The Fashion Show is the New Project Runway

Poor old Project Runway has sadly sashayed off to Lifetime-land, and tonight Bravo premieres its new fashion-focused reality show. Isaac Mizrahi and Kelly Rowland step in for Tim and Heidi on The Fashion Show -- which dangles a $125,000 cash carrot in front of 15 designers as they face weekly elimination challenges and deep design drama!

Of course, the Project Runway pattern has been altered a bit. The Fashion Show will have a live audience that weighs in each week on the winning design, which is then manufactured and sold on Bravo's website. And America herself will be called upon to name the season winner, a la American Idol. In short, it sounds like the difference is that the emphasis of this show is going to be on marketability and mainstream appeal. (Mizrahi, after all, reigns over the exotic kingdom of Target.) Gone are the days of human-hair fringe and Ferocia Coutura.

Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to watch Mizrahi channel his inner Tim Gunn. "I was very surprised by my own latent parental...mentoring instincts," he says. "I thought, oh, OK, no problem hosting and judging a fashion competition show. But the surprise to me was like that I actually felt myself dissolve into tears a few times over the sort of quote-unquote "life or death" of these people."

--JESSANNE COLLINS

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