At 10 years old, Max Alexander just became the youngest-ever fashion designer to showcase a collection at Paris Fashion Week.
As PEOPLE reports, the fourth-grader and longtime fashion designer — he began sewing and designing when he was 4 years old — debuted the Max Alexander Women’s Ready to Wear Fall/Winter 2026-2027 collection at Paris’ Palais Garnier on March 3. The showcase came just days after Alexander turned 10, making him the youngest designer to have presented a collection at the French capital’s Fashion Week, according to multiple outlets, including CBS LA and Vogue France.
As CBS LA reports, while Max is full of childhood whimsy and a playful personality, he’s all business when it comes to fashion. “My collection consists of 15 dresses and they’re all, well, 90 percent of my show is biodegradable, recyclable, sustainable, made from dead stock and surplus,” Max explained.
“Dead stock is leftover material not used by companies. … It would have been in the landfill unless I rescued it.” Among the recycled looks that Max says took him about a year and a half to complete, were a corseted gown made from a French military parachute and a vintage sari that the designer “redesigned,” according to his Instagram, which is run by his mom, Sherri Madison.
Alexander — who made his New York Fashion Week debut at 8 in 2024 — “was very happy” while watching his designs come to life on the Paris Fashion Week runway, he explains, adding that the entire experience “was a dream!” His newest bag design sold out in just 24 hours, as did the set of charms he recently released. He says that through all of his designs, he focuses on saving environmental sustainability while ensuring that creativity seeps from every seam.
“I am happy I got to show the world my designs,” he adds, “and maybe encourage people to think about reuse and not buying so much fast fashion.” In an Instagram post recapping the experience, Alexander said he is “grateful to those who believed in him from the beginning.”
The designer, who first shot to fame several years ago, told PEOPLE in 2023 that he believes he was Guccio Gucci, founder of the epnonymous fashion house, in a past life. “I actually was,” the then-7-year-old said shortly after nabbing the Guinness World Record for youngest runway fashion designer. At the time, the burgeoning designer had already made more than a hundred designs, sold his work internationally, held his own fashion shows and even commissioned a piece for Sharon Stone.
“He’s just so committed to it, and he has so much fun. It’s truly his happy place, his studio, and even just playing with the material,” Madison told PEOPLE of her son at the time. “For the first year or two, we said, ‘Well, tomorrow he’s going to be a cook.’ But it just stuck.” She continued, “That’s really the unusual part that impresses me, is the commitment for such a very young child, and his true passion to want to make people feel beautiful, which he has told us since he was 4.”
At the time, Madison also revealed that it is not the runway shows or Guinness World Records that make her most proud of her son — “it’s his golden heart,” she said. “Everything he does is with the intent of making people happy. His whole goal with these dresses is to make people feel beautiful, he says it all the time.”
As for what’s next for the designer, Alexander said in an interview with PEOPLE that he is “going to take a little break!” But not for too long. Next, the young artist says he “would like to start working on some new ideas I have and hopefully keep showing around the world.”
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Photo Credit: Anele Nova / Shutterstock.com