One draped skirt too many got Vancouver designer Genevieve Graham sent home from Project Runway Canada last night.
Designers had to create a dress for top Canadian model Coco Rocha to wear to a red carpet event during New York fashion week.
The judges thought Graham’s silky, gold and crème coloured dress was too demure and “safe” for a model of Rocha’s stature to wear. While host Iman praised Graham as a strong designer, she also said the judges were tired of seeing the same draped-skirt designs from her, challenge after challenge, sending her home.
Graham, 31, believes the judges didn’t necessarily understand her ideas and she feels proud to have stayed true to her own design vision on the show.
“The judges didn’t get my style at all but I wasn’t going to change what I do. I wasn’t willing to compromise my work,” she said.
Graham sparred verbally with judges in several episodes, often dismissing their criticisms outright, and her defensive attitude ultimately didn’t endear her to them in the long run, something she’s fine with.
“Fashion has a lot of personal preference — that’s why I chose to take what the judges said with a grain of salt. I think they definitely have their aesthetic favourites,” Graham said.
With her barbed, camera-ready denouncements of other designers’ dresses and cocky attitude to her own designs, Graham didn’t shy away from speaking her mind on the show. She clashed with several of the other designers, particularly Toronto designer Jeff Mackinnon who she took to task for lying about hand-stitching he had drawn on.
While Graham insists she’s not the ice queen some people have made her out to be, she makes no apologies for sticking to her guns.
“I wish they had shown me smiling and laughing more because I do have a really soft side. But at the end of the day, I am really confident in my work. You have to be confident in this industry or you can’t survive — it’s really cutthroat,” Graham said.
She feels doing the show was a great experience and gave her another stepping stone to traverse in the industry that she loves.
“I learned a lot about my skills and what I could and couldn’t do. I have no regrets in my life — everything you do you learn from,” Graham said.
