Project Runway | |
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Genre | Reality competition |
Created by | Eli Holzman |
Starring | |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 15 (Regular series); 5 (All Stars series) |
No. of episodes | 182 |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) |
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Running time | 62 to 64 minutes (season 8–present) 40 to 42 minutes (season 1–7) |
Production company(s) |
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Distributor |
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Release | |
Original network |
Lifetime (2009–present) Bravo (2004–2008) |
Picture format |
480i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV) |
Original release | December 1, 2004 | – present
External links | |
Website |
Project Runway is an American reality television series on Lifetime, previously on the Bravo network, created by Eli Holzman 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 restricted in time, materials and theme. Their designs are judged, and one or more designers are eliminated each week. During each season, selected competitors are progressively eliminated based on the judges' scores until only a few contestants remain; these finalists prepare a complete fashion collection for New York Fashion Week, from which a winner is determined. It won a Peabody Award in 2007 "for using the 'television reality contest' genre to engage, inform, enlighten and entertain."
Project Runway uses progressive elimination to reduce the initial field of 12 or more fashion designers down to three or four before the final challenge. Each non-finale challenge (the scope of one episode) requires the designers to develop one or more 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 fashion design aesthetic. These challenges may include creating a garment from non-traditional materials, such as: apartment furnishings (Season 3), recyclable materials (Season 3), items from a grocery store (Seasons 1 & 5), edible food items (Seasons 1, 4 & 10), plants and flowers (Season 2), using their own clothes that they happened to be wearing (Season 2), designing clothing with materials from a party store (season 8) ; or designing for a certain high-profile person (such as actress Brooke Shields, figure skater Sasha Cohen or Miss USA Tara Conner); or designing for a corporate fashion line (e.g., Banana Republic; Diane von Fürstenberg; Macy's; or Sarah Jessica Parker's Bitten); or centered on a specialized theme (such as "cocktail party", "wedding gown", "female wrestling outfit", or "prom dress").