Lifetime is like the dorky kid who is trying to impress the cool kids in high school by dating the hot cheerleader. And he’s making sure everyone knows about it, too.
Having picked up Bravo’s biggest show “Project Runway” after a year-long litigation mess, Lifetime is promoting the hemline out of the show to make sure the 4 million weekly viewers on Bravo move over to the home of “Army Wives” and “Drop Dead Diva.”
That includes carting out the contestants in cities across the nation two weeks before the show even airs. In Atlanta, Carol Hannah Whitfield, Gordana Gelhausen and Mitchell Hall.
At Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta Saturday, Dave FM's Mara Davis hosted a "Project Runway" challenge in which six people would try to design a T shirt seven minutes with the victor getting a $100 Simon Mall gift certificate. They did the competition 10 times.
The show has been on the shelf for nearly a year. “Most of us had given up hope” it would ever air before the April announcement, Mitchell said. Fortunately, he and the others didn’t find out about the legal wrangling until near the end of the taping.
It did force the top contestants during Fashion Week to hide. In past shows, usually, viewers would at least know the top 5 by the time Fashion Week runway shoots pop up.
Some of the designers were pretty darn good. Lauren Shadix (below), a Georgia State English major who has minimal fashion experience, cut off part of the T-shirt to create a cowl neck. She won the $100 gift certificate. She actually beat a friend who attends SCAD.
“They’re revving up the PR machine!” Shadix said. She is a huge fan of the show and prefers it over Bravo’s imitation replacement “The Fashion Show.” The designers, in general, were inferior, she thought.
Gordana, above, 45, lives in San Diego but did spend three years in Roswell in the early 1990s with her now ex husband. She owns two boutiques, one in Charleston, another in San Diego and has a Web site www.shopgoga.com. (Goga is her nickname.) She travels a lot so she was able to easily fool her friends when she disappeared last fall to tape the show.
Carol Hannah was one of the younger contestants, now 24. She is a long-time Charleston resident, now living in New York City, and like many on the show, a huge fan before she made it. “A friend used to have Project Runway viewing parties,” she said.
She was able to hide the fact she was on the show by telling everyone she was moving to New York anyway (when in fact she went out to Los Angeles last September and October.).
“I’m so excited,” she said. “There’s so much buildup, it’s crazy!”
"We had a wonderful experience," said Mitchell, who now lives in Savannah after graduating SCAD in 2006. He is now a creative designer at Bleu Belle bridal boutiques. He also knows Atlanta "Runway" alum Mychael Knight.
He appears to be quite the personality and may be fun on the show. He doesn’t care what network it’s on - he just wants it on! But say the word Bravo and he uttered, “Don’t ever say that!”
The trio each tried the T-shirt challenge. Gordana ended up winning.
Davis, the emcee, managed to make it on time despite the fact her vehicle was rear-ended in Virginia Highland. (The car was drivable.)
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