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closeFriday, Oct. 16, 2009
'Project Runway': Talkin' with Shirin
Richardson's Shirin Askari got aufed on 'Project Runway' last week, and we got the scoop.
Robert Philpot
DFW.com
Richardson's Shirin Askari says that although she was eliminated on Project Runway, the show gave her exposure that has benefited her business.
I probably shouldn't have to say this, but ... SPOILER ALERT. I mean it. The spoiler comes quickly.
On Thursday's Project Runway, Richardson's Shirin Askari was eliminated during a challenge in which contestants had to make an eye-popping, stage-friendly, Bob Mackie-inspired outfit for singer Christina Aguilera. This didn't seem like Askari's style to me, since she has a love of vintage clothing that doesn't necessarily translate into a love of sequins and feathers. She endured having Tim Gunn say her design looked like a really bad prom dress, which led her to some changes that led Heidi Klum to say it looked like a Halloween witch costume. Ouch.
Askari, who generally comes off pretty upbeat, isn't letting it get her down. She talked about the challenge, her fellow contestants and what it's meant for her business in a brief phone interview.
I got the impression that a Bob Mackie design e was about as far away from your comfort zone as you could get. Did I get the right impression?
[Laughs] I wouldn't say you're completely wrong. I mean, it's not something that I make all the time or anything. I've done it maybe once before, or twice, something really extravagant -- but yeah, it's not something I normally do.
When the judges were talking to you and Christopher [who was also up for elimination], it sounded like they were being a lot more harsh on him, so it was a bit of a surprised when you got auffed.
Yeah, that's television for you. They're always wanting to shock you. I was surprised -- I knew it wasn't my best work, but at the same time, I was standing there with people who'd been in the bottom a couple of times, and [I] was the one to leave. It was a little disheartening. That's the way it worked out. That's the way the cookie crumbles, and there's not much you can do about it.
How much longer are those judging sessions than what we see on TV?
Hours, hours. Hours hours hours. You're in that room for a while, so you have time to kinda think about what's happening and deal with it. ... I'd never been in the bottom, and it was really new to me, so I didn't really know what to do. I didn't know what to deal with. I didn't really say the things that I wanted to say.
When we got our book for Christina Aguilera -- you know, we got some pictures of [things] she had done, like shows and stuff, and every picture, I'd say every one except for one of them, she was wearing these long dresses. They were like long and sequined and sparkly. So I was envisioning her in a long dress. At first, I thought "short dress," but then I saw the pictures and I was like, "Oh! OK, long dress." Let me tell ya, it would've saved me a hell of a lot of time if I'd just gotten some sequeined, stretchy fabric, like other people did, and made a short little dress. I would've gotten done so much quicker and it would've looked a lot nicer. But I decided to make a dress that had like 65, 68 pieces in the skirt or something like that. I kinda took on way more than I should have. I kinda made it a lot harder. That's my personality, though -- I always make things a lot harder than they need to be.
After a while, it kind of drains on you. It's by far the most physically, mentally, emotionally thing I've ever done in my life, and probably ever will do. I feel blessed to have been there and to have been a part of it. Thousands of other designers would have killed to be in my shoes.
What has it done for your business?
It's been really good. I've gotten a lot of exposure now. I'm doing a lot of custom wedding dresses now. That's exciting, that's fun -- I love weddings, and I'm actually one of those people who likes working with brides. It's really amazing when somebody trusts you, you know, a girl, it's her wedding day, it's the most important day in her life, and it's really truly an honor when somebody trusts you with that dress they're going to wear.
Who will you miss most from the show?
I kind of miss the people that got eliminated toward the beginning. I don't get to see Ari -- it's really hard; the way they portray people on the show, that's one of the things I was really worried about, how I was going to be portrayed, and I don't think it was completely dead-on, but it was pretty close and I can't complain. But some people didn't get portrayed very well. Ari was the spacey, weird girl, and Mitchell was like the guy who couldn't sew or was kind of lazy or whatever, and they were two of the funniest people I've ever met. The same thing with Malvin, he's such a sweetheart. It's just one of those things where -- at the end of the day, it's reality television.
They portrayed you as somebody who talks a lot.
Well, I do talk a lot. But I still have friends. I don't feel like I talk to the point where people just want to shoot themselves in the head. I think on the show they portrayed me as the only one talking in the room. And honestly, sometimes I was. Because everyone was so focused and so serious, and you know what -- at the end of the day, we're not curing cancer here. We're making dresses. I'm just one of those people that needs to entertain myself. I can't just work in silence, and we couldn't have TV, we couldn't have radio, most of the time people weren't even talking.
Sometimes, the producers would come up to me and say, "Could you just go in there and say something?" Because they knew I would do it. So I was the one who went in and asked [fellow Dallas-area resident] Louise about her bird noises. They didn't show that, but they were like, "Go ask Louise about her bird noises." I was like, "Oooh, OK! Louise, I hear you do bird noises! Let's hear them!" [Laughs]
What about Irina? She said some kind of nasty things about your design aesthetic last night. [Specifically, Irina called it "bargain basement."]
That's one person that I think they portrayed pretty right on. [Laughs] That's pretty much exactly how she is in real life, except for the fact that she doesn't say those things to your face, she says them behind your back. I don't really take what people like that say seriously. I was not raised that way. I went in to it saying, "I'm not going to trash someone for no reason." It's just not by personality, it's not the way I was raised, and I think it's kind of sad that she feels that she has to put other people down or feel she's better than other people for any reason.
I'm also Persian, so I grew up in a really warm atmosphere, and everybody's warm and sweet to each other, and she's just overall kind of a cold person. That was a little off-putting to me.
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