‘Project Runway’ to boast a new look
Long-running reality competition returns to Bravo with revamped cast
PASADENA, Calif. – “Project Runway” is having its own “make it work” moment.
The new season of the long-running reality competition series returns to its original network home, Bravo, with a new group of designers and wildly altered cast on March 14 (8 EST/PST).
Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, the show’s host and mentor, respectively, for 16 seasons, have departed to start a rival show on Amazon, replaced by model Karlie Kloss and designer Christian Siriano, who won the Season 4 competition. Kloss will also serve as a judge, alongside Brandon Maxwell, Elaine Welteroth and Nina Garcia, the last remaining original cast member.
Speaking about the new season of the show at the Television Critics Association Tuesday, the new panel of fashion experts promised that the show would include the best parts of the original but reflect big changes in the world and fashion industry that have occurred since “Runway” premiered in 2004.
The new season has a bigger prize for the winning designer ($250,000 instead of $100,000) and will allow viewers to buy their favorite designs from some episodes right away, on Bravo’s site.
“The audience has a chance to vote for their favorite look from the episode, and it will be available to buy, and the judge’s pick will be (available) to buy if it’s different from the audience’s pick,” producer Dan Cutforth says. The producers and stars of the series emphasized that they want to capture the instantaneous nature of the fashion industry and the strong role of social media in launching designers.
As far as losing Klum and Gunn, the producers were quick to note that Klum suggested Siriano to replace Gunn, and Siriano himself was confident he could offer a perspective that Gunn couldn’t.
“I’m very close with Tim and very close with Heidi, but I think what’s great about the new season is that for the first time the mentor is a designer,” he said.
“Tim was never a designer, he never worked in the industry, he was a teacher. ... But I think what’s really special for the designers to be successful going forward is to have a real designer give them advice because the industry’s tough.”
The designer, the most successful alum of the show, says he will treat contestants the way he treats his employees.
“I treat every designer like I treat my design team in my office everyday. ... I feel like I get very passionate; sometimes I get too passionate.”
Welteroth claimed that the new season will be “the most inclusive iteration of Project Runway that the world has ever seen,” and the judges hyped the diverse group of contestants and models, including the show’s first transgender model.
When it came to questions of the show’s historic treatment of plus-size fashion, Siriano was quick to note that some of the contestants are eager to dress plus-size models and make that a part of their personal brand.
The #MeToo movement also has rocked the fashion industry in the past year or so (The Weinstein Company was an original producer of “Project Runway”).
“We will not shy away from conversations about issues in the industry that affect women and people of color,” Welteroth said. “We find a way to way keep fashion at the center of it all, but it is also a lens for the things that happen in our world.”