Thursday, June 29, 2006

Fashion in Houston - Project Runway

When most people think of Texas, barbeque, the death penalty, humidity, and Dallas, the show, come to mind. Most people never think of Texas, much less Houston, as a fashion Mecca. Houston does have a Galleria with all the latest stores carrying all the fashionable designers, but none of those designers are from “around these parts”, to them Houston is just a place on the map.

All of that changed when Chloe Dao won Project Runway, a Bravo reality show where designers compete by sketching, planning and sewing their outfits and taking them to the runway. One by one the designers are bid farewell or auf wiedersehened by Heidi Klum until one is crowned king/queen of the runway. Chloe Dao, a Houstonian, won season two of the show and today she had a fashion show in Houston.

I have seen the tents up in New York and Los Angeles and have envied the people that were lucky enough to attend those events, but today the tent was up in Houston and I was one of those lucky people. There was food, an open bar, media, and photographers every where. Every time you turned around there was another beautiful woman wearing one of Chloe’s dresses getting her picture taken for a newspaper or magazine.

The backstage was chaotic to say the least. I was only in the back for a couple of minutes, but I don’t know how they do it, everyone was working non-stop to get the models ready for the show.

Finally the lights came up and it was time for the runway. The dresses are amazing. I thought I would be totally scarred by seeing 5 foot 9, 100 pound women walking in front of me endlessly, but I really do not feel so bad, or maybe the booze softened the blow. The show consisted of some of Chloe’s original designs, along with some items from her store, lot 8, and the men’s Adam’s Apple collection.

To top the whole experience off Chloe was finally given her car! The car was one of the prizes for winning Project Runway and today she finally got to driver her very own 2007 Saturn Sky home.

Oh, yeah, and everyone received a goodie bag just for attending, how cool is that?!

I think it is so neat that Houston is alive with designing talent, we have a pulse. I know that we are really far off from becoming a fashion capital, but hey, we have to start somewhere. If you sew it, we will wear it.









For your viewing pleasure, I have uploaded all the pics to flickr.

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