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The 37-year-old Sheldon High School graduate detoured from his practical career path, veering into the world of high fashion, moving to New York and eventually landing a spot on the show, which begins streaming tonight.
As a senior at Sheldon High School, Bi Pham worked on paper dresses and Barbie doll outfits in a fashion design elective, taping and gluing together classroom couture. He loved it.
But as a Vietnamese immigrant kid in Oregon who loved fashion design, when it came time to pick a college major, he followed his parents’ advice and skewed practical.
“They go, because we’re Asian, ‘Go study something that can make money,’” he said in a phone interview with Lookout. “OK, fine, I’ll do dentistry.”
Two decades later, Pham, 37, is now on one of fashion design’s flashiest pulpits. He’s one of 22 designers competing on this season of “Project Runway,” the fashion competition television show that catapulted designer Christian Siriano to celebrity status and made a well-known catchphrase out of former host Tim Gunn’s advice to “Make it work.”
Though the New York City-based designer, who has experience working for Dior, running his own store and making samples, left behind dentistry, a clinician’s hand is at work on his projects.
Pham’s designs, he said, have a clear throughline to his STEM background: he’s a technical thinker, marrying a dentist’s precision and a designer’s passion in service of sleek, “very clean, very light” ready-to-wear and custom looks.
He said that he hopes his “Project Runway” appearance is a point of pride for Eugene and Oregon as a whole, and evidence to his parents that his pivot from dentistry was the right choice.
“When I changed and moved my family, they questioned me. ‘Why are you doing this? You have your whole life here.’” Pham recalled. “Being on the show, I hope they know this is a viable career that I can thrive in.”
High fashion from Oregon?
Pham’s path to “Project Runway” was not a straightforward one.
He was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, and immigrated with his family to the United States. At first, the family stayed with relatives in McMinnville before moving to Eugene, where Pham finished middle school and went to high school.
Then he moved to Corvallis for six years, studying in Oregon State University’s predental program, two of them part-time as he dealt with the impact of his mother’s death while he was in college.
But after graduating, he paused before applying to dental schools. He recalled his mindset at the time: “I don’t know if I love dentistry, and this is my only life.”
Instead, he went for another program: fashion school at the Art Institute of Portland for two years, before that college suddenly closed at the end of 2018.
Even if the school had remained open, the Beaver State was not the ripest terrain for the elegance and drama of haute couture.
Many of his classmates from that time went on to careers in sportswear, at places like Nike and Adidas, which didn’t mesh with Pham’s aesthetic sensibilities.
“In Oregon, high fashion is not a thing there,” he said. “Well, not yet, at least.”
So, at the end of 2019, he packed up and left Oregon for New York City to attend a two-year program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, only for the COVID-19 pandemic to disrupt the in-person, design workroom education he had moved across the country for. He sewed over Zoom, turned to YouTube and books, and made the most of it.
“I knew no one here,” he said. “I had to make it work.”
After building his New York fashion career, working at Dior, opening and selling his own store, making samples for other designers, someone reached out with a question.
Would he want to audition for “Project Runway”? The answer: Of course.
Competing on ‘Project Runway’
Pham couldn’t share details of how the season played out — the first episode airs tonight, Thursday, July 9 — but he said the experience was stressful. He loved it.
“I’m used to stress,” he said. “I don’t mind stress.”
This season packed the competition with 22 designers, the most competitors ever on “Project Runway,” in honor of the show’s 22nd season.
Standing out in a crowded room, Pham said, was a combination of his piece being clean and well-constructed, while leaning into his sillier side and cracking jokes with the other contestants. (Often about the judges, including host Heidi Klum, Elle magazine editor-in-chief Nina García, celebrity stylist Law Roach and supermodel Tyra Banks.)
He said the highlight of his experience was just meeting the other designers, even though they were in a high-stakes competition.
“They are so nice. Oh my God, they are so nice,” he said. “Except for one or two.”
Pham said he found friendship in the workroom with fellow contestant Bao Tranchi, also a Vietnamese American designer. At first, he mistook her for a long-lost someone-or-other: “The first time that I saw her, I was like, ‘How do I know you, like family? Friend? How do I know you?”
He said that he hopes his “Project Runway” appearance is a point of pride for Eugene, which does not get much homegrown national television attention.
“I just want the towns that I grew up in, Eugene and Oregon as a whole, to be proud we have a designer on this big show,” he said. “Finally, like, ‘I see someone from Oregon.’ Hopefully some kids in Oregon can see, ‘Oh, I can do it too.’”
The new season of “Project Runway” premieres tonight, Thursday, July 9 on Freeform, and will stream shortly after on Hulu and Disney+, followed by weekly airings.
