California Apparel News

The Bravo TV network’s fashion-focused reality show, “Project Runway,” will open its second season Dec. 7 with half of its designer-contestants hailing from Los Angeles.

Season 2 will begin with 16 designers vying for the show’s ultimate prize: $100,000 in seed money to help the winner launch his or her own collection, a photo spread in Elle magazine and a mentorship with the Banana Republic Design Team. This year, carmaker Saturn will give the winning designer a 2007 Saturn Sky Roadster.

The show held open casting calls in Los Angeles, New York, Houston and Miami in April and selected a lineup of 16 designers from California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas and South Africa.

The Los Angeles–based designers competing include Daniel Franco, returning from the first season’s competition, Santino Rice, Nick Verreos, Andrae Gonzalo, Kirsten Ehrig, Guadalupe Vidal, Raymundo Baltazar and John Wade.

All of the designers are under strict orders not to discuss the show, and several had already returned to their previous jobs. Franco, who produced a runway show last season shortly after Los Angeles Fashion Week, is working on a new line. Rice, a former designer with Jennifer Nicholson, is back at work with Pegah Anvarian and helped to produce the Los Angeles designer’s recent runway show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios. Verreos, co-designer of the Nikolaki line, has returned to teaching at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Gonzalo, owner of the Chinatown boutique Forget It Jake, has returned to designing his Andraegonzalo line.

“I was blown away with how many Los Angeles designers there were,” said Verreos, who said he and Rice and Gonzalo have met or knew of each other before the show.

“But I think nobody was more surprised than the East Coast people—although there was no animosity between the East Coast and the West Coast people. It just shows that there is untapped talent on the West Coast particularly with designers doing avant-garde fashion or something different from just denim and T-shirts.”

The show will continue its formula of giving the competitors a series of design challenges, which are presented before a panel of judges that will include designer Michael Kors, Elle Fashion Director Nina Garcia, Parsons School of Design Chair Tim Gunn and others. Supermodel Heidi Klum will return as host of the weekly show. Each week a designer will be eliminated until a final three vie for the big prize during a runway show at New York Fashion Week in February 2006.

“Project Runway’s” first season garnered an Emmy nomination for Bravo, and more than 2 million viewers tuned in for the show’s finale.