Chloé said nothing. She simply ground the dried petals of her rafflesia into a foul, brownish-purple paste. The smell made the camera crew gag. But as she dipped her muslin, something miraculous happened. The color wasn't ugly. It was deep, bruised velvet—the color of a royal sunset after a plague.
The silence was electric.
Brandon Maxwell leaned forward, squinting.
The lights dimmed. A low, sub-bass drone filled the tent. Model Sasha walked out, not with a model’s glide, but with a heavy, deliberate stomp. The gown was a thundercloud. The purple was so deep it looked black, and the mycelium threads dragged behind her like a living root system. The bodice was a structural cage of twisted, dyed burlap that mimicked the flower’s mottled, fleshy texture. Project Runway - Season 19
“Oh, honey,” whispered Meg, the season’s queen bee, peeking at Chloé’s mood board. “That’s… brave. Very goth funeral chic.” Her own design, a gossamer dream inspired by the Middlemist Red camellia, was already taking shape in expensive, pre-dyed silks.
Runway day. The guest judge was a legend: Iris van Herpen.
She worked through the night, ignoring Meg’s snide comments about “composting on the runway.” She shredded old burlap coffee sacks, dyed them the corpse-flower purple, and wove them into a sculptural exoskeleton. From the center of the bodice, she let hundreds of raw, undyed linen threads spill out like mycelium roots. The silhouette was massive, angry, and utterly captivating. Chloé said nothing
Meg’s face, backstage, was a perfect mask of horror.
When Sasha reached the end of the runway, Chloé had programmed a final reveal. The model pressed a hidden button on the hip. The mycelium threads retracted, pulled by tiny fishing-line pulleys, revealing a second layer beneath: a short, sharp cocktail dress made entirely of mirrored shards—shattered compact discs she’d salvaged and dyed a pale, ghostly yellow. It was the maggot-like center of the corpse flower, turned into a dazzling disco ball of defiance.
Chloé had drawn the Rafflesia arnoldii —the corpse flower. It was enormous, parasitic, and reeked of decaying meat. While the other designers romanticized the delicate Lady’s Slipper or the ghostly Franklinia, Chloé was stuck with a botanical nightmare. But as she dipped her muslin, something miraculous happened
Elaine Welteroth gasped.
And for the first time that season, the monster in the workroom—the ticking clock—didn’t sound like a predator. To Chloé, it sounded like a heartbeat.
“In fashion,” Christian said, placing a hand on her shoulder as the credits rolled, “everyone wants to be a rose. But the thing about roses? They get pruned. The corpse flower? You just have to stand back and watch people faint.”
The challenge was deceptively cruel: Avant-Garde Bloom . Each designer had to create a high-fashion look inspired by a single endangered flower. The catch? All fabrics and trims had to be dyed using natural pigments derived from that same flower.
“Designers, you have one day ,” Christian Siriano announced, his blazer sharper than his wit. “Make it work. Or don’t.”