Project Runway teaches what not to wear

by Nathan Campbell
Online Editor

Students, staff, faculty and representatives from several local employers descended on the Stockdale Room last Thursday for the Career Development Center's second annual Project Runway event.
Project Runway - taking its name from a popular TV show - is a fashion competition between teams of students and staff to see who can best exemplify proper business attire. Each team consisted of three members - one for each category, which were: business formal, business casual and what not to wear.
According to Jane Evarian, Director of the Career Development Center, the even was held to help students identify, what exactly is proper attire to wear to a job interview, as well as to give a chance for students to interface and network with the employer representatives who were judging the teams.
EJ Callahan introduced each team, and did his best to describe their attire as they strutted down the Christmas light runway.
The outfits were about what you would expect to see around the water cooler: your classic suit and tie, pant suits and vests - worn by both sexes were a common appearance. However, by far the most entertaining category of the night was the "what not to wear."
The student participants seemed to take this as an open invitation to dress as ridiculously as possible - and for some, to act pretty inappropriate as well.
Faith Perry was actually one of the more reserved contestants wearing a torn tie-dye tank top, jeans and baseball cap. "I just tried to wear the craziest colors I had," said Perry about her outfit.
Others in her category wore everything from bathrobes and pajamas to some incredibly tacky ties.
After all of the teams had walked the runway, the judges conferred and came back to offer some advice.
One of the judges, Jennifer Bravo from Brown Armstrong spoke to the crowd about employer expectations.
"A lot of what you're wearing as business formal would actually be business casual," said Bravo.
This comment was specifically aimed at some contestants who wore a dress shirt and tie, but not a suit jacket.
She went on to say that she recruits for her company at CSUB and several other nearby state universities, and said that they seek out "different calibers of students," which makes one wonder what exactly she was implying by telling the CSUB audience that.
In the end, team Fade to Black won. Stephen Muchinyi, ASi Vice President of Legislative Affairs, was the team's business formal model. He was wearing a Richard Harris two-piece suit, a lavender Ted Baker tie, a cranberry colored Geoffrey Beene shirt.
Fade to Black's business casual model Robert Tincher wore a pinstriped vest, red dress shirt and tie from Express.
Jason Goklaney, the team's what not to wear model, wore a black hoody, which he stripped mid-walk to reveal a black print tank top to go along with his white board shorts and flip flops.
The winning team was awarded $150 in Visa cards, second place team "Fashionistas" won gift cards to Target and third place team "Fashion Police" won $15 gift cards to Starbucks.