Kara Saun

Kara Saun
Saun in 2008
Born(1967)
OccupationsFashion and costume designer

Kara Saun is an American fashion and costume designer best known for first competing in the first season of the American reality television series Project Runway.

Early life and education

Kara Saun grew up in South Carolina, where she participated in Girl Scouts.[1] She gained interest in fashion design while attending a junior high school in Sumter, South Carolina. She graduated from Rutgers University, near where her sister and her parents' relatives lived at the time.[2] Saun's parents grew up in the Cape May area of New Jersey and then moved to Sumter.[2] Her father served for the United States Army, and her sister served for the United States Navy.[1]

Pre-Project Runway activities

After Rutgers, Saun started her fashion career working for a lingerie manufacturer.[2] She then started her career as a costume designer with Malcolm in the Middle.[1] She also designed clothes for other television shows, like Malcolm & Eddie, Eve, and the first iteration (1999–2001) of The Queen Latifah Show, and designed Queen Latifah's red carpet dress for the 72nd Academy Awards (2000).[2][3][4] She designed clothes for also her loyal customers, like Eddie Griffin.[2] She also designed costumes for both 2003 films Baadasssss! and Gang of Roses, the latter a Western-themed film "with a hip hop edge".[4]

Project Runway season 1 (2004–05)

Saun, a 37-year-old fashion designer of Los Angeles without formal training in a design school, first competed in the very first season of Project Runway.[2][5] For the second challenge of the first season, whose dresses must represent the "envy" theme, Saun designed a green dress inspired by "her background as an 'Air Force brat' ".[2][6] She selected the green color to connect "war with envy" and won the challenge.[2][6] For the eighth challenge in which a USPS postal uniform should be redesigned, she made a "winter uniform with a turtleneck sweater, a lined vest and drawstring pants" and then won the challenge.[7] Her work up to January 2005 had received praise from the series's mentor Tim Gunn via the series's official website.[2] Amy DiLuna of New York Daily News the following month also praised her work seen in the series.[8] Until the Fashion Week, she had been praised for her consistency[9] and won four out of nine total challenges this season.[4][10]

For the Fashion Week, Saun designed her collection representing femininity and utilitarianism and inspired by The Aviator, a 2004 biographical film about Howard Hughes.[6][11][12] Included in the collection were " 'aviatrix' leather pants and a fuchsia cracked patent-leather flight jacket" as well as other "intricately cut leather pieces, fur shrugs and jackets, and a series of glamorous gowns".[6][13] (The title of her collection alternated between "Fantasy Fly-Girl"[4][6] and "The Aviatrix".[14])

Controversially, Saun had Dollhouse Shoes design the custom-made shoes without charge for her Fashion Week collection. Under contract, the participating contestants were not allowed to be assisted gratis whatsoever.[15] Thus, the producers instructed the judges to exclude those shoes from judging evaluation if she were to use them, which she did, and her attempt to pay the designers $15 per pair failed to make the producers reconsider.[14][15] She became the first runner-up to eventually winner Jay McCarroll.[16]

When the series originally aired, Saun was perceived as "the most level-headed and talented of all the contestants" this season and, a black Project Runway contestant herself, unlike other African-American contestants of other competitive reality television shows who at the time were portrayed negatively and perceived to generate "more drama than white contestants", like black contestants in The Apprentice.[17] Up to the seventh season, no black contestant had won Project Runway. Besides Saun, a first runner-up herself, two out of four other black non-winning finalists were first runners-up. Furthermore, as LaMont Jones of New Pittsburgh Courier noted, to that point, none of permanent judges were black, and rarely a black guest judge made an appearance.[18]

Post-Project Runway activities

After Project Runway, Saun designed clothes for the fourth season (2005–06) of a sitcom What I Like About You and another reality television series R U the Girl.[19] She also designed thirteen gold metallic leather dresses for contestants to wear as part of promoting the fifth season of America's Next Top Model.[19][20] She also designed other clothes for pilots of other WB and UPN shows and of an ABC sitcom Notes from the Underbelly.[19][21][22] She alongside Wendy Pepper and Austin Scarlett made a cameo appearance in Project Jay, an hourlong documentary about Project Runway winner Jay McCarroll, which aired on Bravo on February 22, 2006.[23]

With financial assistance from a Connecticut angel investor, Saun launched her evening wear collection at Los Angeles Fashion Week in March 2006.[24] To help her build the collection, the investor gave Saun an investment in low hundreds of thousands of dollars. Under contract, the investor would control some equity, while Saun would fully control her creativity and business operations.[25] A few clothing stores by July of the same year sold her clothes of that collection.[24] By November 2007, her "line of gowns and cocktail dresses" were sold in boutiques located in California, New York, Texas, and Connecticut as well as via her own official website, starting from US$1,500 ($2,330 in 2025)[25]

Saun further designed costumes for an MTV series America's Best Dance Crew as of October 2008;[26] for the Collective, a Nashville-based a cappella band who competed in the third season (2011) of The Sing-Off;[27] and for the first three films of the Disney Channel's Descendants franchise: the first film (2015), Descendants 2 (2017), and Descendants 3 (2019).[28]

Saun was one of fourteen returnees re-competing in the all-returnees twentieth season (2023) of the main Project Runway series.[29] By then, as Anne MacKinnon-Welsh of The Washington Post noted, a number of judges of color had increased to this point, and younger black contestants and black judges had seen Saun and Korto Momolu as their role models and primary reasons for pursuing their own fashion careers.[30]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Runway finalist says designers need to be tough". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. May 12, 2006. ProQuest 382568650.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Collins, Karyn D. (January 9, 2005). "From Rutgers to Runway: Contestant Has Designs on Fame". Asbury Park Press. Asbury Park, New Jersey: Gannett Media Corp. Section E, p. 4. ProQuest 437701181. The ProQuest copy of the article misspells Sumter with "Sumpter".
  3. ^ Russak, Brian; Abel, Katie (February 7, 2005). "Follow-Ups". Footwear News. Vol. 61, no. 6. Los Angeles: Penske Business Corporation. p. 14. ISSN 0162-914X. ProQuest 210450120.
  4. ^ a b c d Mack, Melanie (April 6, 2006). "Designer Kara Saun Debuts Fashion Is Hope 2056". Los Angeles Sentinel. Vol. 71, no. 55. p. B5. ISSN 0890-4340. ProQuest 369312778.
  5. ^ Givhan, Robin (December 3, 2004). "Project Runway: From Produce Aisle to Banana Republic". The Washington Post. p. C-1. ISSN 0190-8286. ProQuest 409757555.
  6. ^ a b c d e Nachman, Barbara (February 10, 2005). "Best in Show". The Journal News. White Plains, New York. p. E-1. ProQuest 442710995.
  7. ^ Morrison, Mary E. (February 14, 2005). "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor haute couture...". B to B. Vol. 90, no. 2. Chicago: Crain Communications. Beyond the Biz section, p. 49. ISSN 1530-2369. ProQuest 209423568.
  8. ^ DiLuna, Amy (February 13, 2005). "Some of our favorite moments could be found off the runway". New York Daily News (Sports Final ed.). Sunday Now section, p. 26. ISSN 2692-1251. ProQuest 305943658.
  9. ^ Touré (February 23, 2005), Plot To Kill President?; Gender Controversy; '90-Second Pop', Lanham: International Wire, ProQuest 466944022, ProQuest 466941589, [...]Kara Saun is the consistently respectable, consistently good...
  10. ^ Kennedy, Shawn (April 2005). "Kara Saun". Savoy. Vol. 1, no. 3. p. 25. ISSN 1532-3692. ProQuest 231092872.
  11. ^ "The Final Countdown". Women's Wear Daily. Vol. 189, no. 25. February 5, 2005. p. 36. ISSN 0149-5380. ProQuest 231101605.
  12. ^ Givhan, Robin (February 8, 2005). "Designers in Short Pants". The Washington Post. p. C-1. ISSN 0190-8286. ProQuest 409853895.
  13. ^ Collins, Karyn D. (February 23, 2005). "Rutgers graduate among the finalists in Project Runway competition". Asbury Park Press. Asbury Park, New Jersey. p. D-3. ProQuest 437703682.
  14. ^ a b Paulsen, Wade (February 24, 2005). "Jay McCarroll wins first Project Runway, but hit series' future uncertain". Reality TV World. Retrieved February 20, 2026.
  15. ^ a b Russak, Brian, ed. (February 28, 2005). "Shoe Project". Footwear News. Vol. 61, no. 9. p. 6. ISSN 0162-914X. ProQuest 210442105.
  16. ^ Aurthur, Kate (February 28, 2005). "Reality Runway Ratings". The New York Times. p. E2. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 92947939, ProQuest 432992353. Among the three, Ms. Pepper, the scheming dressmaker from Virginia, was abolished first by Heidi Klum, the host.
  17. ^ Ryan, Maureen (February 24, 2005). "Critics say reality TV plays into stereotypes". Knight Ridder Tribune News Service. p. 1. ProQuest 456583638, ProQuest 420205153.
  18. ^ Jones, LaMont (May 26, 2010). "Black designers passed over on Project Runway". New Pittsburgh Courier. Vol. 101, no. 21. Real Times, Inc. p. C5. ProQuest 2493490239 (online), ProQuest 507822751 (print). Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  19. ^ a b c Seibel, Deborah Seibel (September 11, 2005). "To the Runner-Up Goes the Sitcom". The New York Times. p. A8. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 92994647.
  20. ^ "Black Designers Are Sewing It Up Around The Globe". Ebony. Vol. 62, no. 4. February 2007. pp. 108–110, 112, 114. ISSN 0012-9011. ProQuest 232565248.
  21. ^ Amodio, Joseph V. (April 3, 2006). "STYLE FILE: Life after Runway". Newsday. Long Island, New York. p. B2. ProQuest 280050940.
  22. ^ White, Jackie (May 10, 2006). "Trends in looks, life and love". Knight Ridder Tribune News Service. Tribune Content Agency. ProQuest 456757325.
  23. ^ Ryan, Maureen (February 22, 2006). "Jay McCarroll's got a Project". Chicago Tribune. Tempo section, p. 3. ISSN 1085-6706. ProQuest 420413310.
  24. ^ a b "Ready to... Where?". Los Angeles Times. July 12, 2006. p. 54. ISSN 1085-6706. ProQuest 420491338 – via Chicago Tribune.
  25. ^ a b Brown, Carolyn M. (November 2007). "Money Matters". Black Enterprise. Vol. 38, no. 4. p. 101. ISSN 0006-4165. ProQuest 217900219.
  26. ^ Gustafson, Joanna (October 9, 2008). "Runway leads to success for Saun". Chicago Tribune. p. 38. ISSN 1085-6706. ProQuest 420780124.
  27. ^ Sciullo, Maria (September 19, 2011). "Former Pittsburgher Takes Part in Collective on NBC's Sign-Off". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p. C-6. ISSN 1068-624X. ProQuest 890664868.
  28. ^ "Hollywood costume designer gives Pasadena homeless kids a runway-ready Halloween". Pasadena Star-News. October 30, 2019. Archived from the original on October 30, 2019. Retrieved February 19, 2026.
  29. ^ Chikhoune, Ryma (May 8, 2023). "Bravo's Project Runway Back for All-Star Season; All the Details and Returning Designers". Women's Wear Daily. ProQuest 2811072722. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  30. ^ MacKinnon-Welsh, Anne (September 14, 2023). "Ann Lowe shows why we need Black history in our schools". The Washington Post. ISSN 2641-9599. ProQuest 2864715237.

Further reading

allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Saun