THE EXPOSITOR
By BRIAN GORMAN, © ZAP2IT
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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.
And every year, hopefuls line up for a chance to impress Iman; her fashion mentor co-host, Canadian designer Brian Bailey; and the panel of judges who will assign them weekly tasks, assess the results and then thin out the herd.
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, 53, admits there's a bit of irony in the fact that she was an overnight sensation.
The daughter of a diplomat, she was raised in Kenya after her family fled Somalia following the military coup of 1969. She was discovered walking to classes at Nairobi University in 1975, was flown to London for a tryout and quickly became part of the first wave of supermodels.
The trivial nature of the fashion business sometimes troubles her, she says, especially when she considers the way her country has fallen into lawlessness since central government gave way to rule by warlords, criminals and pirates over the past two decades.
"I was majoring in political science ... when I became a model," she says. "And my parents have never
forgiven me for that, because it's such a waste of life, of what I started with. But in all honesty, I can sleep at night -barely, but I can sleep."
Since retiring from modeling, Iman has kept her hands in fashion through a line of cosmetics and her involvement with "Project Runway."
Yet, she says, she couldn't possibly live in the fashion world alone, and she stays involved with politics as an international spokeswoman for Keep a Child Alive, which provides anti-HIV drugs to children in Africa.
"I breathe politics," she says. "Being an African, everything about our lives in Africa, whether you are trying to get an ARB drug for your children who are dying of AIDS, or trying just to live in Somalia, it's all politics. So politics is part and parcel of the lives we live and the air we breathe in Africa.
"But this is a totally different world. Fashion is definitely a cocoon. And you are not aware of what's going on unless you make an effort of it, of what the rest of the world is like."
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. It's a known fact that a lot of the Broadway shows go through Toronto before they come to us. It's like living in New York on a smaller scale.
"In Ottawa, I did a lot of things with my daughter that she enjoyed. We did so much outdoor recreation. Toronto, it's things that I enjoy."
Source: The Expositor, Jan 27, 2009