Last night’s Project Runway Canada episode was a double-shocker as two previously eliminated designers came back and two more got sent home.
The contestants were dragged out to a camping ground where designers Jason Meyers and Genevieve Graham, who had already been cut in previous episodes, crawled out of tents to reveal that they had been reinstated on the show, with a catch: They had to win the next challenge or get sent home again.
Designers were split into teams of two and asked to use camping gear like tents, sleeping bags and backpacks to create one avant-garde design and one ready-to-wear dress.
Calgary designer Adejoke Taiwo and Vancouver designer Kim Cathers teamed up but got cut despite judges calling Taiwo’s sleek and sexy dress her best work on the show.
The soft-spoken Taiwo, 25, says the competition was stressful but despite the hardship she’s glad she did it, though getting sent home on what the judges themselves said was her best design yet was painful.
“I did the best job I could on every single challenge. If (the judges) don’t want to see me flourish, that’s their loss,” Taiwo said.
She says she’s happy that she didn’t bomb out in any of the design challenges and kept to her unique style throughout the competition.
“Before I went, I just thought, ‘I don’t want to design anything too ugly!’ I feel like my designs stood out from the others,” she said.
Cathers, 29, seldom shied away from expressing her abrasive opinions about the other designers, though she now wishes she had voiced her frustrations less openly, at least on-camera.
“Obviously I’m the bitch on the show. In retrospect, maybe I could have kept the sharp tongue under wraps more,” Cathers said.
She doesn’t feel the show portrayed her unfairly, although she does wish her softer side could have gotten more screen time.
“I did say all those things, I did act quite abrasively, but they didn’t show all the laughing, all the jokes. I can be a bitch but I can also be hilarious,” Cathers said.
From wonky seams to iffy fabric cuts, Cathers’ weaker construction skills often didn’t live up to her creative ideas.
“My weaknesses and strengths really divided themselves,” Cathers said.
