Christian Siriano Is Painting His Pandemic Feelings

For some, it was the sourdough starter kit. Others took to tie-dyeing. As the worst of the pandemic set in last spring, Christian Siriano picked up his paint brushes.

For the designer, holed up in a new home in Westport, Connecticut, painting was a much-needed distraction from a fashion industry in crisis. “I was in the moment like, ‘Oh, my God, fashion’s over.’ I’m going out of business,’” Siriano told Vogue by phone. His wondrous world of red carpets and weddings suddenly ceased to exist; some 100 of his brides canceled in 2020. Siriano considered the uncertain fate of his employees. “Fashion is a really, really, really hard business,” he said. “It’s pretty brutal.”

Painting, however, felt pure, and freeing for Siriano, 35, who has roots in fine art after sketching and sculpting his way through college at American Intercontinental University in London. “It’s a stress reliever, a hobby, something that reminds me of when I was growing up,” he told me. “There’s not so much pressure on me.”

So Project Runway’s proudest son painted the darkness he felt, in some 30 paintings and 60 sketches that he shared publicly for the first time on Sunday in a show at Westport’s Swoon boutique. Siriano’s favorite: a large-scale, sculptural black piece he created about a month into the pandemic, replete with muslin plucked from his studio, made to look as if a dress had been sliced and splayed on canvas. “It was a darker time,” he said. (The “graphic and grounded” work hung for a while on the white walls of his entryway; now it’s headed to a client’s.)

Siriano’s art show was a combination of moody abstracts and paintings inspired by the famous dresses he designs for the likes of Lady Gaga and Oprah. Backstage Chaos is a rendering of Siriano’s friend and muse Coco Rocha in a black, tulle, draped gown, against a backdrop of swirling, chaotic color. (“I’m not a portrait painter,” he said, but “it always emulates someone.”) In another, Siriano paints a dress he aspires to make in real life, with a black sweetheart bodice and a skirt of fiery red, blue, and black. “When you’re painting, you can manipulate colors so easily, whereas in fabric it’s quite hard,” he said. “I now need to figure out how to make that ombré of color.” As the pandemic relented, Siriano’s work turned lighter, with streaks of golden orange and cool blue, including a recent piece based on Siriano’s new fashion collection inspired by the Italian coast. He has fond memories of visiting Positano, Amalfi, and Naples with his Italian family.

More than a year after he began pouring his despair into art, Siriano’s brand is experiencing a surge. “Every wedding is back on,” he said. “Red carpets are back.” So is high drama. “I’ve had brides that are like, ‘Never mind, I don’t want a simple dress. I want a ball gown. I want a train.’” But Siriano—who converted his studio into a mask factory during the throes of COVID-19—hasn’t loss his sense of purpose as one of fashion’s most inclusive designers, the one who raised his hand to dress Leslie Jones for the premiere of Ghostbusters in 2016 when the actress said no other designers would, who provided the pioneering Billy Porter an innovative tuxedo-cum-gown for the 2019 Oscars, and who casts models in a full spectrum of sizes on his runway.

“I really decided a while ago that it wasn’t enough just to make beautiful clothes,” Siriano said. “If I was gone tomorrow, what would I leave behind?” He describes himself as instinctual and reactionary (see famously tweeting back at Jones when she issued a cry for help on Twitter). “Brands that, two years later, decide to dress curvy women or have plus-size—that’s not really instinctual.” What compels Siriano to bring body diversity to an industry in which it’s still sorely lacking? Life experience. “The fact that now we go up to a size 28 or, sometimes a size 32, is because I grew up with a mom who was curvy,” he said. “I went to a high school in Baltimore where I was a minority,” among a predominantly Black student body. All the “amazing Black talent,” he says, “all of those things, I think, helped me understand the world a bit more.”

Siriano has similarly held fast to his Project Runway roots. Siriano is to Project Runway as Kelly Clarkson is to American Idol—the Bravo reality show’s proudest export—and he doesn’t shy away from the series that helped launch him as a spritely 20-year-old quote machine. He has replaced Tim Gunn as the show’s mentor and also serves as an executive producer. “I was a kid when I auditioned for that show,” he said. “In the beginning, it was hard to move on, but I feel very proud that I was able to turn it into a very successful, multimillion-dollar business.”

And when the industry feels like too much, there’s always his creative release. Siriano’s interest in art and interiors has spawned an eponymous interior design studio. “It could be a Sunday night at one in the morning,” Siriano said, “and I’ll do four paintings.”

Originally Appeared on Vogue