Field Report - Elisa Jimenez in Austin

Elisa with a local fashion journalist

I was able to squeeze a few minutes to meet Elisa Jimenez at her "Pop-up and Play Boutique" in downtown Austin. Basically they are the occasional trunk type shows that she likes to do in various cities. She had just completed one in Dallas and in LA. My friend Rick and I had quite the journey to get to her event. Her showing was in the busiest section of downtown and it took forever to find street parking and we walked around for 20 minutes trying to find the store and were almost ready to give up. Then we saw some colorful swatches tied around a banister. Turns out the event was occurring at a 2nd floor bar lounge. The bar was quite lovely with a scenic covered balcony and provided an ideal atmosphere for her. There was a good steady attendance including members of Austin fashion community.

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Meet The Cast of "The Fashion Show"

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Attention Los Angeles

Become a member of the studio audience and judge a brand new Bravo network "fashion reality" show. Click here for tickets. No fooling.

Memo To Lifetime

With the long awaited news that Season 6 of Project Runway will finally see the light of day, all eyes will be turning to the Lifetime Network to see how they will handle promotion and publicity of the show.

Project Runway is considered a cornerstone in Lifetime President Andrea Wong's continuing effort to feature more original programming and move away from the legacy of Golden Girl re-runs and disease-of-the-week movies. Will the fan base follow?

Here are a few things that we would love to see Lifetime do:

• Create a clean, easy to navigate website for the show that doesn't take 15 minutes to load.
• Bring back Tim Gunn's podcast! Perhaps our favorite bonus feature of Seasons 1-3, Tim's podcasts were often as entertaining as the show itself, providing unique behind the scene details of each episode. Yes, you will probably have to pay the man, but you will endear yourselves to PR fans everywhere and generate serious traffic to your website.
• Schedule the show in its traditional Wednesday 10:00 p.m powerslot. This is the favored time for most of the fans and one that Bravo will most certainly try to counter against.
• Continue the tradition of posting clear photos of each design after every episode.
• Provide previews and video extras that are fully embeddable and easy to share.
• Recognize that there is a significant audience of men that watch this show. Ahem. We can get away with the TV tuned to Bravo, but it's a tougher sell on Lifetime.

We know you have more. What else would you like to see from the Lifetime Network?

A Note From Tim Gunn!

Season Six: What's fabulous about it is our backdrop: Los Angeles. In fact, it's more than a backdrop; we fully embrace the city. During our first days of taping, I was reminded that for the first half of the last century, Los Angeles, and Hollywood more specifically, was THE fashion capital of this nation. It was the burgeoning film industry that inspired people about how they wanted to dress. For example, Gilbert Adrian, the head of costume design at MGM, launched a ready-to-wear line in response to the fervor for his designs. During those early decades, New York fashion was all about copying Europe; New York didn't possess the creative thinking that Hollywood embodied. It wasn't until the couture houses in Paris closed during WWII that American fashion began to ascend, with Claire McCardell and Norman Norell leading the pack.

Back to Los Angeles...it's the home of the television and film industries, costume design, and the red carpet. What better incubator is there for fashion?

Season Six also has a considerable enhancement: "Models of the Runway," a companion piece to Project Runway. Content is shared across both shows, so ardent, insatiable viewers will have to see both in order to get their full dose of all things Runway!

Isn't it fabulous that we can all talk about it, again?!?!?!

XOXOX

Tim

(Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images for IMG)

From The Mailbox

Heidi Klum was on CBS last night for the April Fool's Day prank show, "I Get That a Lot." Click here for the full episode.

Tim Gunn is in Nashville today for an in-store event at Kate Spade. Click here for an interview with Tim in the Tennessean.

Nashville's City Paper is looking for YOUR questions for Tim. Click here to submit.

Project Runway Season 6 Set for Lifetime

This time it's not an April Fool's! Project Runway is actually set to return in the summer on Lifetime. Click here for the report from Variety. The Weinstein Company has agreed to pay NBC Universal a settlement fee.

Our friends at Full Picture confirmed the story for us right after it broke. (We were concerned with the story coming out so late in the day on April 1st.)

UPDATE: According to a statement in the LA Times from Harvey Weinstein, 5 YEARS of Project Runway is part of the deal with Lifetime.

UPDATE: Tim Gunn just called Laura K. and is thrilled to hear the news about Season 6. When asked for a quote he said, "Words cannot adequately express how ecstatic I am."

UPDATE: Here's the statement from Lifetime president Andrea Wong:

I couldn't be more excited that Lifetime will bring its viewers an amazing, all-new season of Project Runway this summer. As the highest-rated cable network for women, Lifetime is the perfect home for this outstanding program as well as its companion series Models of the Runway. All of us at Lifetime are thrilled to move forward with Heidi, Tim, Nina, Michael, The Weinstein Company and the entire Project Runway team.

More to come, stay tuned!