by Lindsay Strouse

There was spit-fire, there were tears, there was plenty of drama. Last night on Project Runway, the designers were taken out of their element when they had to create three complete looks for Heidi Klum's active-wear collection to be sold on Amazon.com. After bringing back the eliminated designers to help out (Jason and Kristin missing), it was Christopher who could not adapt his designing to fit Heidi's style. Today, he spoke with RealityWanted in a conference call about his experiences and thoughts on the show.

Q. Lindsay, RealityWanted: I saw your collection online and it's so beautiful. How close would you say your designs on the show are to your actual designing outside Project Runway? What was the biggest thing you had to sacrifice because of the time constraints?
A. Christopher: I definitely kept it really true to myself. When you look at my website and see me on the show, there's a common thread. I've been designing a long time and I wanted to keep it real and use this as an opportunity to show more people what I do. Through the time constraints, I did have to sacrifice the quality. You just had to get it done. Sometimes I didn't finish the seams or had to glue something on, which was a huge letdown for me. In the beginning, Tim told me how amazing my sewing was, but when the judges are sitting 20 feet away on the runway, they missed things like that. I had to learn how to be an up close and personal designer, to designing looks to be seen from far away.

Q, RealityWanted: You are all in such close proximity with each other. After being with each other for so long and listening to the judges' comments, do you think people were beginning to grow off each other and have their styles evolve at all? Or did everyone pretty much stick to their own individual designing process?
A. Christopher: I think everyone stuck to themselves. There was that time that Gretchen and Michael C. had the same fabric and style and people were saying Michael was looking around a little, but for the most part we just had to keep our faces down and do our own thing. I didn't worry too much about what everyone else was doing, I just kept to my own thing.

Q. How much did having Ivy there help you? Did she have any influence on your design?
A. Christopher: I think that in some of it, she's a very strong, independent worker. So going through some of the designs, I would want to do something and she would say, "oh, no...let's do this." Her coming back, she definitely voiced her opinion. I know she can sew very well, so she didn't design, she sewed. The spirit of her seamstress showed through, but I definitely showed myself through these pieces.

Q. Was this challenge totally confusing? I know some of these designs didn't show active-wear and I was a little confused by it.
A. Christopher: It was so extremely confusing. Heidi was talking about active-wear for her line, but when she came into the workroom her critiques were that it wouldn't fit into her line. But at the same time we were supposed to show our style, so we didn't know what to do. If it was up to me, I would have made different things for an active-line, but I had to design for Heidi. The judges were making comments that some of the designs weren't active wear but they were still great, so it didn't really make sense.

Q. You said in one of your confessionals, you thought a lot of what Nina Garcia said was confusing. Can you expand on that?
A. Christopher: It was a little confusing for me, because I have 10 years of experience in the design industry, so I'm always there listening to what's current. What I do is unique, but I'm always listening to the consumer. I was trying to listen to Nina, but she would make one comment about fashion and you would do it, but the next week she would say it's the worst thing she's ever seen. I tried to grow with the comments, but sometimes if you take their advice, you find it isn't what they really want. I found Nina did that a lot.

Q. You mentioned your active wear wasn't Heidi Klum, but it was very you. Do you think that frustration of having a lack of instruction made you just say "whatever" and do it in your style?
A. Christopher: It was a combination of many things. This was very far into the season, and I've put things down the runway I really loved and some of those things got flat recognition or got really put down. So at this point, I really didn't know if I was what the judges were interested in. I was really confused at what the judges were really looking for. I was trying to take their feedback and work with it, but I never won when I thought there were some winners in there. I started wondering if this was the right place for me.

Project Runway airs every Thursday at 9/8c on Lifetime.

(Image courtesy of Lifetime)

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