(Cover) - EN Fashion - Miss J Alexander used to make his own clothes growing up because he was too poor to buy them.

The flamboyant Americas Next Top Model coach - whose real name is Alexander Jenkins -was the seventh of ten children and money was too tight to splash out on anything other than necessities.

But the fashion-guru did not let that stop him from looking good.

I didnt have the money to buy the clothes I loved, so I taught myself to sew and created them myself on my grandmothers sewing machine, he told Grazia.

Miss Js heart was always in making amazing clothes but when he was 16 years old the 6ft 4ins star was picked up as a model for Jean Paul Gaultier.

At one point, his career even took him to Japan with a $20,000 contract for Elite models.

But the Bronx-born celebrity never rated himself as having any longevity in the modelling world.

It was great fun, he admitted. I learnt a huge amount about making clothes, which was my main interest, but my modelling career was pretty short-lived. I was a strange, savage-looking street kind of model, and I wasnt going to sell Hermes or Christian Dior products. (C) Cover Media