Former Personal Designer to Marlen Cowpland Joins Project Runway Canada Season Lineup

Ottawa-based fashion designer James Jefferson will compete on the upcoming season of Project Runway Canada, Global's reality competition for fashion designers.

Jefferson studied at the Richard Robinson Fashion Design Academy in the early 1990s, graduating at the top of his class and named "most promising designer." He was then hired by Robinson as an assistant in the boutique, where he spent five years meeting clients that included prime ministers' wives and governors general's wives.

While working for Robinson, he met Marlen Cowpland, second wife of businessman Michael Cowpland, who co-founded Mitel Networks alongside Terry Matthews and later founded Corel. Marlen hired Jefferson as her personal in-house designer in the early 2000s. He told the Ottawa Business Journal his job was to shop for and buy accessories, shoes, handbags and jewelry and to design and make matching outfits, from sketches and patterns through fittings and final products. He flew to New York on Marlen's private jet to buy from Yves Saint-Laurent, Dior and Chanel, and worked five days a week at an atelier inside the Cowplands' Rockcliffe Park home.

Jefferson said he and Marlen communicated through fashion magazines and sticky notes, and that they remain best friends.

He later co-founded the fashion house Jefferson Sukhoo, which made custom clothing for former governor general Michaëlle Jean. The boutique was an all-white space; samples were displayed in black, and clients chose a style and the colour and fabric they wanted.