Liris Crosse Was Taped Into a Garbage Bag on Project Runway. She Just Walked for Christian Siriano at NYFW.

Christian Siriano's Spring/Summer 2027 show ran at Cipriani in New York this week, and Liris Crosse walked it — the booking this story reported as upcoming. Siriano dressed her in a tailored suit cut with a deep, center-split neckline and structured shoulder pads, as HelloBeautiful and The Rickey Smiley Morning Show each reported Friday, September 11, in matching pieces bylined Keyaira Boone. Neither outlet states the show's exact date; both name only the venue and the season.

Plus-size model Liris Crosse, 47, is walking five shows at New York Fashion Week, including one for Christian Siriano, People reported Friday, September 11, in a byline by Raven Brunner. "Some people said I would never work again because I spoke out. But I'm booked for five shows this New York Fashion Week," Crosse told the outlet. The exclusive names only Siriano among the five houses; the other four go unidentified.

The remark refers to what Crosse says happened weeks earlier on Project Runway Season 22, Episode 7, which aired on Bravo. During an unconventional-materials challenge, Crosse said, designer Bryan Barrientos asked her to walk in her bra and underwear draped in wires; she declined, and he taped her into a garbage bag instead — one she said still carried visible spray paint from having been on the workroom floor. "It just felt thoughtless. It felt like he just had no idea," Crosse said, according to TheGrio's August 26 account of her statement, adding that the design read as "thoughtless, unintentional and lazy" and that Barrientos "designed what he wanted and not for the model he had." On air, the same coverage reports, Nina Garcia said Crosse didn't look happy and guest judge Iman said she appeared miserable. "My spirit, in that moment, was broken," Crosse said. Per Crosse's own account, Barrientos has not reached out to her since the episode aired; no response from either him or Bravo appears in the public record.

The Siriano booking, at least, wasn't the industry rallying to her — by Crosse's own account to People, she made the ask herself, in person on the Project Runway set, after wanting the show for years. "I have wanted to walk his show for a little over a decade now. I've crashed his castings and have tried numerous times. So I just was like, 'You know what? What do I have to lose? Let me just ask one time,'" she said. Siriano's in-person reply, per Crosse: "I think we can make that happen." That exchange didn't book her a show on its own — Crosse told People she later couldn't reach him through Instagram DM, so she posted publicly to his account instead: "I mean it makes sense to me. Let's do this @CSiriano & show them how it's supposed to be done!" Siriano replied publicly hours later, she said: "See you there love! Fittings Friday and Saturday Hollie the casting director will be in touch!" Of the moment overall, she told People: "It almost feels like a Cinderella story because I've gone through so much within this industry and then we saw what happened this season, and now I'm having this moment where it's like I'm getting the glass slipper and I'm walking down the runway." That's a more specific, more honest story than pure vindication: a decade of asking, an encouraging but non-committal in-person reply, and a public social-media post that actually produced a fittings date.

This magazine's own audit of New York Fashion Week, published August 29, put a number on how rare that yes is. Vogue Business's Size Inclusivity Report found that across New York, London, Milan, and Paris for spring/summer 2026 — a four-city total, not a New York-only figure — 97.1 percent of the 9,038 runway looks shown were on models sized US 0 to 4, 2.0 percent were mid-size (US 6 to 12), and 0.9 percent were plus-size, US 14 and up. The national average dress size is 16/18. Refinery29 credited Siriano as one of only 10 designers who cast plus-size models on the most recent New York runway calendar at all, and he told the outlet plainly why: "Adding plus sizes to my line tripled my business. Why wouldn't you do that?!"

Casting and stocking aren't the same claim, and this desk's own reporting drew that line for Siriano specifically: his brand's own FAQ states that most production runs of the Christian Siriano Collection are ordered "up to size 18, as that is what our retailers order," with anything larger available only as a custom order placed one client at a time. A runway walk this week doesn't change that ceiling. It does mean one of the small handful of designers this magazine has already found still cutting past a 12 is the one who said yes to the model a competition contestant taped into a garbage bag.