Heidi and Tim Giving It To You: Season 7 Project RunwayContinuing with my Casting Behind-The-Scenes Blog--here are two more designers that will be part of Season 7 of Project Runway and also came through the day I was lucky enough to have been a judge at the Los Angeles Casting. We did the castings on Memorial Day (back in May '09) at the W Westwood and there was a big ol' pool party occurring. I joked with Tim Gunn that he should have brought his swim trunks. Needless to say, we never made it to the pool. It was work work work, kids...
Mila Hermanovski:
My memory was definitely refreshed when I saw Mila in her casting video. Several months back, I got a call from someone who was styling my friend and client Carrie Ann Inaba with her on-air wardrobe for Dancing With The Stars (in the past we had worked directly with Carrie Ann or her assistant). Mila arrived at our studio and pulled several of my gowns to fit on her and we spent about an hour discussing how to start a design business, all the stuff I am doing and dressing celebs, as well as being in Downtown LA.
Obviously, I did not realize that she was on the show (remember, those castings took place 8 months ago), but she NEVER mentioned anything the entire time (about the fact that she was on the new season or that I was her casting judge) she was at our studio. I assume that she was probably too scared to say anything (Good Job Lifetime Lawyers!). Who knows.
Onto her casting interview: I thought Mila's designs were cute and retro--very Courreges-meets-Pierre Cardin (look them up kiddies) with a touch of Narciso Rodriguez. I liked the seaming and construction. She could be a "quiet storm" on this season.
Jesus Estrada:
Jesus was quite interesting. At first glance he reminded me of one of my fashion design students from my FIDM classes: Young, "fashiony-looking", confident, and a bit bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they say. When we asked to have a closer inspection of his garments, we were shocked: One of the collars was BABY SEAL!!!! Well, as you know Tim Gunn is a PETA GOD, so he almost THREW him out of the castings--to be banished to some poor sweat shop. I just couldn't believe he was showing this to us. And when we questioned him on the OH-SO-WRONG choice of using that material, he looked as if we were speaking a foreign language. Crazy. But something in the rest of his non-baby-seal collared garments intrigued us so we led him to the next round--with a warning: NO MORE BABY SEALS!!!!