FTM Fashion Week NC Season 9 is happy to start announcing this season’s Celebrity Designers bringing you a NYFW experience in person or via virtual on Saturday, October 23rd! The theme this year is: F.A.B. Extravaganza! Fashion, Art, & Business. Welcome Back Award-Winning Celebrity Designer and Farbe Magazine’s 2019 Designer of the Year: Michelle Collins-Windle CEO and Founder of MCW Original!
Michelle grew up as a happy go lucky little girl loving to laugh and read while living between Metter, GA and Bluffton, SC. Her passion for fashion was ignited when her grandmother purchased paper dolls to style and her mother encouraged her to play dress up in her heels, dresses, hats, and accessories. A little over seven years ago while volunteering at the Hem of His Garment thrift store, a $20 Kenmore sewing machine caught her attention. Side note: Michelle has been a volunteer at the Hem of His Garment Thrift Store in Swansboro, NC for over fifteen years. She didn’t set out to become the established fashion designer she is now today. She bought that sewing machine on a whim with the simple thought of teaching herself how to sew small projects.
Starting off creating handkerchiefs, bow ties, scarves for her husband and son to creating for herself matching neck collars, big bows, and scarves to wear at family outings and to church. These are not just plain colored creations. Michelle can give Crayola, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and The Lion King on Broadway a run for their money on creativity and match them on having an eye for detail. Utilizing bright bold colors, unique pattern combinations, materials, textures, and prints without fear has become one of her signature styles along with incorporating African prints in majority of her designs. That uniqueness is what caught the eye of everyone from the congregation to the pulpit, the runway, and now celebrity clients.
Bold is not just reflected in the color and pattern choices she chooses but being bold in an online crafting group garnered Michelle an opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind African print kimono for Black Panther jewelry designer, Douriean Fletcher in 2019. Fletcher wore the silk turquoise and burnt orange jungle leaf patterned kimono framed in black silk around the neck and wide sleeves to Leading Women Defined. An event founded by Debra L. Lee, former chairman and CEO of BET Networks. When asked how she was chosen to design for the Women of Marvel and Coming 2 America jewelry creator, Michelle said, “Douriean and I belong to a Black Girls Craft group, and she would share her awesome jewelry with us. I love her uniquely crafted well-structured body jewelry pieces. I stepped out on faith and reached out to her asking could I design something for her, and she said yes. The rest is history!" The next few months of exchanging body measurements and homing in on bringing her client's vision from a thought to a wearable reality transpired.
"We were able to create the look and feel she envisioned to attend an upcoming event hosted by Tina Knowles, Beyonce’s mother. I located different fabrics and sent it to her. She chose the African print and wore it to the Leading Women Defined conference that designer Ruth E. Carter attended as well. Ruth started liking different designs of mine on my social media pages after seeing Douriean’s kimono.”
For those who do not know, Ruth E. Carter is an Oscar Award Winning Costume Designer and a movie-industry legend known for being the first Black costume designer and second costume designer ever to have her name enshrined on The Hollywood Walk of Fame which occurred earlier this year. To receive a nod from established talented Black award-winning female designers is confirmation for Michelle and her brand MCW Original that the best is yet to come! She is still receiving sighting updates and pictures of the fashionable masks that protects the faces of former super model Cynthia Bailey and husband Mike Hill, a former sportscaster for ESPN Radio.
The last two years has proven to be a quick steady escalation in her fashion career with becoming an international brand. She has shipped her masks to South Korea and is designing custom outfits and matching facial masks for clients in Japan. Michelle has been scouted by Bravo’s Project Runway casting producer, Skyler Wahl after MCW Original debut at NYFW (New York City Fashion Week) in 2019. She recently has been invited to apply for Season 3 Making the Cut, Heidi Klum & Tim Gunn's fashion design competition show! MCW Original has been featured in several fashion magazines (Farbe, Voyage Dallas, Voyage LA, Voyage ATL, Sewn, Sheen Magazine, South Adventure, and Travel 2020 Summer Issue) and featured in local and national syndicated newspapers and news channels (WCTI Channel 12 News, WSAV Channel 3 Savannah, GA).
She has won several awards since 2019; Pretty Girls Rock Award, 3rd Annual W.O.E. (Woman of Empowerment) Fashion Show Winner, Farbe Magazine Designer of the Year for 2019, made the Top 3 Finalists for Farbe Magazine Designer of the Year for 2021, and is a She Exist Global Awards 2020-2021 Honoree. You can watch Michelle and the other finalists on Friday, October 22nd as the winners in each category is revealed at the Farbe Magazine 5th Annual Awards Gala. Return on Saturday, October 23rd and watch her models strut her latest fashion designs on the runway via a virtual LIVE link. The awards and fashion show will be streaming LIVE worldwide. Go to: www.ftmfashionweek.com to purchase your virtual tickets.
To learn more about MCW Original or to order your custom protective fashionable face coverings, signature pieces, and “unique to you” custom attire and accessories: Phone: 843-288-1077, Email: windlem024@gmail.com, Website: mcworiginal.com, and Facebook: MCWOriginal.