Congrats Anya
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For those of you living under a rock, you may not be aware that last night was the finale of Project Runway, a show in which prior to this season I had no interest in watching, on a network (Lifetime) that I had, until this season in Project Runway, no interest in watching, and which from today, I have no interest in watching.
Why then was I suddenly interested… not just interested, obsessed, in a show which hitherto I did not really know existed, on a network whose main function was lying midway between USA and ESPN?
Well, as you all know, I am an avid twitter user and a rumour started floating around on twitter that a national of Trinidad and Tobago, a former Miss Trinidad and Tobago, Anya Ayoung-Chee, pretty soon the rumour was confirmed and there you were, Anya had applied to be a contestant on Project Runway. She was in the final 20 who would appear on the first episode.
Being a pathetically patriotic Trini, and having gained an enormous amount of respect for Anya for how she dealt with the scandal that plagued her shortly after the Miss Universe pageant, I decided that I would tune in to the first episode and give moral support.
I was totally unprepared for what I saw. At the first attempt I COULD NOT watch that first episode, could not could not. I learnt that Anya made the top three (which made me glad), but I said that I would be supporting from the sidelines from now on. I followed the second episode on twitter, and was immensely happy when Anya was pronounced “safe”. At the beginning, I said to myself, if Anya finished in the top 5, I would be over the moon. Cue the third episode, and when I reach home looking to watch the 4th rerun of some inconsequential football match, I see that my mother is watching… ugh… project runway. Having nothing better to do, I sit down and watch it myself, and lo and behold, the designers are designing for some mokojumbies! Having watched that episode from beginning to end, I realised, hey it’s not so bad… I can watch this for the trini girl, and the rest, as they say, is history… I watched the first 2 episodes online, and followed every episode after that, right up to last night.
After that I learnt, again via twitter, that there was a fan favourite competition where the winner would get $10,000.00 (US). From the very beginning, the competition was between Anya and a guy by the name of Anthony Ryan Auld. To vote for your designer of choice, you would add the hashtag #pr9 plus the name of the designer, so Anya was #pr9Anya. SO i got into that as well, hashtagging as much as possible. Coming to the end, it seemed that it would be in vain. the day before voting, Anya was a more than 40,000 votes behind, but the word got out and she won in the end… by over 60,000 votes. To put this in perspective, that margin of victory is MORE than the COMBINED TOTAL of ALL the other designers, almost twice as much!
Anyways, in last week’s episode, the four finalists had to show a bit of their final collection and one would be eliminated. Anya’s collection contained a god awful bathing suit and a gown that looked like I wrapped myself in my mother’s living room curtain, it was BY FAR the weakest collection there, and the judges made sure that she knew it. But in a twist bigger than a Shane Warne googly, she was in and ALL FOUR showed. Then in another ripper, the finalists were given an extra $500.00 to buy material to create or supplement looks. This worked out for Anya in 2 ways, firstly, she could dump the 2 designs out of hell and start afresh (and last minute as all good trinis do) and secondly, it gave the other designers with much better collections (Viktor and Josh I’m looking at you) to drop the ball, Viktor changed almost all of his great items, and added some sheer stuff that looked almost dominatrix and Josh went very psychedelic with some greenshit shorts and other stuff. The judges liked them, but it make the collection more schizophrenic than it needed to be.
At the end of the day though ANYA WIN!!!!! So this long winded post is to say “congrats” to our trini girl for doing us proud!
One thing though, she named the collection Tobago Love… Now I guess for the average American out there, Tobago Love is nothing but a nice ode to our beautiful sister isle, but as all Trinis know, it carries a far more sinister meaning. No doubt Anya knew this and the name was in recognition of the trouble she got in creating that last collection.
You can follow Anya on Twitter, on Facebook and her official facebook fan page and she has a website, which apparently will be much more active very soon! Anya does not design well for men (as her reggae jesus outfit proved), but I am sure that many trini and Caribbean females will be looking to patronise her designs in good time (2010 Miss Universe runner-up Yendi Phillips tweeted that she wanted to wear one of Anya’s outfits!)
Why then was I suddenly interested… not just interested, obsessed, in a show which hitherto I did not really know existed, on a network whose main function was lying midway between USA and ESPN?
Well, as you all know, I am an avid twitter user and a rumour started floating around on twitter that a national of Trinidad and Tobago, a former Miss Trinidad and Tobago, Anya Ayoung-Chee, pretty soon the rumour was confirmed and there you were, Anya had applied to be a contestant on Project Runway. She was in the final 20 who would appear on the first episode.
Being a pathetically patriotic Trini, and having gained an enormous amount of respect for Anya for how she dealt with the scandal that plagued her shortly after the Miss Universe pageant, I decided that I would tune in to the first episode and give moral support.
I was totally unprepared for what I saw. At the first attempt I COULD NOT watch that first episode, could not could not. I learnt that Anya made the top three (which made me glad), but I said that I would be supporting from the sidelines from now on. I followed the second episode on twitter, and was immensely happy when Anya was pronounced “safe”. At the beginning, I said to myself, if Anya finished in the top 5, I would be over the moon. Cue the third episode, and when I reach home looking to watch the 4th rerun of some inconsequential football match, I see that my mother is watching… ugh… project runway. Having nothing better to do, I sit down and watch it myself, and lo and behold, the designers are designing for some mokojumbies! Having watched that episode from beginning to end, I realised, hey it’s not so bad… I can watch this for the trini girl, and the rest, as they say, is history… I watched the first 2 episodes online, and followed every episode after that, right up to last night.
After that I learnt, again via twitter, that there was a fan favourite competition where the winner would get $10,000.00 (US). From the very beginning, the competition was between Anya and a guy by the name of Anthony Ryan Auld. To vote for your designer of choice, you would add the hashtag #pr9 plus the name of the designer, so Anya was #pr9Anya. SO i got into that as well, hashtagging as much as possible. Coming to the end, it seemed that it would be in vain. the day before voting, Anya was a more than 40,000 votes behind, but the word got out and she won in the end… by over 60,000 votes. To put this in perspective, that margin of victory is MORE than the COMBINED TOTAL of ALL the other designers, almost twice as much!
Anyways, in last week’s episode, the four finalists had to show a bit of their final collection and one would be eliminated. Anya’s collection contained a god awful bathing suit and a gown that looked like I wrapped myself in my mother’s living room curtain, it was BY FAR the weakest collection there, and the judges made sure that she knew it. But in a twist bigger than a Shane Warne googly, she was in and ALL FOUR showed. Then in another ripper, the finalists were given an extra $500.00 to buy material to create or supplement looks. This worked out for Anya in 2 ways, firstly, she could dump the 2 designs out of hell and start afresh (and last minute as all good trinis do) and secondly, it gave the other designers with much better collections (Viktor and Josh I’m looking at you) to drop the ball, Viktor changed almost all of his great items, and added some sheer stuff that looked almost dominatrix and Josh went very psychedelic with some green
At the end of the day though ANYA WIN!!!!! So this long winded post is to say “congrats” to our trini girl for doing us proud!
One thing though, she named the collection Tobago Love… Now I guess for the average American out there, Tobago Love is nothing but a nice ode to our beautiful sister isle, but as all Trinis know, it carries a far more sinister meaning. No doubt Anya knew this and the name was in recognition of the trouble she got in creating that last collection.
You can follow Anya on Twitter, on Facebook and her official facebook fan page and she has a website, which apparently will be much more active very soon! Anya does not design well for men (as her reggae jesus outfit proved), but I am sure that many trini and Caribbean females will be looking to patronise her designs in good time (2010 Miss Universe runner-up Yendi Phillips tweeted that she wanted to wear one of Anya’s outfits!)
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3 comments:
Great post Kev. This is Anya's official Facebook Fan page http://www.facebook.com/anyaayoungcheeofficial
Congratulations Anya you have done Trinidad & Tobago proud!
I <3 ... everything I'd like to say :) will probably be linking to you.
Dude... you sure have a way with words! Well said.
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