The star spangled suit that Kid Rock wore for an Oval Office visit with President Donald Trump has soared on social media but its designer Manuel Cuevas is much more under-the radar.
At 92, yes 92, the designer still works 12 to 14 hours seven days a week from his studio outside of Nashville. Where does all that energy come from? “I have no idea,” Cuevas said Wednesday. “I just love what I do. I don’t become a tyrant or a giant or Superman. I just say, ‘Well, thank God I got through this. I’m happy if people are happy.”
While making a house call to Kid Rock to alter some clothes, due to weight loss, the musician asked Cuevas to make two suits. For the White House visit, he requested the “250” insignia as a nod to the upcoming 250-year anniversary of American independence. All of other creative license was left to Cuevas, who only had a few weeks to make the custom look. Having recently been shown some of the media coverage of Kid Rock wearing the $20,000 suit with Trump, Cuevas said, “People make a big thing about this stuff. I go and hide and go work for my next client. In fact, I’ve had a lot of clients, since I started this business.”
That’s an understatement. Known as the “Rhinestone Rembrandt,” his client list has included Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, John Lennon, Marlon Brando, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Harris, George H. Bush and his son George W., Bob Dylan and Post Malone among others. “People love it, because it’s not just the only jacket like it in New York, but in America or Mexico. It’s the only one in the world. It’s also because their wishes are identified with it,” he said. “It’s like a precious jewel.”
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“The thousands and thousands” of suits that he has made are all one-of-a-kind, and the majority require intricate embroidery. While making a custom coat might take two and a half days, the handwork could take a month or longer, due to the complexity of the pieces. How did he learn to do such complicated work? “Well, just be being a stubborn [laughs] and being contrary to what everybody is doing in the industry. I am not a fashionista. I’m a stylist. It’s a very different hat,” Cuevas said.
As unlikely as it sounds, Cuevas started sewing at the age of seven in Mexico. While watching his brother sew a pair of pants, Manuel asked how the tailoring business was going and was told it would be better if he would help. “So I did, and I haven’t gotten away from the sewing machine yet,” Cuevas said.
In his homeland of Mexico, he started working professionally at 12 and relocated to Hollywood eight years later to “prepare people for movies and how to style people,” he said. During that time, he worked with the famed costume designer Edith Head and many other notables. “A lot of people sometimes have the tendency to think that nothing exciting happens in Mexico, I had fantastic clients in Mexico,” Cuevas said. “Through a few jobs, I go to the top point of working with the stars. Edith Head explained to me one time, ‘Work for the stars. Don’t make things for those dummies that get killed in the first 10 minutes of the movie.’ That’s just the funny way that she was. Apart from having the language of a truck driver, she was nice. She was my kind of person. I loved her and she loved me. That’s how you develop friendships.”
Once Taylor called Cuevas crying, because her Oscar night designer of choice had made the same dress for another actress. “I told her, ‘Don’t be that way. Just come over I will wait for you at the shop. Then she found two things that were more or less in her size,” he said.
His idea is to create a vision of a person – singers, dancers or whatever. That includes former American and Mexican presidents, Grammy-winning musicians, Oscar-winning actors and others. Earning “lots of money each year – sometimes more than God,” the designer said the work can be very intense, but he gets to bring his style, learn about clients’ hang-ups and gets to be very close with them. “I show up with a garment and they love it. I consider myself very lucky,” he said. Although he designed what Lady Gaga wore to dive from a helicopter during her 2017 Super Bowl LI halftime performance, he declined additional requests. “She said, ‘Can you make this and that?’ I said, ‘No, honey, that’s your design. You can have somebody else do that.’”
Cuevas praised designers like Carolina Herrera, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana’s Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, and the late designers Oscar de la Renta and Paco Rabanne. “I love all of them. But I shouldn’t mention any of them, because I will forget some,” Cuevas said.
Always working, he has little interest in sports. “I certainly do not golf,” he said. “Although I played soccer for years and years and I wasn’t that bad at all, that wasn’t my thing. My thing was clothing and that’s what I have been doing all this time.”
Intent on “just doing a good job and enjoying his pieces,” Cuevas said he is sometimes surprised by how much time has passed, when he sees his designs in international museums. “Maybe that’s part of my vanity. You never know. I don’t want to brag about anything. I’m kind of humble.”
He added, “I feel like I’m altogether. I’m living in a world, where you can get rid of a headache with packs of money, with medicine and people’s sapience. But money doesn’t take you anywhere. I always hated it kind of. But it’s also beautiful. You get whatever [with it.] I get ice cream, when I want [laughs.] But I’m not a car guy. I’m not too fancy about anything.”
