Straps of gray suspenders hang and sway, and honey-brown boots hustle as Anthony Ryan Auld hurries over to two models. Making final adjustments for 225‘s photo shoot of his spring 2014 line of Native American- and Origami-inspired clothes, the award-winning fashion designer is as visibly buoyant as his pants are hot pink.
“This is what I needed,” says the LSU alum. “It’s given me a project, a little goal to look forward to.”
It’s the dead center of summer, and a heat that even dark shade from the steely overhang of the Louisiana State Museum can’t defeat hugs Auld and his models as they move into position.
It’s just two weeks after his last round of chemotherapy, but he’s casual and playful on camera and off.
He spills over with ideas. He goofs.
“I tell friends I’m neutered now,” he says, joking about his recent surgery and rare second bout with testicular cancer. “I’m done. Of course, with cancer, ‘done’ never really means done for sure. But I—am—done.”
Gone is Auld’s trademark pulled-cotton Mohawk, replaced with a polka-dot ball cap slanted hip hop-style over his bald scalp.
He reminds Tate Tullier to be careful of certain angles as the photographer shoots.
“I’m 20 pounds heavier right now,” Auld says. “All the steroids and the water weight.”
Since winning Project Runway All Stars in January, Auld has designed dresses for Olympian Lolo Jones—”We helped revamp her image in a way”—Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles and Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin. He plans to work soon with Elle Fanning, another rising starlet, and he’s collaborating now on a new line with Nine West.
That global company could explode the Anthony Ryan label by early next year.
Auld is in New York City a few times each month, but he has made Baton Rouge his home, working out of a downtown studio he admits is currently too messy for visitors.
“It’s cool for Abigail [Breslin] to like my designs because that gets my name out there, but it’s a juggle,” Auld says. “I want my work to be wearable for regular people rather than just getting seen on the red carpet.”
Auld’s new, medium-price-point collection offers an intriguing answer to the question: What would fashion be like today if Christopher Columbus never landed in the Americas?
“It’s lots of bold colors and triangular shapes—just less ‘arts and craftsy’ than what you typically see in Native American stuff—but this is the tamer side of the collection,” says the Texas native, who is part Cherokee.
Auld is a descendent of Chief Philip Bowles, who, after being pushed through Missouri and Arkansas by white settlers, led his Texas Cherokees in a bloody last stand against relocation in southern Texas. Bowles died on the battlefield at age 83, fighting for hundreds of his people.
Auld has staked his claim in Louisiana for reasons beyond fashion. With a new non-profit group called ROAR, Auld aims to bring attention to, honor and design clothing for women who have faced all manner of struggle—from cancer and infertility to heart disease and more. Last spring, Auld and a group of LSU fashion design seniors created garments for 22 women chosen for overcoming these struggles.
“It’s about celebrating a life adversity that you’ve overcome,” Auld says. “Why not be vocal about it?”
Dr. Mary Kathryn Rodrigue is the founder of The Wellness Studio in Baton Rouge and a successful non-profit starter who is co-organizing ROAR with Auld and other partners.
She’s been to New York City and Paris with the designer and his Project Runway pal Joshua McKinley and watched as both were nearly overwhelmed physically by crowds of fans.
“It can be like the Beatles—all the attention they get for the show,” she says. “But that doesn’t affect [Auld]. He’s the same person after Project Runway that he was before—which is incredibly warm and giving.”
Rodrigue sat next to Auld during his last rounds of chemotherapy. She saw his perseverance up close.
“He’s a great example that you don’t become a different person once you’re diagnosed with cancer,” she says. “Ryan’s still an open book, and he’s not slowing down.”
Chemotherapy makes a lot of patients sick. Auld is thankful, he says, that he only got lethargic.
“It made me tired all the [expletive] time,” he recalls. “But I didn’t want that to take me off-track from where I’m going. It was just a little wrench in the engine.”
Auld likes Baton Rouge. Many of his friends and family are here. Instead of fleeing to New York or Los Angeles after becoming a TV star, he is excited about his decision to build a flourishing career from the same place it began.
When diagnosed with testicular cancer for a second time in April—something his doctor had not seen in a decade—Auld admits he was tempted to ask, “Why me?”
“I actually bought a mug with ‘Why me?’ on it to remind myself not to ask that question,” he says with a laugh. “It’s just something life threw at me, but you work to overcome it.”
As he seeks a longer-lasting purpose for his newly earned fame through ROAR and other charitable projects, Auld says he would hate it if his clothes failed to make a greater impact beyond the Project Runway acclaim, too; if they remained on the runway and never walked down the street; if they were never folded in drawers or hung in closets; never thrown on the dash before thrilling adventures; never admired on a first date or happily muddied on the fairgrounds at Jazz Fest; never traded back and forth by roommates or handed down to eager little sisters or present for the giggles and the tears that so often come from flipping through family photographs.
These are the things he hopes for his work. These will be his rewards.
