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Pinking Shears at 20 Paces
Season 2 gave us Santino Rice and Andrae Gonzalo. Rice's dismissive attitude toward the other contestants was leavened only by his ability to do a spot-on imitation of Gunn. Gonzalo would weep uncontrollably during the critiques, even when the judges complimented his work.
Season 3 offers a more diverse collection of the talented, the desperate, the cocky and the kooky. The contestants range in age from 25 to 49, with a fairly even distribution, while in the past there tended to be only a token elder. While a few of them are without professional design experience, most have been employed at large corporations or have small businesses of their own.
  Malan Breton has been invited back for the third season of "Project Runway." (Mark Abrahams -- Bravo) |
Robert Best, 37, has one of the most focused résumés. He graduated from Parsons and has worked for Isaac Mizrahi, Anne Klein and Donna Karan. He currently designs clothes for Barbie. (You thought those sparkly party dresses were just conjured out of thin air?) And he brought his favorite pillow to the "Project Runway" apartment. Who could not love a man who plays with Barbies and has his own version of a binkie?
Keith Michael, 34, is a Brooklyn-based menswear designer trying to expand into womenswear. For his first attempt at a dress, he recalled the famous Carol Burnett skit in which she plays Scarlett O'Hara in a dress made from curtains -- and the curtain rod. He used the image as a warning: Don't make a costume. He wins the first challenge with a dress that is elegant, engaging and wearable.
Laura Bennett is a trained architect, the mother of five children and so polished she almost makes Heidi Klum look like a schlump. Bennett arrives at the group apartment wearing a pencil skirt and crisp white blouse. Her red hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. She's carrying her belongings in a Louis Vuitton valise and train case. The season will be worth watching just to get a look at her grooming regimen.
"I never dress down," Bennett says. "When you're 42 with five children, it's a slippery slope to sweat pants and a minivan. So I just don't go there."
Vincent Libretti is not a favorite to win. The 49-year-old former designer flamed out from stress during his first go-round in New York, and now he's back. Having cashed out his 401(k), he's trying to revive his career. He exudes desperation and a quivering fear that his clothes don't have enough youthful pizazz. That insecurity leads him to accessorize his dress with a lampshade and sunglasses. One look at his model has Kors inquiring, "How many drinks did she have?"
The designer with the most daunting scholastic record is Stacey Estrella. At 40, she has an undergraduate degree from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard and works for a high-tech company in San Francisco. But she loves fashion and says that if she wins, "it will help me build significant brand awareness in my target demographic while also providing seed capital to build a multinational fashion house and investment firm."
Laudable. But this is not "The Apprentice," this is "Project Runway." The only salient question is, can Estrella make a nice dress from a shower curtain?
Project Runway (one hour) makes its third-season premiere tonight at 10 on Bravo.
