A fashion designer from Nantucket is one of 12 contestants on the newest season of "Project Runway," the competition reality show for fashion designers.
Nantucket's own Madeline Malenfant made it through the first two episodes, which premiered last week, without being eliminated by the judges.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke to Madeline to learn more about her time on season 21 of "Project Runway" and how her childhood on Nantucket led her into the world of fashion.
Gilda Geist Did you grow up watching "Project Runway?" Was that something you wanted to do when you grew up?
Madeline Malenfant I definitely grew up watching "Project Runway." I was always fashion-obsessed. I was obsessed with shopping, basically, but I never really thought that I would be the person sewing. I never thought that was possible, and I think I told myself until I was 22 years old that I wasn't capable of doing it.
GG How did you get into fashion and design?
MM I was a sculpture major in college and when I graduated I was moving to a small apartment in Brooklyn and didn't have enough space to make my giant concrete sculptures in there. So I thought, what is something sort of adjacent to sculpture that I can get into? And that led me to costume design. I worked for a small label in Brooklyn for a little bit and then I applied to a costume design MFA program at the London College of Fashion and attended that in 2019. So, classically trained in costume design. And then after that, I worked in TV for a couple of years in the costume department. I really, really disliked my time there and decided to branch off and create my own brand in 2022.
GG Can you introduce us to that brand and describe your signature style?
MM My signature style definitely stems from the fact that I come from a classical costume background. I'm really drawn to historical shapes, drawn to vintage fashion, era-style clothing, and I try to modernize that and just make it my own. I like to use things that people have seen before, but I twist them so it becomes something that they haven't seen before hopefully.
GG On the show, you talk about your designs being inspired by historical and vintage fashion. And one thing that I've noticed about the Cape and Islands—I'm not from here, but I moved here a few years ago—is that people here really do love their history. So I'm wondering, do you feel like growing up in a place that valued historical preservation so highly contributed to your point of view today, or do you think that comes from somewhere else?
MM It definitely comes from growing up on the islands. There's just no doubt about it. Nantucket, as many of you know, and maybe you don't, is sort of preserved in its own time capsule. There's lots of institution around keeping things looking exactly how they were hundreds of years ago. So I think just being surrounded by that and knowing that there is inherent worth in history has ingrained in me sort of these ideas that we should really preserve the things that are beautiful, the things that have been here for a while. In my case, I like to preserve them mainly in their ideas. Growing up here, I turned to thrifting and vintage shopping, and probably another stem of my obsession with that kind of culture and those kinds of silhouettes is that that's where I was getting my inspiration. I was going to the thrift store and getting '80s dresses when I was 12 years old, wearing them all around the house and wearing tutus and stuff like that.
GG When it comes to the weekly design challenges, it always looks like it's down to the last second on "Project Runway." Is it as much of a time crunch as they make it seem? Does it feel like that every time?
MM It feels like that every time, and it's definitely worse in real life than it is on TV, if that's even possible, time crunch-wise. It is always us sewing at the last minute. When you see that on TV, and you see Christian [Siriano] up there saying, 'you've got 20 seconds,' people are actually sewing things on—I'm actually sewing things on in those moments.
New episodes of "Project Runway" air on Freeform on Thursdays at 10 PM ET. Episodes become available for streaming on Hulu and Disney+ the day after they air.
