Project Runway is finally gearing up to air, but there is a new competitor on the block: Bravo’s The Fashion Show.  The hosts and judges – designer Isaac Mizrahi, musician/fashionista Kelly Rowland, and IMG Fashion VP Fern Mallis – tell us how The Fashion Show is different from all other fashion shows.

You seem like you are having a lot of fun. How are you setting the show apart from Project Runway?

ISAAC MIZRAHI: Well, the format is different in that it’s maybe more competitive. There’s a mini-challenge first and then a final fashion show every week in front of an audience. That sets it apart to begin with, just the fact that each week is sort of this
big set piece fashion show in front of an audience.

KELLY ROWLAND: And not just that, but I love how America gets to vote for the final
winner. And it’s crazy how America has had such a great choice in so much talent when you think about other reality shows, that have challenges in them.  You think about American Idols, Kelly Clarkson, how she is so talented.  America makes stars now, and they are going to make an innovative designer.

FERN MALLIS: Also, Bravo, having created Project Runway, now taking The Fashion Show on, has really defined the fashion competition and has brought all of those eyeballs who want to be in fashion to the reality-TV space. And this has added elements that have really taken it up many, many notches, with an audience and with people voting. But, also, each week somebody wins, and each week, one garment will be manufactured and sold on , which absolutely gets all of these designers out there, making clothing, having something sold immediately each week.

ISAAC MIZRAHI: I think the answer to that question is also just quality, you know. Bravo just does it best. That’s my opinion.

KELLY ROWLAND: I agree. Ditto.

Will we see men’s clothes in this show?

ISAAC MIZRAHI: Not yet, actually. There are specific weeks. Every week is a different challenge, and it focuses on different clothes, but they are always women’s clothes. Like, for instance, one week, it’s society clothes made for only $40. And one week it’s about shoes and things that go with shoes. And one week, it was focusing on hair and makeup and how that works with clothes. But no menswear so far.

Can you do this kind of show these days without an online presence, or without a product-placement component? How important is that to the sale of the show, to making it profitable?

FERN MALLIS:  The online component, I think, is a very critical part of this. More and more people are shopping online, and right now, in this climate and economy, people are not going to stores as often, and people are very engaged by what these designers are doing on the show. So by us selecting a winner that has been narrowed down by the audience’s choice, the winning look will be made and manufactured each week. So I think it’s creating a whole new business of e-commerce that is very fluid and very natural. It’s not a forced product that’s being sold online because of the show. The product is actually being created because of the show.

ISAAC MIZRAHI:  Another thing about television in general is it’s media.  It’s about communication. It’s about education. We’re not just selling things online, but forming a whole community. We are doing blogs. We are doing discussions. We are doing open forums. And that just adds to the whole romance of the show. That adds to my experience of doing the show, and I think it adds to the audience’s experience of watching and being a part of the show.

It seems that fashion on the red carpet, this year especially, has gotten better. The celebrities don’t look as scruffy as they used to.  Have you observed the same thing, and why do you think that is? Do you think the fashion shows that have been on TV, yours included, have influenced celebrities to dress up?

ISAAC MIZRAHI: That’s a good question. I think it’s a kind of evolution. I think that we’ve all gotten more aware of style in general. Like, when I was a kid, there was iceberg lettuce.  Now, my nieces and nephews like Frizzmo and Mazur lettuce.  Do you know what I mean? They know what very fancy lettuce is, and they also know that Prada shoes are great.

Stars have come a long way.  They work with stylists now, which they’ve never done before, and stylists who are so great. And the stylists say, ”This is the makeup. This is the shoe. This is the hair.”

KELLY ROWLAND: Not just that, but who wants to be on a “why did she do that” list. I think that you do have to be on your P’s and Q’s. It’s a part of who you are as a celebrity, you know. That image, that is also important. It does play a very huge factor in that.

FERN MALLIS: And the entire red-carpet experience, I think, has changed drastically over the last 10 to 15 years. There was a time when celebrities walked the red carpet at award shows, and people asked them what movie they were doing and what their next project was. Now, the only questions are “Who are you wearing?” “Who designed the shoes?” “Who is the jewelry?” I mean, it is only about the clothing to the point that it’s a little bit, almost, insane. But it has created a completely new dialogue about designers and educated the world, the celebrities, the whole community about designers and who they are and who the good ones are and who are the bad ones and what works and what doesn’t work. So the red carpet has become a fashion front-row runway of critics’ commenting on the clothing, not the performances.

ISAAC MIZRAHI: And more and more, you can’t separate them. There’s such a fine line between red carpet and runway. Like, fashion show, red-carpet show, no difference. Right? The cover of ”Vogue,” the cover of “Harper’s Bazaar,” what you see is usually,  a celebrity these days.

Fern, you have seen fashion eras come and go.  Do you have a favorite?

FERN MALLIS: I really don’t because, when you love fashion, you don’t get stuck in an era or in a period.  That is what’s exciting about fashion and why you like it.  It is constantly changing and moving so quickly that everything keeps evolving and moving on. I just only wish I had bigger closets so that I could keep all of the things through the years of all of those eras because everything — everything that’s new is old, and everything that is old is new again. But it always comes back in a new, refreshing way.  You have a style: the way you dress and how you communicate with your clothing, but it’s always evolving and changing. That’s what keeps our industry going, and that’s why we need new talent that is going to come right out of this fashion show on television. I mean, it’s a breeding ground, and we have to keep feeding the beast with new talent and new designs.

Kelly, what brought you from being a performer to being a stylist?

KELLY ROWLAND:  First, I love fashion above anything, and I have worn, I think, every gown, every outfit, every bead, every diamond, everything you can think of. That’s definitely what makes me love fashion. I definitely have a sense of style. And I’m a consumer, you know.  I like to buy clothes. I know what looks good. I know what feels good on. And I think that’s one of the reasons they asked me to be a part of this show. I have an opinion. It definitely counts. I’m very honest with the designers as well, and I’m loving it.

ISAAC MIZRAHI:  That’s like in a 12-step program, the first step is admitting something? “My name is Kelly, and I’m a consumer.” That’s a step, a big step.  On the show, we have all kinds of discussions, and we have different perspectives. Mine is from the designer’s perspective. Fern is from I guess, the industry perspective. And Kelly is from the perspective of someone who really wears clothes. And, often, she’ll just cut right to the chase and say ”I’m sorry.  Girls are not going to wear that.” We don’t need to hear that coming from a style icon who is on the red carpet, on stage. So it really is a great perspective, and I learn from it.

Will there be any challenges that involve designing for different body types?  And Isaac, can you talk about designing for different sizes within your own line?

ISAAC MIZRAHI: Do you know what’s funny? I’m right in the middle of designing a line for Liz Claiborne. I’m doing these events, and every time you take questions, someone says “Why don’t you show the clothes on real people?” And the answer to that is because, if I did, people wouldn’t be interested in the clothes. There was one episode where we had real people involved, and it was kind of fabulous.

KELLY ROWLAND: It was fabulous.

ISAAC MIZRAHI: It was so fabulous because you are right. When I design clothes, though I show them on models, I am always thinking about real people.

How do you do that, though, because some people are varies shape and sizes?

ISAAC MIZRAHI: First, you have fittings with the same garment on a lot of different bodies, so you get a consensus of the female form before you ship something.  And that was also the thing we kept trying to get across to these kids, the designers, though we couldn’t really coach them on the show. We weren’t really coaches. We were judges and hosts. We couldn’t say, “Oh, that doesn’t work. Do this.” That wasn’t what we were doing. We would ask leading questions. But, occasionally, I would say — at the end of the critique, “Kids, try these clothes on. I know you have a half an hour with the model. There are girls in the room. Ask them to slip it on for me to see,” because it’s all about the body. It’s all about the real body.

And what about cultivating an ageless style that will work for any age as well as geared to a type?

ISAAC MIZRAHI: I think there are certain designers who are not good at that and certain designers who really think about that.  I’ve been trained to think about this
perpetually 35-year-old woman. Whether she’s 65 or 25, she’s 35, perpetually 35. And that is reflected in all of the clothes I do. They are not clothes for girls.  They are clothes for women. But not every designer needs to be good at that.

Kelly, who are some of your favorite designers?

KELLY ROWLAND: My favorite designers? Besides Isaac?  Alexander McQueen, D Squared, Dolce, just to name a few. I love to mix and match a lot of different things, along with couture and vintage.

Were there any eco-friendly challenges?

ISAAC MIZRAHI:   There was a minichallenge, and there was a designer’s shoes that were eco-friendly. Of course, it’s in the foreground of everybody’s mind, and there are innovations. There are steps being taken both on The Fashion Show and in my work for Liz Claiborne as well as my Isaac Couture collection.  It’s not really enough at the moment to say “I’m a leader in that area,”  because there are other designers who are leaders. And I really adore them and respect them and take my cues from them. If they tell me it’s better to work with a certain textile or it’s better to finish a certain textile in a certain way, then I listen to them.

FERN MALLIS: There’s still a lot of controversy in the industry about what ecofriendly fashion really means and really is. There are still a lot of unknowns about the way things are manufactured, the damage that certain plants and chemicals have on the environment, et cetera. Certain cottons and things that are recycled that people think are better for the environment aren’t necessarily.  It’s all still very much anew frontier, and we are learning more each season.

ISAAC MIZRAHI: I recently made a beautiful dress in salmon-skinned paillettes.  I was approached by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, and they were doing a eco-friendly fashion show. I was chosen to do this thing, and I looked through a lot of
textiles, and I learned a lot about it. And I won’t lie to you. There is a lot of controversy. Like, the whole idea about bamboo, which people think is really very ecofriendly and probably is. But if you look into it now, there are studies that say that the growth of bamboo is somehow not as friendly to the planet as we thought. It’s like, in the end, we are recycling bottles, and we don’t really know what’s happening with the recycled bottles. Some day we will know.

KELLY ROWLAND:  Once we did that eco-friendly challenge, they liked to include eco-friendly designs in the rest of the challenges. It was something that they learned, and they wanted to put in every single one of their designs.

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