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Project Runway

Project Runway US is in full swing on Arena TV in Australia. The format is the same, why change something that works so well. We love this show.

Project Runway is an American reality television series on Lifetime Television, previously on the Bravo network, which focuses on fashion design and is hosted by model Heidi Klum. The contestants compete with each other to create the best clothes and are usually restricted in time, materials, and theme. Their designs are judged and one or more designers are eliminated each week.

Project Runway uses progressive elimination to reduce the initial field of 12 or more fashion designers down to 3 before the final challenge. Each non-finale challenge (the scope of one episode) requires the designers to develop one or several pieces of new clothing to be presented at a runway show. The challenges range in creative diversity to test the designers' ingenuity while maintaining their personal design aesthetic.

The designers are given a budgeted stipend to select and purchase fabric and notions, and then provided a limited amount of time to finish their designs (from as short as half a day to two or three days). Often, the designers work independently, although on some challenges, contestants must work in teams or as a single collective group. Once the deadline is reached, the designers must dress their models and select their hair, make-up, and accessories. Each model walks down the runway, and the garment the contestant made is rated by a panel of judges, who score each look in several categories from 0 to 5, and often provide personal annotations and comments regarding the presented designs.

The judges then interview the six remaining designers who garnered the highest and the lowest scores (usually a top 3 and a bottom 3), and share their opinions while listening to the designers' defense of their outfits, then confer as a group in private. The panel then announces the winning and losing designers based on their scores and other considerations. Typically, the winner receives immunity for the next challenge, and therefore cannot be eliminated. As the season progresses, immunity is disregarded during later challenges to prevent the designers from getting an easy pass to make it into the final round.

Other incentives given to the contestants aside from winning immunity include: The winning garment may be featured in print media, integrated into a limited edition look for a particular clothing brand, or sold at an online fashion store (e.g., BlueFly.com beginning in Season 4 onwards). Generally, the loser of each challenge is eliminated from the competition, with host supermodel Heidi Klum giving him or her a double air kiss on the runway and wishing the eliminated designer her catchphrase, Auf Wiedersehen, before they depart.