The fashion designer who dressed Elvis, Johnny Cash, and the King of Morocco — and says he’s never worked a day in his life
Manuel Cuevas is sitting at his sewing machine in Nashville. He’s 92. His hands are doing what they’ve done since he was seven years old — cutting, stitching, building something that didn’t exist before he touched it.
Sam Davidson asks him when he’s going to retire.
Manuel doesn’t understand the question.
“What for?” he says. “I never worked for an hour in my life.”
He’s not being cute. He’s not delivering a line. He means it the way other people mean “I need coffee to function” — as a fact so obvious it barely needs saying.
In the latest episode of Circle Back, the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s podcast, Sam sits down with Manuel in his studio to hear the full story. It starts with a dare from an older brother. It ends — well, it doesn’t end. Manuel isn’t done.
The dare
Manuel was seven, visiting family in the small town of Coalcomán in Mexico. His older brother was making pants on a sewing machine. Manuel stood there watching, legs crossed, doing nothing.
His brother looked up: “Why don’t you quit being lazy and help me?”
So Manuel sat down at the machine.
That was 85 years ago. He hasn’t gotten up.
“I asked him 25 years later how the pants business went,” Manuel tells Sam. His brother’s answer: “When you see a stupid little kid learning what I was trying to learn in 10 years, that bugged the heck out of me. I just got out of it.”
Manuel stayed in.
77 dresses at 12
By 11, Manuel had been sewing his own shirts and pants for years. He was reading the Sears catalog — not as a customer, but as a competitor.
He saw the problem: mass-produced dresses wrapped in cellophane, shipped to mercantile stores across Mexico. Every woman at every event wearing the same thing. Black and white. A funeral or a wedding — you couldn’t tell.
“This has to change,” he decided.
He started making dresses. Custom. One of a kind. Colors that turned heads — royal blue, red, yellow. The kind of clothes that made people look twice.
His first year, he designed, cut, and sold 77 dresses. He was 12.
He charged more than a banker made in a pay period. “I am almost ashamed to say,” he admits. “But people paid it. They wanted to.”
By 17, he had five seamstresses working for him and was producing 500 dresses a year. He designed and cut. They assembled. He ran the business.
A design studio with employees, premium pricing, and growing demand. Run by a teenager who hadn’t left Mexico yet.
Hollywood: the king of cowboy
Manuel spent 35 years in Los Angeles. He started working with the Motion Picture Industry union, designing wardrobes for film and television.
The list of names reads like a hall of fame of its own: Bonanza. The Lone Ranger. Rifleman. Gunsmoke.
Edith Head — the most awarded costume designer in Academy Award history — took notice. She called Manuel “the king of cowboy.” Her advice was blunt: “Don’t you ever dress those suckers that are going to die in the first 10 minutes of the movie. You dress the stars only.”
He did. And then the stars started calling him for their personal wardrobes.
Elvis. Johnny Cash. Michael Jackson. Dolly Parton. Mick Jagger. Burt Reynolds. The Grateful Dead. Waylon Jennings. Porter Wagoner. Emmylou Harris. Loretta Lynn. Marty Stuart. Ronald Reagan — “I met him as a lousy actor and then as a great lawyer,” Manuel says.
The Johnny Cash connection deserves its own line: Manuel decided Cash would wear black. He’s known him since 1956. Four generations of the Cash family have worn Manuel’s work.
Four generations of the Williams family, too.
One of a kind. Every piece. No exceptions.
The King of Morocco’s coat
One story captures what Manuel’s career looks like from 30,000 feet.
Willard Rockwell — yes, those Rockefellers — was a client. He called Manuel from Morocco.
“I’m at a party with the King of Morocco,” Rockwell said. “He looked at my coat and asked who made it. I opened my coat and showed him your name. He opened his coat and showed me your name.”
Manuel didn’t know he’d dressed the King of Morocco.
“That’s the way it is,” he says. “Life is the way it is.”
He tells it without ego. Just amusement that the world works the way it does — that a seven-year-old kid from Coalcomán could end up inside the coats of kings without even knowing it.
Nashville: 36 years and counting
Manuel left Los Angeles after someone shot out his studio windows. Twice. In one year. He went to the police. Their response: “Collect your insurance.”
“That’s when my wife and I said, ‘Get the heck out of here,'” he recalls.
Nashville was the answer. He’d been visiting for work — the music industry had been a client for decades. He knew the city. More importantly, he knew the people.
“Nashville has the magic of hospitality,” he says. “It’s not Hollywood.”
He’s been here 36 years now. Still making one-of-a-kind pieces. Still answering the phone. Still at the machine.
The philosophy
Manuel doesn’t give startup advice in frameworks or bullet points. He gives it the way he gives everything — directly, with humor, and without apology.
On finding your work: “Get your tape, put it in front of your eyes, and measure the efforts and measure your dreams. If your efforts are as big as that measure, that’ll take you somewhere.”
On fun: “You got to have fun with what you’re doing. If you don’t, you’ll never make fun out of work.”
On retirement: “I’m on vacation. I’m on vacation.”
On what the world needs: “Make more love, man. Make America love again.”
On whether he’ll ever stop: “I think I would croak if I quit. It’s fun. I miss it when I’m not doing it.”
He was inducted into the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame in 2025. The honor recognized what anyone who meets Manuel already knows: this is a man who built a global business by refusing to make the same thing twice, treating every client like a one-of-a-kind project, and never once calling it work.
Eighty-five years at the sewing machine. And he’s still having fun.
Watch the full Circle Back episode with Manuel Cuevas on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOqxqtJU0fM
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/circle-back/id1548063180?i=1000752590339
Circle Back is brought to you by the Beth and Randy Chase family, in partnership with Nashville Post.
Learn more:
- Explore EC programs: ec.co
- Nashville Entrepreneur Center on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/nashville-entrepreneur-center
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