celebrate korto momolu cover and story

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66 Celebrating the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Arkansas FEBRUARY 2009

DESIGNING WomanBEhind thE sEAms with ARkAnsAs’

photos by Philip thomas of nOVO studioand Josh Barron of Barron Photography

by kristal kuykendall

YOU nEVER knOw hOw EVEnts thAt hAPPEn AcROss thE glOBE mAY shAPE YOUR FUtURE.

You never know how events that happen across the globe may shape

your future.that’s what Korto Momolu-Briggs, Mabelvale-based

fashion designer and recent runner-up on Bravo TV’s show

“Project Runway,” found out when she was just a girl, a burgeoning

fashionista with big dreams and even bigger hopes.

Korto, (pronounced “Cut-TOE”) ,who had just graduated high school in

Canada at the tender age of 16, already was using her art background

to sketch dresses and other fashion-oriented items. When Korto

was just 15, her art teacher had suggested she consider going

into fashion design. So upon graduation, she applied — and was

accepted — to a highly regarded fashion design college, the Ryerson

Polytechnic University in Toronto. Then, the bad news came: her father,

who worked for the government in Liberia where Korto was born, had to flee

a worsening civil war there with nothing but the clothes on his back.

“He ended up having to escape, and we lost everything,” recalls Korto,

who uses her maiden name, Momolu, on her designs. “We couldn’t claim

any of our property or assets, so we had to start completely from scratch in

Canada. My parents told me we couldn’t afford for me to go to Ryerson, and

because we weren’t official residents of Canada, I couldn’t apply for assistance

for college.” Korto ended up going to a smaller design program at Richard

Robinson L’Academie in Ottawa, Ontario, where her family had been living.

A woman from her church, Martina Todd, paid her way through the two-

year program.

“After school, I started doing a lot of fashion shows, practicing my craft,

doing a lot of designs for people locally and teaching myself how to sew

and do different things to master my craft,” Korto said of the next several

years. “Somewhere along the way, I ended up going to school at Bauder

College in Atlanta for a year to upgrade on a lot of new things in

the design field.” Not long after, Korto moved to the Little Rock

area and married Benny Briggs Jr. That was about ten years

ago; the two now have a four-year-old daughter, Alyse.

Since moving to Arkansas, Korto has not only

pushed for her own dreams to come true,

she also has helped push forward the

state’s fashion scene by promoting

FEBRUARY 2009 Celebrating the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Arkansas 67

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LiTTLe ROck mOdeL cRYSTaL GiLeS SpORTS a kORTO mOmOLu muLTi-GReen SiLk buRnOuT RObe, aLOnG wiTh a buRnOuT-effecT cOwhide baG in

ORanGe and bLack wiTh a buLL-hORn handLe. bOTh pieceS weRe cuSTOm-made fOR cLienTS bY RequeST.

haiR and makeup bY GiLeS

local designers such as herself through fashion shows, boutique

consignments, and booths at local art shows. But it started small,

she recalls. “At first, it was a culture shock. There wasn’t a huge

fashion scene here then; there were a few boutiques, but not a huge

market. The younger generation hadn’t really caught up yet with all

the boutique trends nationally.”

So Korto — all the while still practicing her craft of making bags,

jewelry and apparel from her own designs, and in many cases

using nontraditional materials in nontraditional ways — got a job

working for Detrix Roseby at his Little Rock boutique, The Vault,

which was in the Hillcrest area. Until the store closed, Korto got to

do some design work for him, and he allowed her to put some of her

creations in the store on consignment.

“That was really my first big design job here in Little Rock,” she

says. “I still did other jobs to help pay the bills, but I always kept

doing what I wanted to do.” Soon after, she began designing items

and apparel on her own for local residents, and eventually she went

back to New York to take summer courses at Parsons, the industry’s

top-rated fashion design university. She says she was determined,

after that summer, to come back to Little Rock and either “do it for

real or not at all.”

She ended up doing it for real. In November 2006, she put together

her first fashion show in Little Rock, and it smacked of New York’s

Fashion Week. It was a hit with the up-and-comers crowd, as well as

with the more established types on the city’s fashion scene. “The way

the runway was set up, it was a really intimate show. Right after that,

Helaine Williams [style writer] at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

did a write-up on it, and it was my first really big write-up.


mOdeL cRYSTaL GiLeS ShOwS Off The veRSaTiLiTY Of a kORTO mOmOLu bLack

jeRSeY kimOnO-STYLe dReSS ThaT haS adjuSTabLe SLeeveS and a LOw, Open back.

heR TiGeR’S eYe neckLace iS avaiLabLe aT jeanTe’ One Of One in LiTTLe ROck, wheRe mOmOLu’S appaReL Line iS aLSO avaiLabLe.

jeanTe’ iS in The pLeaSanT RidGe TOwn cenTeR aT 11525 canTReLL ROad,

501.614.7788. haiR and makeup bY GiLeS

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“iT (heR bOOTh aT aRTS Scene in nORTh LiTTLe ROck,) SORT Of Gave me inSpiRaTiOn i Think ThaT YOu can dO SOmeThinG diffeRenT heRe in LiTTLe ROck and be SucceSSfuL. ThaT’S when i ReaLLY

STaRTed ThinkinG abOuT TRYinG OuT fOR‘pROjecT RunwaY.’”


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THREE GRAPES,ONE BOTTLE.

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MAT-2009 Celebrate Ad.indd 1 12/31/08 12:23:39 PM

It really pushed me; everyone knew who I was after that, and there

was a lot of interest,” Korto recalled. “It was like a coming out

party, and she kind of opened the door for me in that sense. I

started getting a lot more orders, a lot more people called to do

shows at places like the Arkansas Arts Center, the Governors

Mansion, and other places.”

Williams, who regularly writes about both local and national

fashion trends, described Korto’s clothing line in one article as

a “confluence of New York and Hollywood with strong touches

of Africa: star-quality sophisticated, seductive and exotic, but at

broader levels.” Her favorite piece she’s ever created, she says, is

her finale piece for her collection: a long, sheer green wrap dress,

asymmetrically cut with a low, cut-out back, “very long and flowy,”

with jewelry embellishments along the neckline, including beads

made of turquoise, lime green lava beads, black lava beads, African

bone beads and a Thai silver pendant. The most meaningful thing

she’s ever made: her sister’s bridesmaid dresses, which were flowy

celery green, but simple sheath dresses with lace over the top

bodice area.

Korto has been praised for making clothing that fits women who

aren’t a size zero, or anywhere close. “Women have curves, and

that should be celebrated,” Korto says. “I always say that I have

a different style, very classic, but some pieces I call funky, a little

different. They stand out from the ordinary. I use a lot of my

African heritage in designs, and it comes off kind of ethnic. I want

to make clothes for women like me, moms and wives who have

curves, are secure in their skin and still want to look fabulous in

their clothes. Everyday real people don’t go out and buy celebrity

clothing.” But Korto’s clothes can make you feel like a celebrity,

with a plethora of rich fabrics and textures, intense colors, animal

prints, uneven hemlines, ruffles, peplums and a variety of bodice

constructions that show her creativity and her appreciation for the

womanly figure.

As interest in her work grew, Korto was featured on local TV

news stations several times as well, all of which helped build her

business, slowly but surely. She set up a booth at Arts Scene in

North Little Rock, where a group of artists had come together to

showcase their work, kind of like a big antique store or flea market,

but with artists’ work filling the booths instead. Korto was the only

fashion designer with a booth there. One Friday each month, Arts

Scene hosted an art party, and the public would come out to see

the local artists and their talents.

“Being involved with that was really good,” Korto says. “It really

exposed me to a whole different group of people.” Korto put on

a second fashion show in the spring of 2007, at which more than

400 people showed up to see what the hype was about. “It sort of

gave me inspiration I think that you can do something different

here in Little Rock and be successful. That’s when I really started

thinking about trying out for ‘Project Runway.’”

Korto says she had first seen “Project Runway” back in 2004 and

was immediately interested in getting on the show. But she had

just had a baby, and she says it was just too much for her to think

Cover STORY

about at that time. “I had to wait until she grew up a little

where I knew she would be okay if I left her for a little while.”

Skip ahead a few years to 2007, and Korto has been steadily

preparing herself for the show — though she might not have

realized it at the time.

In October 2007, she attended a Liz Claiborne promotional

event at a Little Rock Dillard’s that featured “Project Runway”

host and well-known style guru Tim Gunn. After the event,

Gunn took questions; one of them was Korto’s: How do I get

onto “Project Runway?” He explained the process — you have

to present three garments you’ve made, as well as a portfolio,

and you have to speak about who you are and your aesthetic,

and you have to sell yourself — and encouraged Korto to try

out. A few months later, in March 2008, she did try out, and

she made the cut.

She was away from home for six weeks during the taping of

the show, which features Gunn and other style celebrities

presenting a new fashion design challenge to the contestants

on each episode. Each week, someone “fails” the challenge

and is kicked off the show by the panel of judges, which

includes supermodel Heidi Klum, designer Michael Kors and

Elle magazine fashion editor Nina Garcia. The winner was to

receive $100,000 in seed money, an editorial feature in Elle, a

2009 Saturn Vue Hybrid and the opportunity to pitch his or

her creations on the shopping Web site Bluefly.com.

The hardest part about being on the show, Korto says, was not

the actual challenges they were given, but it was “just waking

up every day and having a new idea, being able to think outside

the box and perform under such tight restraints and keep your

cool. There are so many things you have to think of when

you’re on television, especially a reality show,” she explained.

“You’re performing in a creative way but also performing for

producers as a character as well. It was important to me to

present myself as a woman, an African-American woman, as a

mother and as a wife.”

And that part was difficult, particularly because she was almost

completely cut off from the outside world, including her

family and husband, while she was a contestant. “It’s almost as

if you are a prisoner, in a sense, because you are so secluded.

We had no radio, no TV, no music, no books, you’re living in

this box and there’s no escape from these people you’re with,”

Korto explained. “So basically you’re stuck with them; it’s like


“YOu’Re peRfORminG in a cReaTive waY buT aLSO peRfORminG fOR pROduceRS aS a chaRacTeR. iT waS impORTanT TO me TO pReSenT mYSeLf aS a wOman, an afRican-ameRican wOman, aS a mOTheR and aS a wife.”

– kORTO, ReGaRdinG heR Time On ‘pROjecT RunwaY’

you’re in a bad marriage and can’t get out. You make the best of it,

and once you get out of that situation it’s hard to go back to being

normal.”

That’s because while on the show, all the contestants’ decisions —

outside of fashion design, of course — are made for them. Their

food is prepared for them, their schedule is prepared for them, they

are told where to go and when to be there and how to get there (the

station provided rides everywhere, to continue the seclusion effect).

“Then I went back to being a mom, where I had all these decisions

to make and all this stuff to juggle, it was a little difficult,” she says.

“But the hardest part was I couldn’t call my husband and share my

emotions with him, like after I’d had a bad day, and also knowing my

husband couldn’t do girlie things with our daughter like fix her hair

or paint their nails together and talk like she and I do.”

But through it all, Korto kept her composure. “I was not going to

disrespect myself on TV. I wanted to walk off with my head up high,

regardless of what happened, I’d be proud of it,” she says. “I do feel

like I accomplished that goal.” Since going on the show, she gets many

emails from people all over the country, from women and moms and

immigrants who are grateful for encouraging them. “Immigrants say

I showed them they can go after their dreams. Moms say I showed

them they can go after their dreams,” she says meekly.

What’s the key to going after your dreams? For Korto, it’s knowing

who you are and being confident in that. “To know who you are is to

see what makes you happiest. When you are happiest, what are you

doing?” she asks. “That’s when you know what your dream job is,

your destiny. Surround yourself with people who will believe in you

and encourage you, and if there’s anyone who doesn’t believe in you

or encourage you, drop that person from your life. Follow that path

and believe that it can happen.”

Korto talks a lot about destiny, and she believes that her talent comes

from God. She was one of very few people on the show who showed

their faith or spoke with any reverence about God. “I said ‘Thank

God’ or ‘Thank Jesus’ so many times on the show. I am very faithful

and … it was my destiny to get on the show and my destiny to come

in second place,” she says without a hint of regret or doubt. “Are

there bigger things for me? I am just trying to figure out all the things

coming my way right now, and figure out which one is best for me.”


“a LOT Of mY pieceS aRe One Of a

kind, buT i dO have The deSiRe TO

maSS pROduce

SOme Of mY pieceS.”

Cover STORYAnd there could be a lot of things coming her way: Though she doesn’t want

to reveal any details too soon, Korto says she is currently in discussions with a

“major chain” to get her line of clothing out so that anybody across the country

can find her pieces. She also is steadily building up a clientele of boutiques

across the nation — from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. — that sell her

creations. They start at about $40 for an embellished T-shirt or piece of jewelry

and go as high as $600 for a high-end handbag or a couture piece such as a

one-of-a-kind jacket. “A lot of my pieces are one-of-a-kind, but

I do have the desire to mass produce some of my

pieces,” Korto explains. “Right now it’s a

financial issue. I have some fame


“i wanT TO be a hOuSehOLd name...”

from the show, but I’m still out there trying to get the money to mass produce, or find

a company who will take up the investment and put it out there.”

Her determination and track record predict that her efforts will pay off. Where does

she want to be in five years? “I definitely want to have a line out nationwide so anybody

can get it anywhere,” Korto says. “I want to be a household name in the sense that I

have lifestyle brands out, interiors and house wares and things — not just clothing —

along with an accessory line and jewelry, coexisting with the clothing

line, around the country. I’d like to have the business

set up where it’s going steadily and I am able

to open a new door every year.” •••

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