Onetime jailbird Kenley Collins might become a plus-size designer. Fresh off presenting her eponymous line at the MAGIC trade show in Las Vegas last week, the season-five Project Runway alum told us last night at Paper magazine’s 25th birthday celebration at the New York Public Library that the plus-size market has shown the greatest interest in her collection so far. She has yet to decide whether she’ll do it, though. “We’ll see,” she said. “There were five plus-size buyers that really liked my stuff. So I have them on my mailing list and I’m sending them line sheets and following up with them and seeing what happens. I feel like it’s a great market and I’d rather do that than wedding dresses.” After designing a wedding dress for a Project Runway challenge, requests poured in for custom gowns. “I did it for a year and it was good money, and now I’m broke. And I’m tempted to be in hell again and make another wedding dress,” she told us — and then reconsidered. “I fucking hated it. I’m not doing it anymore. I hate it. I’d rather slit my wrists. I did it for a year. And I’m not going back.”
Collins also revealed that celebrities are starting to express interest in her work. “Kelly Rowland’s stylist contacted me to pull some samples — just for anything, for events, for the VMAs,” she said. “And I said, ‘I need my samples. I need them.’” She pondered, “I felt like, Isn’t that kind of betrayal of The Fashion Show, since she’s part of The Fashion Show and I’m part of Project Runway?”