THE SUDBURY STAR
By BRIAN GORMAN
Thursday, January 22, 2009
"Project Runway Canada" is going big and going Global this year, says series host Iman.
The Somali-born supermodel is also a judge on the series, which begins its second season Tuesday, Jan. 27, on Global Television Network.
"Anytime a show goes on a national channel, it becomes a little bit bigger," she says. "I think expectations are much higher. So it becomes a bigger and hopefully a better show, because we have to step up to the challenge."
"Project Runway" offers aspiring fashion designers from across Canada the chance to compete for a grand prize of $100,000. Over the course of the show, one is eliminated every week until just one fashionista is left standing.
Iman has high praise for Evan Biddell, the Saskatoon native who won the first "Project Runway Canada" last year. Yet her advice to him is to take the prize money and live off it while he learns his craft.
"He didn't go to school to be trained to be a fashion designer," she says. "But the talent that he has. If he hones his creativity, and really thinks it through, and takes the money and goes into an internship in a big place, like an Alexander McQueen ... .
"He has the money. He won $100,000. So go and work for nothing for Alexander McQueen, and then come back and start your own fashion.
"That's what they need to do -including the Americans who came out of 'Project Runway.' They never have made anything. Nobody has become a designer."
The main thing all the winners need to do, Iman says, is to remember that they won an opportunity to build a career -and not the career itself.
"Being a reality show, it puts in these young people's minds that they become overnight sensations and household names," she says. "And then they lose track of this is really a hard business to break into."
Iman has been married to David Bowie since 1987, and the couple divide their time between London and New York. It was through Bowie that she was introduced to Toronto, which she says she loves.
Most of "Project Runway" was shot in Ottawa, with only the finale in Toronto during Fashion Week in October, and it was Iman's first time in the national capital.
"The minute I get there I start saying, 'Eh,' " she says. "It becomes inherent. But Toronto I love."
Source: The Sudbury Star, Jan 22, 2009