Brini Maxwell - Ben Sander

Ben Sander

Early Life

Ben was born on July 23, 1969, at Boston Lying In Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to Peter and Mary Jane. The first seven years of his life were spent in Wellesley, MA with his father teaching theater at Brandeis University and his mother alternately keeping house and acting in professional productions in Boston and New York as well as touring with her own one woman adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. In 1976 the family moved to the small college town of Athens, Ohio, home of Ohio University. Ben attended elementary and middle school in Athens while his father taught in the graduate theater program there. In 1980 Peter Sander received a Pell grant and moved the family to Cleveland, OH, where he acted as a Dramaturge for The Cleveland Play House. The Playhouse offered Ben his first opportunity to act professionally. He was cast as Bodo in a production of Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine. They returned to Athens in 1981 for two years. In 1983 Peter took a job with The University of Missouri in Kansas City where Ben attended Center Senior High School. Ben performed in high school theatrical productions, but eventually forsook the stage for the costume room becoming the costume designer during his senior year, using his extensive collection of vintage clothing as costumes for the productions that year. After graduating high school in 1987 Sander attended the Kansas City Art Institute foundations program.

In 2006 the family again moved; this time to Hempstead, Long Island, where his father had been hired as the chair for the theater department of Hofstra University. Ben spent a few years getting his sea legs in New York, working at various jobs and studying fashion illustration with Veronica Galati. He then applied to, and was accepted into the fashion design program at Fashion Institute of Technology in 1989. Ben spent 4 years studying his craft at FIT. Graduating in 1993, he obtained a job at moderate dress houseBGB as an assistant designer. His job was making patterns for the samples. The comp any reorganized 9 months after he was hired and he was let go. After that he worked at a bridal boutique, and two furriers before moving into Manhattan and developing The Brini Maxwell Show for television.