The bespoke raw denim streetwear workshop of Montreal's Spare Jeans

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.”

He abandoned his post selling cigarettes from a jeepney to join a vocational course in tailoring. The course had nearly finished but Prospero was stubborn. In just five days, the rebel without a pause made a pair of pants from start-to-finish using Levi’s 501 bell bottoms as his muse.

“And that was it. I never stopped sewing,” he says.

Unraveling his story 

Prospero refused to let go of his dream to be a tailor. With one dollar in his pocket and less than a week of experience, he had to get crafty. He traded free labour with a local artisan for food and shelter. He convinced a building owner to lease him space for his own tailor shop without so much as a down payment. A generous repairmen gifted him a small sewing machine.

His older brother was so proud of his tenacity that he emptied his savings account so that Prospero could buy everything he needed to start his first company. After its success, Prospero moved to Saudi Arabia to study haute couture. He brought that experience to where he’s been ever since.

“I fell in love with Montreal right away. I knew I never wanted to leave.”

@sparejeans Some of the making of “The Loose Boys” Hours of work in a minute. #selvedgedenim #jeans #denim #sewing #rawdenim ♬ original sound - sparejeans

In the seventies and eighties, the heart of Canada’s fashion capital beat in the city’s Garment District on Chabanel Street. It was the place to be a dressmaker until Covid-19 hit.

“That was the day I stopped making dresses. I couldn’t do fittings. I finally had my chance to do denim, and to do it my way,” Prospero recalls.

Prospero procured vintage sewing machines and came up with a handful of jean styles he could sell online. He tossed fashion magazines and YouTube videos aside to see where his brain would take him organically, which brought him to insects.

“I name my jeans Lady Bug, Bugs Buggy, The Beetle. I then try to imagine the proportions of that insect and see what comes to mind when I close my eyes. Suddenly, I have a pattern.”

Simplicity was the driving force behind Prospero’s website, which he created at the height of the pandemic.

 “I make my life simple. I make my jeans simple,” he says. “I try not to drive myself crazy while making them. When you keep things simple, you always come out with a solution.”

Live long and Prospero

Prospero uses raw Japanese denim from Kaihara, Kuroki and Nihon menpu— unwashed and untreated—to lengthen his workshop’s creations’ lifespans. He finishes his jeans with a self-bound edge, or selvedge, to prevent unraveling. At seventy-eight, he prioritizes quality over quantity, which is why he prefers appointments to walk-ins, though he accepts both.

Prospero’s goal is to give each client that one pair of jeans they’ll never want to take off, and always want to wear out.

“People drive eight hours to come to our shop,” he says, flipping over a pair of half-finished jeans on the table beside him.

Like a signature, the back pocket stitching takes the form of ocean waves. Prospero explains they symbolize a traumatic event where he nearly drowned during a typhoon at age three. The leather patchwork reads: ‘Ang Nakaligtas,’ which translates to ‘the survivor’ in Tagalog.

“I am a survivor; the koi fish is a sign of resistance against the waves. That fish is me.”

Paying it forward

Prospero steps out for a moment. An understudy of Prospero’s, a bright-eyed Montrealer who’s been working at the other end of the room-sized cutting table, introduces himself.

“I saw the first TikTok he posted and was so fascinated by it. He was doing something so different from anyone else,” says Henrique Miglioranzi Kato. 

Henrique visited the workshop to meet Prospero, who immediately offered him a mentorship if he’d take over social media. Henrique had zero background in tailoring much like Prospero when he started out. The man behind Spare Jeans admired Henrique’s curiosity and determination. Perhaps he saw himself in him. Perhaps he saw a future for the company, and the next generation of tailors.

 “The Montreal fashion world is changing. Kids are busy buying jeans at thrift shops and that’s throwing the industry off because it’s so hard to compete with. I wanted to design something that everyone is going to love,” Prospero lights up.

“I’ve been around a needle and thread for a long time, worked in the Chabanel factories in Montreal for decades, and now I have my Spare Jeans. We’re starting to see people in Montreal copying us. It makes Henrique nervous, but it makes me happy,” he laughs.

“It means I made it. It means we’re legit.”

Spare Jeans is located at 6268 Chem. de la Côte-des-Neiges #2.