Shortly into Daniel Esquivel’s first year at Austin’s Crockett High School, he dropped out. The future fashion designer couldn’t take the bullying for being Hispanic and gay. Yet he made the most of it.
“I came home so happy,” Esquivel, 49, says. “That day I was on the sewing machine. I was 14 or 15. I sewed all day long.”
Esquivel won the season’s first challenge and several more after that. He ran into trouble with the “duct-tape challenge,” but he seems headed for Fashion Week.
Back in Austin after the taping, Esquival turns heads. Fans recognize him partly because of his Salvador Dali mustache but also because of his quirky sartorial style. The day we met at a South Austin coffee shop he wore a sweater from Target dyed canary yellow, black-and-white polka dot piqué pants and shiny Prada tennis shoes.
“I like to mix everything together,” he says. “I take things and change them. It doesn’t all have to be the same brand.”
The road to Project Runway
The designer’s deceased father, Amado Esquivel, served as a translator in the U.S. Air Force. His mother, Sarah Gallardo Esquivel, is a retired seamstress who did alterations for a high-end boutique in town. She and his grandmother, Sapopa Cortez, taught Esquivel how to sew in their South Austin home.
“Grandmother taught me how to sew buttons at 8 years old,” he recalls. “Then my mom stepped in. She’d get mad because I got into her stuff. ‘Don’t get into my threads!’”
Esquivel, who attended beauty school and styled hair for eight years, started designing clothing when he was 16. He also worked at the family business, a dry cleaners on North Loop.
While shaping hair at local department-store salons, he grew familiar with couture and met designers like Mary McFadden and Donna Karan. His earliest influences, however, were Christian Lacroix and Issey Miyake.
“The Asian thing was really coming in,” he says of the 1980s. “So I blended crazy over-the-top couture with crazy torn up clothes. You went from one extreme to another.”
Esquival learned tailoring from a master — and part-time magician — Raymond Galindo at Ace Tailors.
Sixteen years ago, when his father died and the family cleaners closed, he fell into a deep depression worsened by substance abuse.
“I have no problem talking about it now,” he says. “I finally got out of that dark spot. I had a great network of friends.”
His emotional void was partly filled by a job selling fabrics and a growing list of clients devoted to his designs. Kathy and Maria Girling (Austin-based Girling Health Care) and Camille Cipione were among his fiercest followers.
“It was the beginning of beautiful relationships,” he says. “Getting back to work pulled me out of my depression.”
“He got me the application the day after Valentine’s Day last year,” Esquival laughs. “He said: ‘Here: Enter!’”
Friends pitched in and helped him assemble the pictures, paperwork and video, all mailed out the day before the deadline.
“Then I got a phone call,” Esquivel says. “From last year to this year, my life is totally different because of the chances that I’ve have been given.”
Nervous outside the audition in Dallas, Esquivel thought: “I’m just going to go in there and be myself. Despite the cameras, I was myself.”
But before the final selection, there were long contracts to peruse, psychological tests and background checks. Then came the even bigger call and the trip to the big city.
“It was: Wow! ” he says. “I had never been to New York. I didn’t expect it. ‘This is it! Your life is going to change today.’ It was overwhelming.”
During the taping, contestants are confined to long hours of work, allowed no time off and little contact with the outside world.
“Everything is controlled,” he says. “Everything is set up to the minute. It’s like a movie. But you don’t know what’s going to happen in the workroom or what they are going to say.”
The routine is designed to make contestants go “all nutted-up crazy.”
“You’re not sleeping. You’re not eating,” he says. “It takes to you to the breaking point.”
Except for one brief instance, the positive-minded Esquivel has kept his cool so far this season.
The duct-tape challenge, which he took tongue-in-cheek, took him unawares.
“You think you’re doing really good,” he says. “And then it turns out that it’s not what they want. After that first time, I learned not to take it to heart.”
It was also the only time Esquivel felt he was edited to look bad.
“They can portray you any way they want,” he says. “But they kind of kept me myself. That’s just who I am.”
Even before the finale, Esquivel is fielding opportunities.
“The doors are already opening for me,” he says. “Retailers are reaching out. I am also collaborating on a new collection.
I didn’t think the doors would open this fast.”
Esquivel will make guest appearances during the University of Texas fashion show in April and Austin Fashion Week in May.
Meanwhile fans have told Equivel that his performance encouraged them pursue their creative sides.
“When you can change somebody’s life a little bit, that’s a win right there,” he says. “That’s a big win actually.”