Last night’s episode of Project Runway (Season 18, Episode 6), titled There is Only One You, featured Fernando Garcia as guest judge.
In the latest episode of the show, the designers were tasked with creating designs of their choosing based on inspiration derived from the stories and emotions linked with their family histories.
Chelsey Carter emerged as the winner in the challenge, while Shavi Lewis ended up eliminated.
Chelsey’s design featured a blue varsity jacket mini dress inspired by her family’s history of black educators.
Shavi Lewis’s design was a lounge singer dress inspired by ’40s fashion style. The design had construction issues, and this contributed to his elimination. Lewis apologized to his model, saying “sorry to embarrass you like this on TV.”
A notable story effort came from Sergio Guadarrama, whose pink-colored cotton cocktail dress, inspired by his Mexican immigrant heritage, was embroidered with the names of six immigrant children who died at the border.
Who is Fernando Garcia?
Fernando Garcia is a Dominican-born designer who co-founded the fashion label MONSE with Korean-born Canadian designer Laura Kim. MONSE (pronounced mon-say) is named after Garcia’s mother, according to Net-A-Porter.
Garcia studied architecture at the University of Notre Dame. He interned at Oscar de la Renta in New York after graduating from Notre Dame and rose quickly at the fashion house to the position of senior designer.
Garcia and Laura Kim met as members of the design team at Oscar de la Renta. Kim rose to the position of design director at Oscar de la Renta.
The MONSE brand debuted in the Spring/Summer of 2016 and quickly gained recognition and acclaim as a leading fashion brand stocked at top boutiques and department stores across the country and overseas.
Garcia and Kim were later appointed co-creative directors of Oscar de la Renta in September 2016. They replaced Peter Copping, the former creative director at Oscar de la Renta, who left in July of 2016.
Garcia and Kim were nominated for the CFDA Swarovski Award in the womenswear category in 2016.
Garcia also appeared in the Spanish thriller film Marshland (2014), the Spanish drama film Unit 7 (2012), and the biographical thriller The Man with Thousand Faces (2016).
Project Runway airs on Bravo on Thursdays at 9/8c.