The compact atelier of Spare Jeans is bursting at the seams with personality. Stacks of raw denim reach for the ceiling. Half-finished projects fan out across a massive cutting table. Swatches and snapshots decorate the walls, while a shower curtain rod doubles as a coat rack for custom jean jackets.
The man behind Spare Jeans Prospero Rey is no less a character. The ambitious teenager from a tiny island in the Philippines relied on charisma, quick wit, and a touch of kismet to make it to Montreal, and to make it in Montreal.
Love at first stitch
“I started sewing when I was fourteen-and-a-half,” Prospero recounts. “I didn’t like being told what to do. I was very much a rebel. I wanted to decide my own future, which is wrong in my culture, but that’s my personality.”
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