One actually doesn’t have to look too hard to catch up with Project Runway Season 1 winner Jay McCarroll. He’s been busy writing a pretty genius recap and commentary of his own of Season 4 of Project Runway for Elle Magazine.
However, while his fans might be thrilled to learn he’s just as much an entertaining presence in print as he was in person on the show, they still might wonder what else he’s been up to. Quite a bit, it turns out, including a relocation from the Big Apple to the city of Brotherly Love.
Jay was featured on the Bravo Special Project Jay, which documented his big move to New York City after his Project Runway win. Since then, his efforts to make it in New York City became gossip fodder, with the culmination last year of the “Homeless Jay” incident. Some news outlets claimed he was still sleeping on couches trying to make it work in Manhattan. Jay protested this wasn’t true, and responded with a YouTube video of himself hamming it up, begging to the tune of “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters.
Since then, though, he’s made the switch back to his home state of Pennsylvania, although he is sticking with urban life for now.
He’s teaching fashion classes at his own alma mater, Philadelphia University, and he will be debuting a line on QVC this summer. Television shopping has turned out to be a great sales venue for many Project Runway alum, and it would appear to be a perfect fit for Jay as well.
He’s said, “I’m not one for glamour or red carpet stuff or sexy crap…I definitely want people to have my product and I definitely want it to be affordable — there’s better things to spend money on than something disposable. I make stuff for every day, every woman kind of thing; I grew up that way. I grew up loving the sale rack at Gap and going to Sears.”
The crew from Project Jay continued to follow Jay around for the next year as he planned his post-reality show collection, and the footage from that is being turned into a documentary called “Eleven Minutes,” referencing the amount of time the runway show itself actually took.
Jay told SouthPhillyReview, “It showed everything from collecting ideas, hair, makeup, jewelry, working with assistants, PR, production, backstage, press and into the show and after the show into sales — the whole process top-to-bottom…[The fashion show] was one of the most heinously stressful events of my adult life and I will never do that again.”
– Leslie Seaton, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: SouthPhillyReview
(Image courtesy of Bravo)
Staff Columnist, BuddyTV
