By Nadine Kam

Bravo photos
From left are some Season 5 “Project Runway” contestants, from left, Kenley, Jerry and Wesley.

Season 5 of “Project Runway,” the last with Bravo before it moves to Lifetime, starts up tonight. You can go to www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway to check out the latest crop of designers.

My sister emails from New York that she helped one of the contestants, Kenley, with her application last year and though she didn’t make it at that time, the judges liked her and welcomed her back this year.

Don’t know if she’ll make it though. Right now, all I can look at are their influences, and hers — Coco Chanel, Betsey Johnson and Edith Head — are all across the map. There’s no coherence to the mix.

Other designers had the usual suspect list of influences, veering toward the theatrical: Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano. With these candidates, I picture bombast and a lack of taste and sophistication.

I’m curious to see what Jerry from Montana (influences: Martin Margiela, Rick Owens and Calvin Klein) and Wesley from Massachusetts (influences: Jeanne Lanvin, Marc Jacobs and Cristobal Balenciaga) will do.

It’s been noted on Twitter that no one from Hawaii has made it onto the show. Sorry, I’m not surprised.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 12:03 pm and is filed under media, Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.