When Bishme Cromartie returned to Project Runway for the show’s 20th season, the All Stars competition meant something different for him. Shortly before the show started filming, his sister, Chimere Faye Didley, had passed away. Cromartie was early in the grieving process when he arrived on set, dedicating one of his collections to Didley.
Project Runway model Jessica Millin in Bishme Cromartie. Makeup by Denise Medina. Assistant stylist London Carr.
“Once Project Runway contacted me, I told my sister that I was thinking about going, and I was nervous because I didn’t want to be away filming and then get bad news [about her]. She texted me and was just like, ‘You got this,’” he recalls. Looking back, Cromartie thinks participating in the show helped him channel his grief from a comfortable place. “I honestly didn’t care about winning,” he says. “I was just happy to escape and showcase that you can go through a traumatic time and actually use your gifts as fuel.”
The Baltimore native originally competed on Season 17, and has since created custom looks for Leslie Jones, Lizzo, and Coco Jones. His avant-garde streetwear aesthetic served him well this time around, where a string of wins in the back half of the season—including the pivotal “Freedom” challenge—helped him to ultimately claim first place. His victory comes at a propitious time, right before his first show at New York Fashion Week.
And now he has a whole new circle to exchange ideas and share resources with: his fellow contestants. “If you go into the competition [believing] everyone’s your enemy, you’re not thinking about the bigger picture,” he says. “If you go in realizing that you have something to offer people and they also have some knowledge that you can gain from them, then you build a lifetime-long friendship, a team, and a community.”
This story appears in the October 2023 issue of ELLE.
Features Editor
Adrienne Gaffney is the features editor at ELLE and previously worked at WSJ Magazine and Vanity Fair.