CGG: So Kevin, tell us how you got involved with the Rachael Ray event.

Kevin Christiana: So my friend who I grew up with, he called me. He knew I was struggling bartending; he knew I was hating it. And he said, “Listen, I’m the head carpenter at the Rachael Ray show. You need work. If you want to make a certain bundle a day basically doing nothing, come with me one day a week!” I’m like, “Define nothing.” So he said, “Literally, you move a TV here and there and maybe we build some stuff.” And I like building stuff, it’s cool. So I started working with him as a stagehand/carpenter and it just kind of escalated into getting to know everybody, getting to know Rachael, getting to know the wardrobe stylists. And it was a lot of the guys that work as stagehands, they’re just union guys, just like my cousin who's from Jersey doing construction. They're big guys who go home to their families, and I’m the guy with tattoos with the funny hat on and the tight pants. So I got made fun of, naturally. And people just started asking, “What does he really do?” And then it kind of just snowballed.

CGG: So how did you get involved specifically with Rachael Ray’s wedding dress special? How did your name come across in that?

KC: It actually just kind of evolved in a way where if you want to see something happen in your life that was so fast-- where you were just at one point so low in the totem pole and then just excelled to something that you wanted to do. When I worked on the Rachael Ray show the first thing I said was, “I want to be on this show.” So I set a little bit of a goal. It was just my own goal. I didn’t talk about it and it kind of just came to fruition. And once I got cast for Project Runway, the producers came up to me, and Rachael came up to me and they said, “Why didn’t you tell us?” And I said, “I couldn’t; I was under a disclosure agreement. I couldn’t say anything!” So they said, “Well we want to do something with you as soon as we can.”

So it just kind of turned into this whole thing where I became friends with the producers and Rachael’s husband who is a musician. I do a lot of menswear in fashion with musicians. And I started becoming friends with her husband and I went to his gigs, and it became more intimate off-set to be friends with Rachael and everyone around her. And I pushed myself. Rachael reminds me of one of my cousins from back home. And obviously with anyone who’s of that caliber, if you’re just real to her she’s real back. She’s a normal person deep down inside.

So I did the first segment with her-- I made her a dress and a jacket for Valentine’s Day; it was my first challenge. They liked the whole segment. We had a great time; we had great chemistry. And then the producers were thinking about what else to do, and then the wedding dress thing came up because they wanted to do some kind of wedding dress miracle. And they basically sent a commercial out. And the commercial said, “If you have a wedding dress drama or anything that’s crazy”—if you’re getting a wedding dress made and the store burnt down—a serious story.

And this girl sent the story in. Her best friend’s mom was making a wedding dress and she got diagnosed with cancer and she couldn’t make it. So that story was touching. The girl was amazing; she’s so sweet. And we chose her. So it was this whole “Rachael sent to me save the day” almost kind of thing. It was almost like just being a kid and wanting to be a superhero for once in your life—it was that moment. And it was so touching.

If you go to the one segment I did before that, it was very uppity-up. Rachael and I were having a good time, and all of a sudden it was the clippings, the footage was a woman going through chemo! And it hit so hard. And finally for once I understand why I’m in this business. And if I could touch people’s hearts the way I did with that woman and the girl who wore the wedding dress, I could have that feeling for the rest of my life.

CGG: Kevin, you’re original art is menswear. So what was it like coming into this and designing a complete wedding gown, literally the most important article of clothing of a woman’s life?

KC: I would say it’s too much pressure. I would say I can’t speak for women. You know, I’m not a woman; so I would assume that a lot of girls deep down inside would think that their wedding day is going to be this moment that they’ve been thinking about forever. And even though they may not want to get married, eventually they just dream about that wedding day. And to be responsible to make them the best they’ve ever looked in their entire life—it’s a lot of pressure! It’s very intimate. You don’t want to let them down! And I in making this wedding dress spent 10 hours a day just sewing lace on, hands-on lace by hand; and pinning myself. My fingers-— at one point I had a speck of blood on the dress. I was freaking out. And you’re moving this ten yard dress from factory to home or whatever, and it gets dirty on the bottom and you freak out! So it was a lot of pressure. Honestly, I’m never making a wedding dress again. Ever.

CGG: So what advice do you have for a woman that doesn’t really have that much money to spend on her wedding dress? She’s working on a budget but at the same time she wants to feel glamorous, she wants to feel like the most beautiful woman. What are some eco-friendly tips you can give for her to use to invest in this wedding dress?

KC: Honestly I would take up someone who you know really well who’s been married before and who’s close to you. Maybe you could say to them, “I really want your wedding dress if that’s possible.” That’s one way to recycle it. Other than that, go on eBay, or try to find someone who has a vintage wedding dress; take that shell, have a tailor or a seamstress mold it to your body. You’ll have the most intimate wedding dress on the planet. There are ways of doing it to make it your own. You don’t have to go to these mayhem crazy sample sales from Vera Wang and whoever else designs wedding dresses who are really famous. There were so many names that I had to dig up, but right now, Vera Wang is the corner of marketing it. But I mean these girls are going to sample sales and fighting each other to get this one dress; it’s all just wrong! It’s like the same thing with a diamond—it doesn’t really matter! What matters is, if you feel good in this dress and if it’s made for you, trust me you’ll feel much better in it. You will.

CGG: So you did this for a woman who’s best friend’s mother was affected by cancer. Do you know anyone personally who’s been affected by cancer?

KC: Personally, my family doesn’t have a huge history of cancer, but one of my friend’s sisters passed away last week from breast cancer, and she worked with me at the restaurant where I used to bartend. The restaurant that I bartend at is like my family in New York. And we did this huge fundraiser. She’s been fighting breast cancer for five years. She was diagnosed after her last child, and her last child came out perfect. And we did plenty of fundraisers for her. She’s the biggest sweetheart who would do anything for anybody and she happened to be taken away from us and it was very sad. So that’s touched me the most, and I’m going to do anything in my power to make sure that her soul and life are still remembered.

And the first thing I’m doing is in Rachael Ray magazine, I’m doing a “pass the plate” campaign for KitchenAid that raises money for breast cancer research. And I’m doing that actually this week. You have to come up with your favorite recipe and obviously I’m doing tomato sauce. And they want me to give a heart-felt story about something that was really close to me, like the same question you asked me. And that was the closest person to me that passed away from breast cancer (because KitchenAid is representing breast cancer.) So basically celebrities pass the plate, they show pictures of it, and that whole campaign raises money to raise awareness for breast cancer.