Project Runway's Jailbird Sings

Kenley Collins, America’s favorite infamous cat-hurling designer, talks about her debut collection at Fashion Week, her next reality show, and what she learned behind bars.

It’s been a busy year for 26-year-old designer Kenley Collins, the wickedly talented Project Runway finalist, alleged spousal abuser, and aspiring fashion star.

She developed a clothing line showcasing her unique style, a mixture of vintage rockabilly and 1940s' coquette, which she plans to show next month at New York’s Fashion Week. She began filming a new reality show, which follows the designer and her retinue (including publicist and personal attorney) around town. She built a Web site. And—oh yeah—she got into an epic, relationship-ending brawl one morning last spring, in which she allegedly hurled a number of items, including a cat, at her sleeping ex-fiancé and which led to her arrest and two days behind bars.

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“Jail inspired me!” Collins says from a swivel-chair in her Brooklyn studio. She wears black ballet flats, cigarette-cut jeans, a sheer white button-up top and her trademark siren-red lipstick. “It made me appreciate freedom. As soon as I got out I made a kick-ass line and did a photo shoot with 10 of my pieces. Everyone kept saying I put new meaning in the phrase ‘pussy-whipped.’” She giggles and takes a spin in her seat.

“After two days they let me out on my own recognizance,” she says. “I mean, listen, nobody got hurt. He really just didn’t want me to break up with him, that’s all. Looking back I’m like, ‘Huh? Did that really happen?’”

The whole year has been something of a blur.

“Everyone kept saying I put new meaning in the phrase ‘pussy-whipped.’”

Before the fall of 2008, when Collins rocketed to stardom on Runway’s fifth season, the Pompano Beach, Florida, native and daughter of a tugboat captain lived a quiet, anonymous life. As a child, Collins hung out on docks with sailors, took family gambling trips and dreamed of being a designer someday. “I mean, dude, I was always hanging out with a bunch of guys on a boat,” she says. “Other people, like, go to the Caribbean or wherever on family vacations—we went to Vegas. I would be out there gambling with my dad! Vegas is our place, man.”

She got more serious about fashion at the age of 16, when she began scouring vintage clothing stores and creating her own looks. “Really, I taught myself to sew,” she says. “I did take classes at Sew Fast Sew Easy for a bit, but just to refine what I already knew. When I was just a young girl I was taking vintage clothes and reconstructing them—pairing tops with Contempo Casual pants and modeling my designs with my best friend Jillian. I just, like, did it.”

Collins studied marketing at Florida State University and then moved to New York, taking a sales job at midprice clothing emporium Missy Wear. Then last year, Collins got herself cast on Project Runway, clawing her way to the finals with a combination of genuine talent and unchecked bravado that steadily drove audiences and her castmates batty. Over the course of the season, she dressed in 1940s-style frocks and elaborate hairpins. She ticked off the judges by constantly fighting back against their criticism and at one point set off a feud by designing a wedding dress a little too evocative of Alexander McQueen. She finished as the second-runner-up.