At 21 years old, Christian Siriano is the baby of this season of Project Runway. Of course, if he wants to win this competition, he certainly can’t sit back and defer to his elders. He’s going to have to bring some pretty hefty self-confidence with him in order to hold his own against the older and more experienced competition.
It sounds, though, like our young Christian has self-confidence to spare.
Speaking with a Chris Crocker-esque combination of sass and Valley Girl, Christian proudly states in his Bravo video that he is “raw talent.” He admits he knows he is a “novelty” but doesn’t seem to feel this should hold him back. He appears to be very self-motivated, saying that it was his own idea to apply for Project Runway and that his main influence is himself.
This might all sound like quite a bit of youthful hubris, but he might have the goods to back it up. Tim Gunn calls him a “fashion prodigy,” and Christian has already worked for Vivienne Westwood and his favorite designer, Alexander McQueen.
He grew up around creativity and design, having worked in a salon since he was 13. He designed costumes for the hair shows, and started seriously designing clothes in high school. He left the States for London to study at The American Intercontinental University. Keeping at his young prodigy pace, he showed a collection at the London Fashion Week during the fall of 2005.
While he’s been working as a bi-coastal freelance designer, he admits he isn’t leaving much behind to appear on Project Runway, and so has nothing to lose. He plans to be fast and efficient and to stay true to himself in the competition, no matter what the parameters of the challenge.
The sassy confident contestants can generally earn the distaste of the audience, but before anyone judges Christian too harshly for his abundance of faith in himself, they might do well to visit his Myspace page. His enthusiasm for design extends far beyond faith in himself, and it would appear there might not be enough exclamation points in the world to capture how excited he is about the opportunity to work in a creative field.
What do you think?
– Leslie Seaton, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: BloggingProjectRunway.com, Entertainment Weekly, Myspace.com, Bravo.com
(Image courtesy of Bravo)
Staff Columnist, BuddyTV
