Austin Scarlett and Michael Knight, Project Runway
Project Runway (Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET, Bravo) has certainly had its share of colorful characters — and inspired creations — over the past four seasons. So which of the reality hit's wannabe designers have found a pattern for success? We checked in with the winners and notable also-rans to find out just what they're up to now.
Wendy PepperVirginia mom Pepper, the controversial dark-horse finalist from PR1, is sticking close to home. Her new line, Pretty World, is being sold exclusively through Highcliffe Clothiers, right down the street in Middleburg, Virginia. "I walk to work and make my line at the shop," says Pepper, 43. "First come, first served!" She extended her Bravo career on Celebrity Poker Showdown and Battle of the Network Reality Stars, and she doesn't rule out returning to TV — "Never say never!"
Jay McCarrollAfter winning PR1
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Jay McCarroll by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com
Project Runway’s Jay McCarroll is bitter towards Bravo. Two years after the show wrapped, the designer is still without a fashion line or financial prospects. “What I needed was someone to sit down with me and say, ‘Here’s how you start a fashion label,’” the Season 1 winner said in the Aug. 13 issue of New York Magazine. After winning the top title, McCarroll discovered that if he accepted the show’s $100,000, 10 percent of his brand would be forever owned by the Weinstein Company. So he turned down the prize but has yet to find his footing in the fashion world. That’s not to say that all the contestants on the Bravo reality show are in the same boat. Season 2’s Austin Scarlett is the creative director of a bridal line, while winner Jeffrey Sebelia sells his clothes in major L.A. stores. Meanwhile, McCarroll is struggling. In response to the New York story, he recently posted a video on YouTube depicting himself as a homeless man with ...
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It's easy, sometimes even enjoyable, to disparage reality TV, a genre so notorious for bottom-feeding it just asks for abuse. (When I heard someone was shopping a show reuniting Amy Fisher with the Buttafucos, I thought about early retirement.) Despite all the soul-numbing creepshows we've witnessed — Anna Nicole Smith, the Gottis, Danny Bonaduce, we know ye too well — there is a gratifyingly popular trend to deliver shows with one goal in mind: to entertain, leaving you with a grin instead of a grimace for having wasted your time. Here's my ranking of the current crop.
American Idol Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 pm/ET, FoxThe hook: Watching someone’s musical dreams come true — eventually. But not before we endure weeks of painful auditions by people who are way t
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Bravo has announced a Feb. 22 premiere for the Project Runway spin-off Project Jay, chronicling Season 1 champ Jay McCarroll's adventures in the New York City fashion biz.... Sheryl Crow has joined the star-studded lineup of Animal Planet's Trail Mix, a Jan. 29 special about (and I quote) "the special bond between some of the music industry's hottest acts and their horses."... CMT has acquired rebroadcast rights to NBC's Three Wishes and has the option to license any new episodes produced beyond the 10 that have aired.
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Jay McCarroll's fashionable array of color-coordinated outfits — complete with matching headphones — helped him defeat Project Runway's designing women last week. Here, the newly-minted couturier shares some behind-the-scenes dish with TVGuide.com, including his take on Wendy Pepper's brazen backstabbing and why he feels his nasty comment about Kara Saun's shoe snafu was taken way out of context.
TVGuide.com: Unlike the other two finalists, you never won a challenge. Yet you took home first prize. How's that for irony?
Jay McCarroll: It still hasn't really sunk in. I'm just waiting for that moment where it's like, "What just happened?" I'm trying to keep levelheaded about the whole thing and not get too wrapped up in the celebrity of it.
TVG: You're just the next big thing in fashion, no big deal.
Jay: I don't really look it at that way. I just feel
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