Anyone who actually believes that doesn’t understand how money works.) (Seriously, Lifetime is going to spend $10,000 and then not have her show those clothes on the runway? That’s beyond nonsensical. From 2009-2013 it was given to at least the Top 8, if not more.) And by showing that Kenya had a budget and a collection they made it even harder to pretend decoy collections don’t happen. This season they finally got close to admitting that they give a budget, time and a slot in their NYFW presentation, not just to the finalists, but to the entire Top Six? (Since 2014 that is. After all, the last we saw of Swapnil, Tim was doing everything he can not to pull a Tyra and scream “We were all rooting for you! How dare you?” How many viewers would believe that a week or two later, he gets a call from the producers telling him he gets a budget to make a decoy collection and he’s going to NYFW after all?įor that, I have to commend Project Runway. I’ve met loads of people who have no idea that, say, Swapnil and Meline showed in New York in Season 14. And for the audience at home who are not that into NYFW, and who aren’t twitter nerds, and fashion geeks, this pretense still remains. Bravo kept it to one or two at most, while there were entire years during the early Lifetime run where the entire Top Ten had collections walk the runway.Īnd yet, the program has always pretended like this is not the case. From Kara Janx in Season 2 to Mychael Knight in Season 3 to our latest editions, every single season has had at least one dummy collection to keep the audience from figuring out the winners. Project Runway has featured decoy collections during New York Fashion Week to hide who the finalists are since the show’s popularity first took off. Our second decoy collection for Project Runway’s NYFW Spring 2018 show was the closest the TV’s show’s come to admitting dummy collections exist.

Project runway new season