The highly anticipated return of Project Runway,
featuring designer Carol Hannah Whitfield.
Thursdays, at 10pm ET/PT, on Lifetime Television.
Photo Credit: Mike Yarish/Lifetime Networks, 2009
So Carol Hanna Whitfield was a nerd.
I’m not sure this could be true, given the pixieish designer’s self-assured nature we see now. If indeed it was true, it certainly bodes well for her, as everybody knows that geeks and nerds practically rule the world. Being a geek or nerd in high school is a pretty good predictor of future success. Those that have their day in the sun in high school tend to stay there. Those that had a hard time launch themselves into a fabulous future. This is what Carol Hannah has done.
Ms. Whitfield started sewing when she was very young. “My mom taught me to sew when I was like 7, so I used to make all kinds of little Barbie things, and I was, you know, really crafty. Then I started making things for myself because I was a really awkward tall skinny kid, and real geeky. It just made me feel better about myself, so I just made all my clothes.” (Hmm…was she really that tall? She seems so petite on the show.) This could result in making her look even geekier, or looking very cool, depending on one’s skill level. She says it wasn’t until middle school that she started actually wearing the things that she made. She must have been pretty good by the time she got to high school, because it was then that she tackled the meat of being a designer. “In high school I taught myself patternmaking and draping from library books, basically.”
Oh my, and there I was, doggedly stitching up Simplicity patterns in at that age and being teased about being fashionable. Never mind that come Christmas every ‘mean girl’ had her own pair of the very same boots I proudly strutted in September (it was the 70’s, folks). One even shouted at me, as I glanced at her new Frey’s, “You didn’t start it!” Oh my, if little Carol was making her own patterns then, was she less or more of a geek than me—than any of us who feel the need to make our own marks?
Put this kind of kid in an environment that boasts high school beauty pageants hosted by a young announcer with a distinct—if not charming—southern drawl, and what happens? From what I could dig up on the pageant that Carol Hannah entered —the Miss Westside Pageant—the contestants are certainly talented. Sadly, I did not find video of Ms. Whitfield's year, but as of 2008, they promenade on the stage in sportswear and gowns, while the announcer tics off who their parents are, their academic achievements, and for one girl, her disability. South Carolina is indeed its own special place.
Kojii Helwein models her designer Carol Hannah Whitfield's
red carpet look in the premiere episode of Project Runway,
Season 6 on Lifetime Television.
Photo Credit Mike Yarish/Lifetime Television
Carol Hannah Whitfield won Miss Congeniality in the Miss Westside Pageant but she is not eager to have that part of her life talked about. “Don’t go digging for that. I was not a pageant kid. I was a huge nerd in high school, honestly. The fact that I entered that thing was so funny, but I just did it for fun. I was like, well, I haven’t done this before. I like dresses. Let’s do this. My dad and I played a song, I used to play the flute—used to be actually pretty good at the flute—my dad played the guitar. My family is pretty musical, so… anyway, that’s enough about that.”
Still, with all that geek to her name, I think that perhaps Ms. Whitfield is still too close to her high school years for her involvement in the pageant to be anything but uncomfortable for her, though I am not sure why it makes her so uncomfortable. It certainly illustrates her fearlessness to dive into the unknown. It should be a fun memory, no? Ms. Whitfield confessed to me that "It's not a true representation of who I really was, you know? I was in marching band, student government, the National Honor Society, Youth in Government, Girls' State and "most likely to succeed."
That is indeed a full helping of geek. Still, I hope that as time passes, she will fondly remember that time on stage with her dad, and her mom cheering her on. It was Carol Hannah’s mother that even put the pageant on my radar at all when she gushed that her daughter “made her own dresses for the Miss Westside pageant...” in an interview for the Independent Mail. Moms. They will always get you, eh?
Somewhere along the line, she left that geek label behind and found herself putting herself through college on her fashion design skills. She was stitching up wedding dresses, cocktail dresses, and you name it, while studying marketing. I am really pretty sure that no one at my college would ever be commissioning dresses. We were too poor, and those that weren’t (oh those Jersey girls) would not think that a student was worthy of their dollars. I think I have to say again, that Charleston—or perhaps it’s actually the whole of the south—is a unique place. Or maybe she was really just that good. Maybe since she was the only fashion designer there, she was able to put her fledgling marketing skills to use?
She seemed to get a bit testy when I asked about her education, and how she thinks she did on her own. She conveniently had 15 other designers lined up in front of her during Project Runway to measure herself against. I know that at least two of those self-taught designers on the show felt the gap in their education, with Gordana ogling her fellow designer’s tool boxes, and Christopher Straub asking Mitchell what ‘smocking’ was. However, this was not the case for Carol Hannah. “I make a living doing this. I have no regrets about not going to design school. It’s something that I considered doing and decided not to because all of the things I would have learned there I already knew how to do. I think honestly, I have a little a bit of an advantage because I have formal business training and I know how to market myself, and how to take this talent and take this art and turn it into something that’s gonna be successful.” Wow. Okay.
PROJECT RUNWAY: SEASON 6 DESIGNERS
The highly anticipated return of Project Runway, now in
its sixth season, premieres Thursday, August 20,
at 10pm ET/PT, on Lifetime Television.
L to R: Top Row: Mitchell Hall, Ari Fish, Nicolas Putvinski,
Louise Black, Malvin Vien, Shirin Askari, Ra'mon-Lawrence
Coleman, Christopher Straub, Gordana Gehlhausen
Bottom Row: Irina Shabayeva, Johnny Sakalis, Qristyl
Frazier, Logan Neitzel, Althea Harper, Carol Hannah
Whitfield, Epperson
Photo Credit: Mike Yarish/Lifetime Networks, 2009
In her freshman year, she managed to put a few of her designs in a wonderful boutique in Savannah. The shop happened to be Goga, Gordana Gehlhausen’s store “They sold well. I approached her when I was a freshman in college. I was young, and I was scared to death because I was pretty shy when I was younger and I knew I wanted to kind of try something. I took her 4 or 5 dresses and she took them, and she liked them and she put them in there and they sold in about two weeks. It was pretty great. I don’t know why I didn’t do it more, actually. Well, I know why, I was in college studying.” Hmm...I am starting to have my suspicions about the shyness that Ms Whitfield says used to plague her. I think she was simply young, and doing things that were leaps of faith at that age can be scary. Fear is not shyness—not when you go ahead and do the scary things anyway…again and again.
Carol Hanna’s path to project runway firmed up at Charleston Fashion Week for emerging designers “I didn’t tell anybody I entered it because it was a big deal. It was something that was very personal and very kind of scary. Because you are putting a big part of yourself out there to just, for people to judge, like, plainly judge. That’s kind of intimidating until you get used to it” Well, I think she got used to it pretty fast, considering she won. She also scored a commission for “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and it was the same pieces from Charleston Fashion Week that landed her a spot on Project Runway.
Ms. Whitfield’s Real Housewives of Atlanta credit came when DeShawn Snow wore one of her pieces. “Her stylist came to my show in Charleston, and commissioned the dress for her for a photo shoot or something. It was really funny because it was such a quick thing—she needed it. My show was on a Friday and she needed it on a Wednesday. In Charleston I used to need to order every piece of fabric that I used because …the resources aren’t there. I didn’t l have time to order fabric. This was like a project Runway challenge directly, almost. I had to take one of my pieces from my show and cut it up and turn it into something else for her. That was kind of crazy.”
If you ask me, it’s all been kinda crazy for Carol Hannah. Here she is, taking a career survey in the fifth grade that sets her on her path of fashion designer, and she refuses to take the leap and believe that it’s a money making venture. Instead, she takes a satellite major that will be an advantage for her if indeed she finds that she can make money at it. Well, she chose better than I did. Although neither of us were in schools that were known for fashion, I spent my first two years of college as an Aerospace Engineer. I was finally crushed under the weight of calculus and ran to the College of Human Ecology, where I really belonged, and immediately ended up on the Dean’s list—but without the advantage of a marketing background. Heck, at least Carol Hannah knew she could find a career in fashion. I was trying to mix my love of flying with my love of design. All because we all are told that it’s not possible to make money as a fashion designer, and we all better have back-up. It’s a shame really, because, as I found out when I finally headed up to NYC, there are tons of jobs in fashion. You just have to find a teacher that will shove you in the right direction. For Carol Hannah, this was Sara Frankel.
“College of Charleston has nothing to do with fashion whatsoever. It was a tricky thing because I really wanted to develop my fashion illustration skills because they really weren’t there. I needed some help. Sarah actually worked with me to create a kind of independent study where we would go through old masters, and fashion, and art through the ages and just practiced and practiced and practiced. It was really great. It was very encouraging. It’s funny because a lot of the techniques that she used to teach us in class, like you know, not to be precious about things, not to be to attached to it: Warming up by doing something very quickly, and if you get stuck do a quick 10 minute session of something. Those are things that I do every day. Like before I go to bed. I usually take the last 15 minutes of my day to drape something new. And I don’t have to be committed to it. I may take it apart the next morning. It’s that same exercise of kind of loosening up and not over thinking it. In an indirect way she really helped me develop some of my skills”
She is certainly making the most of her skills with a presence on Etsy, the best place to find and buy hand-made items on line, or anywhere else for that matter. I asked if she would continue to sell there, now that she has her own web page, http://carol-hannah.com/. “You know, I haven’t decided yet. I have mixed feelings on it. I do intend to put up an e-commerce section on my web site, but there is something about Etsy that I really like and it’s that they really promote artistry, and I think it’s important, because there are Gaps on every corner. Old Navy is so cheap, you can buy pants for $4.” She goes on to say “It’s a nice way to really get yourself out there. Honestly, I started doing Etsy not all that long ago, and I have sold dresses to people all over the world. It’s crazy! Even before our names were released for being on the show I actually got like some, press from Lucky magazine through Etsy. I think it’s a great thing. I definitely support it.” There’s that word "crazy" again. But really, the woman is only 24. Of course it’s crazy.
Sometimes it just looks crazy, like in her home visit video for Project Runway. On the surface, it looked like she was living out of her car, and indeed there were comments on Youtube that expressed dismay that she should be on the streets. However, if you looked in her storage unit, you’d see things that simply HAD to have recently had a home. Expensive things: a cutting table, a large industrial sewing machine, her rack of samples. I had my theory about her plight, and happily I was proven correct. “I was getting ready to move. I was actually planning on moving to New York before the whole Project Runway thing came about. At the time that they filmed that …there was like a 2-week period between when my lease ended and when I was supposed to be moving, and then I found out I made the show.” So there you go, She was simply in idle mode for a couple of weeks.
She has not been idling since Project Runway. Carol Hannah is doing 3 lines now: bridal (her new launch), the regular cocktail /party dresses she has always loved, and daytime and very wearable knitwear jersey dresses that are currently popping up on her back, and on Etsy. Better get them now, folks! Get them, and tuck them away so you can say you have a Carol Hannah original. She has places to go, and she has a plan to unfold—one that addresses how she found herself in this place and career. “I am hoping to take this experience and take this company and take it past fashion. I think it’s because I started getting into this because I was insecure as a kid and I know what it feels like to have a lot of pressure there. I have done a lot of research on fashion on self-esteem and self-image of young girls. The facts here are very scary, and I really want to be able to build a successful company so that I can partner up with groups that are trying to do something about that. I don’t want to just make dresses and sell them, and that’s it. Like, I really wanna make a difference and give back, and offset some of those effects the fashion industry can have.”
If anyone can do this, Carol Hannah can. Pretty good for a nerd, huh?
More interviews:
Project Runway Designers Unveiled
For more info:Carol Hannah Whitfield Fashion Designer on YouTube, Lifetime, Delight by design, Charleston City Paper, Model Mayhem, Charleston Magazine,
Comments
Slideshow photos are mislabeled. Look at the sign in the back ... these were all from Charleston Fashion Week, not Savannah. FYI.
And Westside is not in Charleston.
Whoops! JLT You are so right. It's corrected now.
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