Growing up in Chihuahua, Mexico, Victor Alfaro based his sartorial education on all the American fashion magazines; today the 33-year-old creative director of the New York clothier TSE Cashmere is so busy designing his own line of chic clothes and accessories that he barely has time to read. After a short stint at the University of Texas at El Paso, Alfaro studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, and not long after, he took on the grunge-obsessed fashion world by creating a colorful, ultrafeminine line of dresses, winning fans from Mariah Carey to Madonna. Vogue has already included him alongside Calvin Klein and Donna Karan in a story about couture’s shakers, and he has received the ultimate trendy tribute: Absolut Vodka has commissioned an Absolut Alfaro ad. “Now I’m in a different league, with people I’ve admired all my life,” he says. “But I’ve still got to prove that I can create new ideas and be on that trend wheel.”