Photo by Samantha Cabrera

Interior designers doubled as models for the event.

Houston's design industry turned out to Bayou Place for the 4th Annual Product Runway competition, in which interior designers turned their skills to fashion design.

The event raised more than $14,000, donated to the Houston Furniture Bank, which outfits homes for those in need. Hosts were Rod Ryan from the Buzz morning radio show and Jeannie Wu of Gensler, who is also a chair for the Houston City Center IIDA.

Notable design firms such as HOK, Gensler, Page Southerland Page and Bennett Design Group formed teams within each company to participate in in the event, which was presented by Houston City Center and the Texas Oklahoma chapter of the International Interior Design Association.

Area schools, including The Art Institute of Houston and Lone Star College Kingwood, also competed.

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Photo by Altamese Osborne

If Dr. Seuss had ever decided to pen a children's book about cowboys, cowgirls and their beloved cowboy boots, he might've gotten inspiration from the Lucchese-lined back wall at Pinto Ranch, Post Oak's eponymous store for Western wear. Short boots, tall boots, big boots, small boots, thin boots, round boots, pink boots and brown boots stood in bunches on the display stands and hung endlessly on the racks in the huge store last Saturday. Woven throughout the pairs of cowboy boots were more than your average number of shoppers; this past weekend was Pinto Ranch's second trunk showing of the Lucchese Classics brand of handcrafted, high-quality leather boots.

"This is something we do every May," said Bea Garcia, Pinto Ranch's director of marketing, referring to the event as the store's "kickoff to summer boot sale."

Leather isn't the only material the boots are made out of. According to Brian Eden, one of two Lucchese representatives present that day (the other was a bit media-shy), some of the shoe materials read like a safari fashion show: American alligator, Cayman crocodile, snakeskin, hippopotamus, even elephant.

"We use a huge variety of leathers," Eden said.

Photo by Altamese Osborne

The Lucchese-lined back wall.

The cowboy boots can be bought in-store or specially ordered, at which time the customer can have his or her shoes custom-designed to taste.

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Debra Ham

Weaving has been a cultural tradition of a small refugee community known as the Karenni since they left their home in the mountainous region bordering Thailand. Originally from Burma, the Karenni families escaped a civil war that's been going on there for about four decades. Over time, many of the families had left their villages and gone into the jungle to live for several years before eventually moving into Thailand, where many of them lived in refugee camps.

Now just fewer than 100 Karenni families have moved into Houston, home to a number of refugee communities. As Pat Jasper, director of Folklife & Traditional Arts for the Houston Arts Alliance, explains: "Houston really has the capacity to accommodate refugees in a way that a lot of cities around the country can't."

The city offers a certain amount of funding for things like short-term education and housing for refugee groups that move here, but that has been increasingly limited in recent years. Many of the Karenni women have used weaving not only as a cultural tradition, but also as a way to supplement their income since coming here.

And now their work is being showcased at a special exhibition, Weaving Home, produced by the Houston Arts Alliance Folklife & Traditional Arts Program.

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So many words, so few details.

Project Runway has been holding casting calls across the country this spring and sharing some of the details on its blog. And by "some of the details" we mean very few, very scant details -- a photo from the Dallas, Seattle and New York City casting calls, plus a few lines about their location. Although the blog refers to these posts as "sneak peeks," we don't see anything but judges at a casting table! The links for the casting call and application for Season 10 are all still active, but there is no final cutoff date mentioned, nor is there a list of cities in which auditions are being held.

Frankly, the whole thing is making us pretty cranky.

For those of you who are anxiously awaiting the return of Project Runway, we have compiled a list of PR resources to help take the edge off until we get more details about what to expect for Season 10 -- and the Project Runway blog isn't one of them.

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Jill Meisner and Melissa Liebling-Goldberg

"There's an interesting story about my dress," says Jill Meisner, laughing.

We're inside of Triniti Restaurant and Bar, a geometrically chic South Shepherd eatery. Inside the restaurant's private room, Meisner, public relations director for fashion and lifestyle Web site Gilt.com, and Melissa Liebling-Goldberg, Gilt's editorial director -- stylish in a Proenza Schouler number -- are surrounded by a bevy of fashion writers.

"We're taking time out to meet with the media," said Liebling-Goldberg, to find out what Houston's fashion writers like about Gilt.com and what they think our city's fashionistas want more of from the site.

Back to Meisner's dress.

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The New York Times is a great newspaper in a great city, but sometimes it seems to be sending in reports from another planet, and that planet's inhabitants have more money than they know what to do with.

Case in point: today's story about how "designer children's wear is all the rage." Two cute models at the top of the Thursday Styles section are outfitted in stunning and expensive clothing -- one a tulle dress for $1,200 with $1,570 coat and ballet flats for $190.

The second child, looking years beyond her age, sports a $375 trench coat and $180 kilt. And a pair of Converse sneakers for a measly $32.

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Jessiica Howell should be proud. The new fashion designer stepped away from a corporate job to bravely debut a Saturday night sneak preview of her self-titled line, Jessiica Howell Fashions, which she created in less than four months. She should also give herself a pat on the back for transforming the previously bare-bones Hermann Park Golf Clubhouse into a glitzy after-five venue that hosted the inaugural event, held as both a fashion show and Howell's birthday fete. Her competent style staff and her wide circle of fabulous, fashionable friends deserve kudos, too, for stepping out to support a dream born in middle school in her hometown of Chicago. Claps all around.

Now, on to the show.

It went off without a hitch, minus a few tiny flaws. For one, we didn't expect the event to start an hour late. But there we were, waiting pensively at 8:54 p.m. for models originally scheduled to strut down the runway at 8:00. Emcee Nakia Edwards's attempt at a stand-up comedy career didn't pacify the impatient crowd, either. Once started, the show -- broken into two halves -- was unnecessarily punctuated by performances, the first being poet Paul Wilkinson, who stumbled over his lines, and Maxx Julian, a burgeoning singer/songwriter who thought his song, "Lipstick," would be a great opportunity to serenade a woman in the first row, who happened to be married -- and sitting right next to her husband.

On to the fashion.

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Timothy Norris/LA Weekly

Aging hipsters -- the very same people Coachella targeted when it began holding the music fest in Indio -- are usually easy to spot on the Empire Polo Fields. They're the ones who can't be bothered to walk over to Gobi and check out a new band because "It's too hot!" (or, in Friday's case, "It's too cold!"). They're the ones who weren't interested in At the Drive In's set because they were too old when Vaya first came out. They make disparaging remarks about everyone else's outfits ('What the fuck is that flower contraption on that girl's head?"). If you think we're talking about you, check out our list after the jump.

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Luciana Scarabello's small collection at Saks.

Our very own Christina Uticone didn't hold back on her critique of NBC's new style show, Fashion Star. We have to agree; the fledgling show leaves a lot to be desired. Despite its weaknesses, however, we still wanted to see if it held true to its advertised clincher, that is, whether the clothes modeled the night before actually arrive instantly online at the end of the show and in stores the very next day.

In the latest episode, the ten remaining contestants were put into groups of twos and threes and told to re-create a store window that fused their respective designs into a cohesive statement. The result was half and half; five designers sold to store chains H&M, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy's, five didn't and Edmond Newton, whose hastily assembled Oxford shirts made a last-minute stumble into the world of men's fashion dominated by fellow contestant Nzimiro Oputa, was sent home. As soon as the show was over, we checked each store's Web site for the winning designs, and, as promised, they were there, ready for sale. But we wanted more. We had to see the clothes in person.

The next morning, we began our Fashion Star scavenger hunt at the unapologetically expensive Saks Fifth Avenue. Sure enough, we found Luciana Scarabello's mid-length dresses in shades of plum and black hanging on the high-priced racks.

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Tags:

Fashion Star, H&M, Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue

Can NBC's 'Fashion Star' make it work well enough to get us hooked?

NBC's fashion/reality show Fashion Star can be hard to watch, especially for a die-hard Project Runway fan. On one hand, you want to give the show a fair shake, without comparing it to its Bravo Channel counterpart; on the other, it's a fashion design show hosted by a model and judged/mentored by fashion designers and celebrities, which by definition begs the PR comparison.

Viewings of the first couple of episodes left us uninterested and uninspired. And slightly confused, as the grand prize includes a presence for the winning designer's clothes in all three stores participating on the show: H&M, Macy's, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Now there might be room for overlap between Macy's and Saks, and between H&M and Macy's, but it's hard to imagine the garment that would look equally at home in a Saks window as an H&M window. This glaring issue is reinforced when you watch the show--rarely do H&M buyer Nicole Christie and Saks' buyer Terron E. Schaefer bid on the same designer's clothing. Ultimately that is an issue for the buyers and designers to resolve -- as viewers, here are a few of the issues that result in Fashion Star missing the mark.

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