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Kenley Collins Might Do a Plus-Size Line, Denies Samples for Kelly Rowland

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?”

Kenley Collins Might Do a Plus-Size Line, Denies Samples for Kelly Rowland