Boy Wonder - Profile

South Florida CEO, June, 2002

He may be only 17 years old, but fashion-design wunderkind Esteban Cortazar is quickly making a name for himself on South Beach and beyond. A Palm Beach businessman has bankrolled his design firm, and Madonna's brother has already optioned the film rights to his life. Meanwhile, he has homework to do for school.

Cyn. Zarco

Don't swing it like a dead cat!"

That's not fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi in a scene from his documentary "Unzipped." It's 17year-old student Esteban Cortazar telling his model, a leggy ninth grader at DASH -- Miami-Dade's Design & Architecture Senior High -- how to work the runway.

What she's wearing for the annual school fashion show: "Marilyn in Sevilla" -- a $2,200 purple ostrich boa and black satin evening dress from his debut Fall 2002 Cortazar Collection.

What he's wearing to school today: Cowboy chic -- A vintage checkered Western shirt unbuttoned a la James Dean, faded bellbottom jeans and canary-yellow cross-trainers.

"I usually dress like this at night," says the five-foot-seven tenth grader shyly, touching gelled points in his hair as he alludes to his more flamboyant persona as South Beach nightlife's most famous teen.

Famous? If you've thumbed any of the local trendy magazines over the years, you've probably seen his high profile in the party pages: Cortazar dancing in Liquid nightclub's VIP area with Daisy Fuentes and Madonna pal Ingrid Casares; Cortazar holding court at nightclub owner Chris Paciello's table at the infamous BarRoom; Cortazar with nightclub promoter pal Michael Capponi at B .E.D.; or, simply, Cortazar engulfed by a gaggle of blonde models like Hugh Hefner at a Bunny convention. Underage but never overdressed, Cortazar has been the sweetheart of the SoBe artists-and-models set since he was a pre-teen.

"I saw you on Lincoln Road last week," one of his teachers says knowingly as Cortazar passes him in the hallway. The mundane reality of absenteeism and make-up tests rolls off Cortazar's back like champagne spilled on sharkskin. His cool aloofness is half star attitude, half teen cheek. He's got a lot on his mind today. It's weeks after his Fall 2002 Womenswear Collection's "coming-out party," and he has press interviews to do.

Last year, when plans for a full-blown New York runway show premiering his 60-piece collection were postponed because of Sept. 11, Cortazar came up with the cost-effective idea of launching a limited line of women's clothing -- not with models on a runway, but with a cocktail party/exhibit extravaganza in the Zen garden of Miami Beach's chi-chi Shore Club. His A-list included gosees by hotel guest Janet Jackson, celeb photographer Dah-Len, Eighties chronicler Tama Janowitz, shoe designer Brian Atwood, and Elle fashion director Nina Garcia, a good friend. It worked. His 64-piece Spring 2003 Womenswear Collection will debut in New York this Fall. Apparently, Cortazar has arrived.

After school today, as part of DASH's student internship program, he's meeting his globe-trotting financial backer, Ferdinand Grandi. The 44-year-old, fast-talking, white-shirt-and-khaki Milanese financier, who maintains homes in Palm Beach and New York (and soon South Beach), is the CEO and president of Esteban Cortazar, Inc. But, first, Cortazar must finish his school work: two fittings plus a dress rehearsal for Mrs. Pringle's year-end fashion show, and a makeup quiz on CPR in Mr. Summers' Phys. Ed. class.

A day at DASH is like a day out of the WB network. Students hand-picked for their artistic acumen graze the halls of this sunny, U-shaped public magnet school like milk-fed cattle on a designer ranch. Long after the bell rings and school's out, kids in dreadlocks and Pumas loiter near their lockers until one grown-up yells, "Go home!" Set in Miami's hip Design District off Biscayne Boulevard, the faculty here is encouraging and art-sensitive. Freeform sculpture waits outside the principal's office; neo-expressionist student paintings hang proudly on the walls. In the library, computer-savvy pupils hunt and peck at the Web as they cram research on iMacs.

Inside Mrs. Pringle's Fashion Production II workshop, designing teens are on pins and needles tweaking last-minute details on masterpieces. As sewing machines whir, two girls attached by the sleeve in a Marlene Dietrich, Siamese-twin tuxedo jacket hobble by, followed by an avant-garde Southern Belle in a swooping, paper-mache hoop gown, and a hip-hoppity girl in a white, braided Barbarella mini-dress.

In the midst of all this pre-show twitter stands 17-year fashion industry veteran Alicia Alfonso, a Parsons School of Design graduate and former production manager of Vera Wang Bridal Headquarters in West Palm Beach. Now production manager of Esteban Cortazar, Inc., she has just schlepped over two original couture samples (he doesn't drive) of Cortazar's 14-piece 2002 Womenswear Collection from the showroom to the classroom for the fitting. "You don't expect me to leave these dresses here at school, do you?" says Cortazar, already thinking like a businessman.