Project Runway — Page 7

Finale tonight!

Set your Tivo!

How do we think sweet Kara, funny Jay or nasty Wendy will do?

Updated On: 2/23/05 at 03:04 PM

Clawing their way to the top

'Runway' face-off tonight

By MARISA GUTHRIE

The claws come out tonight at 9 when the rags- to-ratings hit "Project Runway" crowns its queen Bee on Bravo.
Get real, darling. It's the fashion business.

According to host Heidi Klum, there is a (gasp!) "huge fight" in the two-hour finale. See if you can tell who squares off.

Only Jay McCarroll, Kara Saun and Wendy Pepper remain from the 12 designers competing for $100,000 in seed money and a mentorship with the Banana Republic design team.

Their final test: Take four months and $8,000 to come up with a Fashion Week collection to parade for designer Michael Kors, Nina Garcia of Elle and pixie actress Parker Posey.

Winning simply means losing 11 people along the way, says Pepper, a 39-year-old mother from Middleburg, Va., the show's resident evil character.

"The point is not to become friends with 11 people," she says. "The point is to get rid of 11 people. If you want to call that villainous, you can, but I just call it realistic."

"[Wendy] is delusional," says McCarroll.

"She seriously thinks that everyone had a strategy on the show," he adds. "There are parts of her I cannot f— stand. She's a weirdo.

"Hopefully after this whole ordeal I'll never see her again."

McCarroll's Fashion Week display of bold sweaters and wraps with a futuristic bent receives more applause than Pepper's equestrian-inspired collection. Saun's spangly, sexy pieces accessorized with brightly dyed fur jackets does, too.

Much of the tension on the show was between Pepper and 37-year-old costume designer Saun, whose beautifully tailored designs and sunny disposition have positioned her as the contest favorite.

"Honestly," says Saun, "in the beginning, I was rooting for [Wendy]. Then you see her whole strategy thing and it's like literally being stabbed in the back. This is not 'Survivor.' You do not have to do it that way."

But such ugliness is a natural part of the world of high fashion.

"Every morning we open up the trashy magazines and we rip each other apart," says Klum.

"'Oh my god, look at her hair! She's fat! She's skinny! She looks like a cow! She had her lips blown up! She had her breasts done! She walks like a stork! Oh my God, what was she thinking?'

"That's what we do. In other businesses they do it, too; it's just we don't put a piece of paper in front of our mouth."

To hear Klum tell it, the most Machiavellian reality-show contestant has nothing on a catwalker with a raging case of envy.

"There's so many bitchy girls in the modeling world," Klum says. "They whisper things in your ear before you go out or they take your shoes and they switch the sizes so when you're walking down the runway your shoes are too big and you're falling all over the place."

And if the sharpened stiletto fits, Pepper is happy to wear it.

"I'm in the fashion business," she says. "People in the fashion business make a statement. Who will be remembered when this is over? It will be me."

Indeed, Pepper knows that in the cut-throat world of couture, spectacle sells.

"Did Wendy Pepper show up on the screen," she asks. "Yes! Did the editors have a grand old time? Yes! Did the viewers sit there on the edge of their seats? Yes!

"I'm counting the minutes they spend on me, and I think I come out pretty well.

"Some people didn't get me," she says. "They didn't understand me. They didn't know what I was trying to say. But it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

"I'm still waiting for my broom to come in the mail!"

Updated On: 2/23/05 at 03:14 PM