FRENCH, Evelyn H.

[evi french]

EVELYN HELENA FRENCH Evelyn Helena French (born 03/17/1991) is an American fashion designer and socialite best known for her line 'Evi' and her provocative classic hollywood fashion shows. Appearing first as a newcomer when she was nineteen, she rapidly grew in popularity in 2011 when she received a 'New Designer of the Year' award. There are currently two locations for her boutique - Hollywood and New York City. She is related to the model Athena Oliveras as well as the Promotor, Jackson Booth. Evelyn is currently preparing to release her Spring/Summer '13 line.

- "Evi French at the Vanity Fair After Party: Hit or Miss" (Extra)"

- "@WendyPan: Ahhhhhhh I got @evibydesign to design my wedding dress!! #Best wedding dresses #I wonder if she does lingerie."

- "Evi spring/summer 2013"

your signature: Blonde.
your coffee order: Caramel Frappe.
your go-to magazine: Harpers Bazaar.
your favorite brand: My own.
your ultimate goal: To become a household name.

I absolutely don't understand: Monkies.
I've always looked up to: Rita Hayworth.
I'm most likely to feud with: My assistant.
I'm starting to pay attention to: My unhealthy shoe collection.
I've always wanted to hook up with: Adam Levine.
I wonder what it's like to be: Miley Cyrus. She's got one hot fiancé.

"I honestly was inspired down this path by my aunt, Elsie. I can't really say whether it's a good route to go in life or not. It's been hard and I've had to fight tooth and nail to get where I am. I went to design school for awhile to try and get some "professional" edge to my work, but the only thing I discovered there is that most people who want this life will never achieve it. If you naturally have the edge for this field, you don't need to go to school because you can't learn talent, you can't learn how to be creative. It's something that just comes to you. I think people forget how hard this industry is to get into and they develop unrealistic goals. Besides, even if you do manage to break into the fashion world, it's really hard to stay in it. Every move you make, every design you put out there - it could be the last thing that destroys your career and you might not ever recover from one failure."

what, if anything, keeps you grounded?

Food. Honestly, just food.

would you rather relive your best moment or redo your worst mistake?

Neither? I mean I think mistakes are what make you who you are and what if you change that one day you went outside wearing mismatched shoes and then your entire future is altered? Not that I've ever done that, but the point is, you never know what changing the past might do so even hypothetically, I don't think I would want to. As for the best moments.. I think those are best left in your memories. I think reliving it would only remind me something i don't have. Or something like that. Hell if I know.

where's your escape from the city?

Martha's Vineyard. It's so beautiful that I can't resist. I love the East Coast, everything about it is so much nicer that the business of the city and this blasted weather in California.

what are you like when you're out of the spotlight?

Pretty much the same as I am when I'm in the spotlight, I guess? I mean I try to be pretty professional and mind my manners, but God sometimes people are really annoying, you know? If you ask me who my favorite designer is, obviously I'm going to say me. If you ask me who my favorite celebrity is, I'm obviously going to say Jennifer Lawrence. These are just facts of life. I also stress eat. A lot. I sit in my office and stare at a blank piece of paper and eat blocks of cheese with crackers. It's not really healthy, but I can't help it. Whereas in the public eye, I think I'm a bit more classy than shoveling food into my mouth. I nibble like the dainty lady I'm supposed to be. I think that's about it. I'm really the same person.

how do you think your team would describe working with you?

Painful. I guess. My assistant gets really stressy and hates when I'm running behind. I guess that's what she's supposed to do, but she gets really OCD about everything. She really loves to check up on me every ten minutes. Whereas once the deadline hits home and I really start getting myself in gear, I can ride my employees like horses so they're not always too pleased.

were there any deciding moments in your career?

Not really. Things have been bumpy, but no more than anyone else's career. I'm still really early on in this though. I've barely touched the limelight so I can't really say I've had any major moments that made a difference.

any inside details on your latest project?

Nope, my current project won't hit until the summer, but I promise you it's going to be big. My team has been working with me to make this work for almost a year. It's going to be awesome.

father: Martin Gray.
step-father: Jackson Booth
mother: Cora Booth.
siblings: James Booth, half-brother.
other: Elsie French-Oliveras, aunt; Beau Oliveras, uncle; Athena Oliveras, cousin; Sebastian Oliveras, cousin.



"My history is fairly straightforward. I was born in California, lived here until I was about four years and then my mother moved us out to the east coast when she decided to get married. Apparently my mother went to college on the east coast, pretty much settled her life out there and only came back to California for a guy. My father, to be exact. She was dating him for awhile, planned on getting married, but things didn't work out. My mom ended up getting pregnant and he went the usual deadbeat dad route and bailed on their entire relationship. He came around since them. He's been a decent father. Sending birthday presents and visiting during the holidays - it was just too late to really do anything regarding his failed relationship. My mother had gotten married a couple years before he came around to a really good guy. He's some promotional representative for some resorts and things. I'm not entirely sure I know what he does, but he comes from money and somehow him and my mom met when I was a baby.

So I was three years old when they finally got married. The year before they decided to move to the east coast. They decided to have a big fancy wedding during the spring in Rhode Island. Apparently it's really pretty there and they decided 'hey, let's move to New England forever.' I'm pretty sure they only got married because my mother got pregnant, though. They were both from well-known families and they can't convince me that she got pregnant and they decided to get married in the same month or two. No matter, he's a good guy and they had a son a couple of months after they got married. About six months after James was born, we moved to Massachusetts. A city just outside the border of New York. That what Jackson was able to drive across the border for work since a lot of his jobs came from New York City and some of the bigger cities there.

I went to private schools my entire childhood. I didn't really know my cousins - my mother's sister or her kids - all that well until I moved to California on my own and met up with them again. I knew of them and I saw them from time to time when they were in New York or my mom and Elsie had one of their random bouts of attempting to get along - something that was very seldom a good idea. My mother was too judgmental of her lifestyle choices. My mom wanted to lead the life of your stereotypical step-ford wife with kids that got perfect grades at their perfect school. She wanted to be as normal as one could be, whereas Elsie was leading a typical socialite life. They just conflicted bit.

Other than that, my family was pretty normal. No really huge dramatic issues, nothing really severe going on. I went to high school, got decent grades, played tennis for a couple years until I got bored, that was about it. My high school years were pretty uneventful, really. I took part in a few clubs, but I always ended up forgetting about them and forgetting to go to club meetings after a few months. Nothing really took my interest. I tried to be part of student government but the junior year I got elected vice president, I really, really hated it. I had to be at all the school events and spend most of my days after school at meetings and running around organizing things for my class. It was pretty tiresome and since it wasn't something I was terribly interested in, I dropped out. That was sort of my entire high school life in a nutshell - I got bored and quit almost everything. Much to my parents dismay.

My romantic life was fairly fleeting. I had a couple boyfriends, but I got really tired of the whole relationship thing really quickly. I just wanted to be able to relax, have fun, and get out of that high school. I was tired of being coddled by my mother and surrounded by the same old upper class kids that came from the same neighborhood as me and went to school with me my entire life. It was just so... boring. For lack of a better word. Even the people I was friends with grew annoying to me. I didn't not want to be friends with them, but we were growing apart after so many years of being friends. The older we got, the less we had in common. We were all discovering where we wanted to go in life - or trying - and I think it was in very different directions.

After high school I ended up moving to New York to go to fashion design school. I was majoring in interior decorating because that was something I really enjoyed. Every time the seasons changed, my mother felt the need to redecorate the house. Not the big things. We didn't go buy new couches or beds or anything, but we completely revamped the layout of every room, the color scheme, all of that. It was probably one of the only things me and my mother really bonded over. We lived in a large house so it would take about two weeks for us to totally change it over for the season. After almost ten years of doing this - I decided this was something I wanted to do professionally. If I was good at it, why not?

After a couple months, I got tired of going to school. I started getting frustrated with the things they said and the way they talked about getting into the design industry as a whole. I decided to set out on my own after the first semester ended. I got a job with the New York Ballet company helping with general design work. I helped sew costumes, fit the actors, ballerinas - whatever you want to call them - and then I helped with the sets. I was never all too good with painting or things of that nature, but I could help design the set and make or find props. I was a bit of a jack of all trades. If someone was sick that day, I was supposed to be able to fill in. I fetched them coffee and went to pick up material for costumes and run errands. I got really tired of being at the bottom of the chain really quickly. I was everyone's assistance, but since I was talented at design work, I was doing stuff that I should have been paid a lot more for. It was tiring.

So I was twenty when I finally quit working for them and I had no idea what to do with my life. I'd really been trying to figure things out for myself. I got a job as an assistant to some no name designer that designed accessories and sold them from her little boutique. That was sort of where I figured out where I wanted to go with my life. Not designing accessories, of course, because I thought that was incredibly boring, but I wanted to start my own line that correlated directly with who I am. I'm someone that struggles to stick with one project for long, but I know my strengths as a designer. Which meant I was going to slowly build up a company around that would cater to the fact that I got bored with so many things so quickly.

Which meant I started running around New York pitching ideas to various companies to try and get a backer to open up a small boutique. I eventually caved and asked my step-father to help me out. Again, much to my mother's dismay since this was an industry that my mother did not want me involved in, he agreed to fronting the money to help me out. I opened a place and design around the 'Evi' name. I guess it sounds a bit narcissistic, but my name is fairly unique so I figured it was simple enough to help people remember my name. Silly, but plenty of designers do it, right? In this, I sorta tossed the interior design thing out the window, but it's still a passion of mine, it's just not what I'm basing my career off. At least not right now.

The company sort of dabbles in a few different things. Clothing and accessories right now. Eventually I would love to expand into make-up and maybe even perfumes and menswear someday, but right now we have a lot to handle as it is. It's hard enough juggling the couple of things we currently have going, but it gives me the opportunity to bounce around in different fields and explore different things. I'm just too flighty with one project to ever stick with one and make a company actually work.

I've collaborated with a friend of mine from New York who went to design school and helps me out. The main focus of the company is fashion in general. We design clothing for all occasions, based on season - of course. My friend enjoys the fancier side of things so she does prom dresses when that time of the year comes. She does a lot of the really elaborate pieces. We don't really do wedding dresses - though I suppose we would if we got a client who wanted one - but it's her dream to eventually lead up designing wedding gowns. Special events things. I do most of the every day wear. Swimwear, every day clothing, things like that.

Now that the company has been up and running for almost two years and it has been successful in New York, I was able to put a down payment on a shop in the Rodeo Drive area. Sort of my dream location for a fashion-oriented business. I know it's cliche, beyond cliche, even, but it was a dream for the last... well, since I decided I wanted to try to get into this field. Whatever. Anyway, I got this location, it's a two story building. The top floor has a large space with tables and supplies and things like that - things to actually work out outfits. Designs that I'm working on, designs that are just in the beginning stages. It's just a general work area. It's also where we bring clients that are requesting custom pieces so they can help with the design process. It's also got two offices so I can sit and work in peace. I have another assistant designer who works and helps me out here so it gives us each some privacy. Down stairs is the actual show room, a couple fitting rooms, and a back room with extra supplies

The shop is officially open after nearly a year of fighting to get the place all set up. We're currently transitioning from winter to spring, which is always fun because I love spring clothing. I loved designing it, I loved the stuff my team designed. It should be a fun upcoming season. I even have some custom pieces that are a work in progress."

alias: rae
age: twenty-one.
play-by: hannah davis.
spotlight group: 15 minutes of fame
city: LA.
currently playing: ... the simpsons.

[administrator]