"It’s strange,” he says. “It is different, and people for a long time said different is not right.” Different has certainly proven otherwise in this case, which Siriano credits to not immediately being welcomed into fashion’s elite inner circle a decade ago. “For the first six years, nobody gave a shit. I didn’t have the industry on my side in the beginning,” he says. “When I started, so did a lot of other people. Jason [Wu], Prabal [Gurung], early on I thought I have to be like them and doing what they’re doing and getting what they’re getting. You compare. I used to take it so personal, but it’s not always about this fabulous It person in fashion that’s changing the game.”