days a week sometimes twelve hour days And you will learn, you learn.

15:54.34

Donna Bishop

what when did you When did you decide it was going to be a business?

15:56.08

Alan

i

15:58.78

Donna Bishop

Because I can hear the creative maker side of you like firing on all...