Designs on success
Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/232067/
Mabelvale resident Korto
Momolu-Briggs has been
making a name for herself for
several years, hosting New York-style fashion shows and creating custom outfits that were way out of the box for Arkansas. These sexy, flowing, African-flavored and full-figure-loving creations simultaneously radiated big-city sophistication and a sassy Bohemian flair. Operating a booth at The Art Scene Gallery and Art Market in North Little Rock, Momolu-Briggs enjoyed her local fame but dreamed of something bigger — competing on reality-TV series Project Runway. “Ever since watching the first episode, I’ve wanted to audition, but I didn’t feel I was ready... to put myself out there like that,” Momolu-Briggs says. “That’s why I waited so long to try out.” After a November visit by Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn to Little Rock to host a fashion show at Dillard’s in Park Plaza, Momolu-Briggs made up her mind to take the plunge. But, she told herself, she’d audition only once: If she didn’t make the cut this season, she would not try again.
She made the cut.
On July 14, Bravo TV announced that Momolu-Briggs would be one of 16 contenders on season five of the seven-time Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning reality series.
Hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum, featuring designer Michael Kors and Elle magazine fashion editor Nina Garcia as judges and also featuring style expert Gunn, the show presents competing fashion designers who take on weekly fashion challenges. Season five will also include celebrity guest judges Natalie Portman, Brooke Shields, LL Cool J, RuPaul, Sandra Bernhard, Diane von Furstenberg, Cynthia Rowley and others.
Contestants will be eliminated week by week; finalists will show their own lines during New York Fashion Week before a winning designer is chosen. That winning designer will receive an editorial feature in an issue of Elle; $ 100, 000 in seed money from Tresemme hair care, a 2009 Saturn Vue Hybrid and the opportunity to pitch his creations on shopping Web site Bluefly. com.
This marks the show’s last season in New York and on Bravo; next season it moves to Los Angeles and Lifetime.
Momolu-Briggs, 33, goes by her maiden name as a designer and just Korto on Project Runway. A native of Liberia, she has lived in Canada and several U. S. cities. She’s a graduate of L’academie des Couturiers in Ottawa and has also studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Her husband, Arkansas native Benny Briggs, brought her to the Little Rock area; the couple have a daughter, Alyse. Momolu-Briggs auditioned April 5 in New York, the final destination of a four-city casting tour. “I just went up there with my A-game,” she said. She got in line about 7 a. m. and went in between 1: 30 and 2 p. m.
A CUT ABOVE Contestant hopefuls were required to present three designs, along with a picture portfolio and a completed 30-page questionnaire that mined for any facts that would help casting judges get to know them and their personalities. Momolu-Briggs immediately distinguished herself by bringing three models — one to show each outfit. One of the first questions she was asked was, “Who are all these people ?” “ A lot of my clothes, to me, don’t look good on hangers” so she wanted to have real people show each outfit, Momolu-Briggs says. “I think I was the only one who had three models.” Her three pieces were two coat dresses and a winter-white silk kimono dress. She accessorized each piece with a handbag and jewelry, which she also designed. “I made everything but the panties and the shoes,” she says she told the panel. “My accessories are a huge part of what I do as well.”
The coat dress that she believes gave her the “in” was a piece she had presented earlier at a fashion show in Little Rock. She’d borrowed it back from a customer who’d bought the garment. The customer felt it would be the one to get Momolu-Briggs on the show, she recalled. And, sure enough, the panel commented on how well-made the garment was. That meant a lot to Momolu-Briggs, who’d struggled with her seamstress skills all through fashion school.
Although Momolu-Briggs is happy to have gotten on Project Runway, she feels empathy for those who didn’t. “There were a lot of dreams being crushed in the line,” she says.
“You just have to believe that what you have, it’s going to shine and it’s going to show,” she says. “I believe in God, I believe in Jesus and I believe that nothing is by accident.” She recalls her own painful experiences of getting close to a career goal... then falling short. But you have to “sow your seeds” and go through the bad things so the good things can come, she says.
She remembers talking to a girl from Kenya, a hopeful just out of fashion school, and telling her “‘ I see you in me. ’” She encouraged the girl to keep practicing her craft and learning from her mistakes. The girl asked Momolu-Briggs why she looked so calm and cool. “I said ‘Sweetheart, I’ve been to hell and back, ’” explaining that her confidence was born of her trials.
“It’s all paying off now. I’ve fulfilled one of my dreams. I’ve gotten to Project Runway.... Out of all the people who tried out, I was one of the 16 who shined.”
Momolu-Briggs describes her first week on the set of the show as surreal. After meeting the first challenge, it hit her that, yes, she was really there, and she was able to focus, she says.
“It was exciting. It was everything I thought it would be.”
She recalls with amusement the times she was told she’d be going to “the next round.” When she was told this, “I thought that was it” — she was very excited. “What you don’t know is that there are many rounds.”
KEEPING THE SECRET Momolu-Briggs says that her selection for the show was a tough secret to keep from her customers and friends. “So many people were so happy for me when they found out I was auditioning,” she says. “To keep so many people in the dark” was difficult. Project Runway airs at 8 p. m. Wednesdays. Episode 1, which aired Wednesday, revealed the contestants’ efforts to make outfits from unconventional materials. This week, they are “forced to think green” for Episode 2. All of the episodes have been filmed except the finale. Although the show is popular, it has its skeptics. “Have any [Project Runway winners ] really found fame ?” asks one commenter at a Bravo Web page announcing season five. “I'd love to see a follow-up program on the winners and losers and how this show has helped [or not ] their careers.” Momolu-Briggs isn’t worried. She feels her career has already been helped. “I’m already a local celebrity,” she says, adding that when she came home she found there was a drink named after her — the Kortotini — at Scallions restaurant, 5110 Kavanaugh Blvd., Little Rock.
Whether she actually wins the competition matters not so much to her as the fact that she made the show. “I’m excited to see, once it’s all over, the opportunities that are going to come my way. ’’ She plans to use her “ 15 minutes” of fame to “really show people what I am about and who I am.”
Those who watch the show will see who Momolu-Briggs is as a designer and will see her just being herself. Anything on the show “is me,” she says. “I don’t regret anything I did... I don’t have any embarrassing moments.” In fact, she says, she has lost 10 pounds due to the demands of the show. “It doesn’t get any better than that.
“ You have different people from all walks of life, different backgrounds, different levels of design,” she says. “It puts you in a position of having to dig deep, ask yourself how you can do better and show something you haven’t done before. It just made you get creative... and I love it.”
The show has garnered Momolu-Briggs some new friends, but she has not forgotten the old ones.
Their support, she says, was the root of her confidence for the audition and the show.
“I just want to thank everybody that supported me,” Momolu-Briggs says. “I just love Arkansas for supporting me. I’m not from here... but I do feel like a native child.”
And now, thanks to Project Runway, her talent shines well beyond the state’s borders.