Project Runway New Zealand
TVNZ 2, 7:30pm Monday
The 14 aspiring designers are one of the best crops of talent a New Zealand reality show has ever seen.
Sure, we may be a little bit late to the Project
Runway party — the US version has been going since 2004 and has 16 seasons in the bag — but the first look at the New Zealand edition suggests it’ll be well worth the wait.
For a start, the 14 aspiring designers are one of the best crops of talent a New Zealand reality show has seen. By the end of Monday night’s episode you’ll feel you already kind of know most of them, or at least be able to identify them by some defining feature. There’s Blue Lips (aka Beth), for example, who rocks up in bright blue lipstick and describes her style as “kind of like a unicorn pooped on Elvira sort of thing.” Or long-haired boy (aka Benjamin), whose silken locks and open shirt collar makes him look like a majestic fashion centaur.
They all come from a range of backgrounds, from self-taught home designers to Kerry, who’s been working for Karen Walker for eight years. “Oh my goodness,” gasps Caitlin, one of the youngest designers on the show, when she walks in. “I interned for him.”
Small world, the New Zealand fashion industry, and no doubt this
will help produce some top drama as the season progresses. There to keep a lid on things, or stoke the embers, is their impeccably-bearded mentor Andreas Mikellis from AUT, while Kiwi supermodel Georgia Fowler is our version of Heidi Klum as host. But the show’s best talent could well be World designer Benny Castles, who lights up the judging panel from episode one. Somebody’s dress is “Flintstones chic"; another’s is “naughty nurse with an edge".
Fowler, a great presenting discovery in her own right, struggles to keep up: “I quite liked the bag,” she says of one design, glancing at her notes. “I wrote: ‘bag, exclamation point'.”