What to Know
Project Runway model Lirise Crosse is speaking out after the dress designed for her by one of the season 22 contestants “broke” her heart. During a challenge where contestants were supposed to be using out-of-the-box materials, designer Bryan Barrientos really went out on a limb and created a dress out of what Lirise says was a dirty garbage bag, sending her out to walk the runway like that. Was this really the best he could do?
Contestants were challenged to create a look out of unconventional materials.
On the season 22 episode “Battle of the Seasons,” the current contestants competed against contestants from season 21 in a challenge where they were instructed to use unconventional materials for their designs with a technology theme.
Unable to go with his first idea to construct a dress out of bubble wrap, Bryan decided to go for it with electrical cords and a garbage bag, and Lirise, the model who would be wearing his design, was hesitant from the beginning.
Lirise said the design originally looked like a “noose.”
In a YouTube video Lirise shared about the experience, she said that after she rejected the idea of walking the runway in just her underwear and the cords hanging around her — which she said looked like “a noose around my neck” — Bryan finished her look with tape and a garbage bag that she had seen on the floor while he was spray painting the cords.
“It just felt thoughtless. It felt like he just had no idea. It felt careless. It felt lazy. My spirit, in that moment, was broken,” she said.
And about that garbage bag that she said was “off the floor?”
“I had no clue that was the garbage bag he had on the ground when he was spray painting some of the cords,” she said. “But if you go back to the episode, you can see there is spray paint on the plastic bag I’m wearing.”
Oh, no. How did he ever think this was okay?
She called Bryan’s design ‘thoughtless, unintentional and lazy.’
Lirisse issued a statement to People about the situation, telling the outlet that her “heart was broken that day,” and added that Bryan’s design “hit a cord, no pun intended, with the audience because it read thoughtless, unintentional and lazy.”
“He designed what he wanted and not for the model he had,” she said. “It also struck up a conversation about how all designers should be able to find the inspiration and design for a fuller body as well, no matter the challenge. If not, are you really a designer?!”
So far, Bryan hasn’t seemed to response to Lirise’s claims, but the judges did see right through his attempt on the show, with Iman even noting that Lirise looked “miserable” in the dress he designed.
This can’t say anything good about his future in the competition.
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