Tag: entertainment

LJ Runway Monday, Final Collection

RIP, Mr. Blackwell

At last, I present my final collection for LJ Runway Monday. It amazes me that this all began because I bought a Summer doll to use in a promotional photo for my forthcoming contemporary romance, A Coventry Wedding. It’s been wonderful to do this with Mark and Timothy, and amazing fun the way Marika supervised it all as Heidi Gunn, Greg and Rhonda took on the roles of permanent judges Miranda Priestly and Michelle Hors, all the guest judges treated it with a wonderful blend of respect and humor, and so many loyal and new readers checked our blogs every Monday to see what was new and maybe a little crazy. LJ Runway Monday was done with respect for Bravo’s Project Runway, and I think my fellow designers and I have a new appreciation for the creative processes of PR’s contestants.

I love Mark’s art-influenced and Timothy’s fashion-forward designs, and I’ve been surprised every time I won a challenge because I think they take bigger risks than I. So often when I’ve seen their posts on Sunday nights/Monday mornings, I’ve gasped with admiration. Every week, their knowledge and creations have inspired me to learn a little more and try a little harder.

Since this did all start with my novel, I wanted to finish it that way, too. So this week, my inspiration is my characters in A Coventry Christmas and A Coventry Wedding. Rather than try to create couture, I had fun imagining how these characters would dress in ways that reflect their personalities and lifestyles.

A look into ‘The Tiny Town with the Big Heart’

LJ Runway Monday, Final Collection, Part 1

On the most recent episode of Bravo’s Project Runway, contestants were sent home from New York to work on their final collections. Among their assignments: Include a wedding dress as part of the collection. Style guru Tim Gunn visited the designers in their homes, then they were brought back to Manhattan to face one new elimination challenge before Fashion Week: Design a bridesmaid’s dress to go with their wedding dress.

LJ Runway Monday producer Heidi Gunn decided there was no need for the Runway Monday designers to spend our time on a bridesmaid’s dress, since all of us are showing final collections. Although she was unable to personally visit each of us as we worked on our final designs, she did send her Fashion Ambassador to check on us. Who could possibly know more about fashion than our producer and judges?

Click here to find out.

Runway Monday results


Summer, no doubt annoyed that I previously won with Nikki as my model, did her best for me this week–and we won! You can read what the judges had to say about each of the designs here.

Thank you to my fellow designers, Timothy and Mark, who did great jobs for:

Nikki

and Figaro
.

Thanks also to the judges for giving their time and consideration to the designs, and to Heidi Gunn for producing us.

Bravo’s Project Runway designers are now into their final collection phase, with no more weekly challenges. That means the challenge the Runway Monday designers just completed is also our last regular challenge. I’m not sure what goodies we’ll have in store for you on Monday, October 13–workroom drama? an unexpected curve thrown at us by Heidi Gunn because of something that happens on the show? a model meltdown or two?–but we’ll have our final collections ready for the judges’–and your–consideration on Monday, October 20.

Thanks for following along while we did this. It was done in fun, but it was surprisingly hard work–at least for me–to conceive of a design each week then try to make it–since I don’t know much about fashion and I don’t know how to sew! The most fun has been hearing from people–friends and strangers–who I never expected would be so amused and eager to see our designs each week.

Ultimately, I think it’s the magic of Barbie. Whoever designed these dolls for Mattel really did create models in Summer, Nikki, and Teresa (aka Figaro). I hope they’d be amused to see that their dolls are getting to model original designs. I also hope they don’t file a cease and desist against Mark for Figaro.

LJ Runway Monday, Challenge 12

On Bravo’s Project Runway, contestants took cameras to New York Botanical Garden, where they shot photos as inspiration for evening gowns for their models.

Heidi Gunn asked the Runway Monday contestants to do likewise. Here’s the photo I chose, from a field trip I took last year in Houston.

How did I transfer this photo to fashion?

Totally random thoughts

For all those who have berated me over the years because I never saw The Princess Bride, you can now relax. I watched it with The Brides, Tim, and Tom when Mark was here. Yes, I liked it. No, I can’t quote large chunks of it yet. But at least I’ve seen it.

Speaking of quoting large chunks of movie dialogue, Tim and I rented Zoolander last night so I could see it (he’d seen it already). Now I know what people are talking about when they quote from it while talking about Runway Monday.

Last March, among my birthday gifts, was a book from The Brides, A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style, written by Tim Gunn with Kate Moloney. Now that I’ve finally had time to read it, I see that I should have read it BEFORE I embarked on Runway Monday. I’m glad Tim Gunn isn’t one of the judges.

Yeehaw!


Thanks to Nikki’s cooperation, we won this week’s LJ Runway Monday challenge with our country music look. I’d like to congratulate my fellow designers:


Timothy, who punked out Figaro, and


Mark, who made Summer all about pop music.

Thanks also to producer Heidi Gunn, all the judges (including TWO guest judges this week!), and everybody who plays along and gives praise and snark about our designs. We’re in the final weeks of LJ Runway Monday, and it’s still fun.

See you on the runway!

LJ Runway Monday, Challenge 11

On Bravo’s Project Runway, contestants were asked to design an outfit in a particular musical genre for their fellow designers.

Because no one on this planet is ever taking my measurements, I was relieved when Heidi Gunn asked the Runway Monday designers to switch models and pick a musical style for them. I was lucky enough to get Nikki–

Nikki: Damn right.

–and my genre is country music.

Nikki: What?

It hasn’t escaped my attention that many of country music’s female stars don’t really dress “country” anymore. Most of the time, Faith Hill, Carrie Underwood, the Dixie Chicks, and even more traditional country singers like Dolly and Reba, are red-carpet-ready. I wanted to borrow a little of their shimmer, but also give my design some country and western flavor.

Nikki: I’m allergic to grease. And gingham.

Will Nikki break out in hives? Click here and find out.

The insanity intensifies

ETA WARNING: There are “Survivor” spoilers in this post’s comments.

No, I’m not talking about politics. I can’t read or discuss the news right now without fighting the compulsion to hyperventilate and stock the shelves with canned goods.

As you so often have heard me boast, I don’t watch much TV. We record our soap each day and watch it during dinner if nothing else is going on, or catch up on the weekends if the week is busy. I watch Project Runway because even though I know squat about fashion, I love to see creative people at work and try to get inside their heads.

On occasion, I have slipped into a glassy-eyed (but fascinated) state when an America’s Next Top Model marathon is on. It’s that damn Tyra Banks, I think. She is (brace yourself for this most overused word) fierce. Aside: Is “fierce” the word that finally knocked out “fabulous?” If we use “fierce” and “hunker down” in the same sentence, do we know we’re finally as on our way out as a Britney Spears husband?

So when Tim asked if I wanted to watch an actual first-run season of America’s Next Top Model, I nodded with enthusiasm. And we’ve missed it twice, so all hail the ability to watch episodes online. It didn’t occur to me that it was SEPTEMBER, and September means Survivor. Which starts tonight. So now I’ll be watching eight hours of television a week. That’s a WORKDAY of television.

Who am I?

LJ Runway Monday Challenge, Week 10

On Bravo’s Project Runway, contestants were asked to design an outfit transforming recent college graduates into career women. The designers had to please not only the young women who were their clients, but also the women’s mothers.

Heidi Gunn asked the Runway Monday designers to show the judges what our models would be doing if they weren’t models. When Summer was discovered by Mattel, she was a college student with a double major in broadcast journalism and political science. When I asked why she picked those fields, she said she’d always been inspired by Barbara Walters’ interviews with world leaders including U.S. presidents, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, China’s Jiang Zemin, the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, India’s Indira Gandhi, and King Hussein of Jordan.

As Summer said, “A good TV interviewer wears clothes that make her look professional and attractive, but her clothes shouldn’t draw attention away from the person she’s questioning. The interviewer isn’t the story.”

Summer on the job