Project Runway Designers from Season 16
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Kentaro Kameyama
- Career-Ending Injury: A complication with his hands forced him to leave his career as a pianist, so he decided to pursue fashion as his second passion.
- Elegant Classical Musician: He was a classically trained concert pianist.
- Funny Foreigner: He is from Japan is quite humorous, often entertaining the other designers in the work room.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: He and Brandon formed a very close friendship after a few challenges, unsurprisingly performing well together as a team.
- Nice Guy: He is very gentle and never showed any animosity towards anyone, not even the twins (who were greatly disliked by other designers).
Ayana Ife
- Author Appeal: Modest clothing that covers everything except the face and the hands.
- Modesty Shorts: As a Muslim designer that wears modest clothing, she is most commonly seen wearing pants under her dresses.
Brandon Kee
- Author Appeal: He likes oversized clothing and menswear inspired designs.
- Heidi Klum described his style as high fashion straight jackets.
- Chick Magnet: Models in the confessional have said that half of them had a crush on him, but unfortunately he has a fiancé already.
- Color Motif: Only uses pastels and off-whites. For his final collection all the outfits were based off a single print with a few supplementary fabrics.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: He and Kentaro formed a very close friendship after a few challenges, unsurprisingly performing well together as a team.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: One of his biggest strengths in the season was his style, of oversized garments with dangling details which the judges typically loved to bits. However, as some contestants noted (unlike the judges) this led to a lot of his looks looking similar if you pictured them all together. Sure enough, while his final collection was wonderfully constructed and the judges loved it, seeing so many similar looks all together ended up leaving a lackluster impression (not helping that all of them have the same flamingo print).
- Nice Guy: Like his best friend Kentaro, Brandon is mild-mannered and friendly towards everyone.
- Signature Style: His final collection focuses on one specific flamingo print.
Margarita Alvarez
- Author Appeal: She wants to input her Puertorican roots on her designs.
- Blatant Lies: Upon finding out the judges hated the pants she co-designed with her model for "Models Off Duty" she quickly threw her model under the bus and claimed she had been having misgivings about the pants all along and had just gone along since it was what the client wanted. Despite up til then in the episode being super hyped for the design along with the model.
- Deadpan Snarker: Like most of her fellow contestants, she showed this whenever they complain about the twins on the confession cam.I'm really loving the environment in the workroom. We're all kinda in the zone, it's very zen, it's quiet... It's kinda nice. [Shawn and the other designers return from shopping] Tourns out, first thing is ”Claire!!! Shaaaawnie!!!”, and it's back to "Wahh wahh wahh"
- Gratuitous Spanish: She and Michael talked to each other in Spanish about Claire cheating.
- Platonic Life-Partners: She and Michael became pretty close friends in the workroom.
- Signature Style: Her final collection consists of big fishes and striped colors.
- Spicy Latina: She is very proud of her Puertorican roots, in addition to her sassy personality.
Kenya Freeman
- Author Appeal: Peplums and Ruffels
- Boring, but Practical: Her designs are usually well constructed and easy for women to wear in everyday life, but due to lacking in the wow factor she never won a challenge despite reaching Final 5.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: She used her bra to transport materials from her car to the drum in the second unconventional challenge.
Michael Brambila
- Author Appeal: Likes adding elements of BDSM.
- Honor Before Reason: When Claire was named the winner of the print challenge, he didn't feel she deserved it (mainly for ripping off two garments and using instruments out of the workroom) and walked out during the judging session out of disgust. He returns later to apologize to the judges for his reaction and continue with the elimination round.
- Platonic Life-Partners: He and Margarita became pretty close friends in the workroom.
Amy Bond
- Author Appeal: Likes making outfits that transform.
- Cool Old Lady: At 46 the oldest member of the cast this season, she's edgy, down to earth and a college professor.
- Cool Teacher: She is an edgy fashion designer and a college teacher.
Batani-Khalfani
- Author Appeal: Likes using bright African prints. Ironically, her last challenge does not utilize this...when it is the challenge that is all about prints.
- Blatant Lies: When Heidi asked she was covering something up with the lace she denied it, but a closer inspection by the judges showed that she was hiding a hole in her dress.
Claire Buitendorp
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: She and her sister tend to overennunciate all their phrases.
- Catchphrase: "Indeed".
- Cheaters Never Prosper: She broke the rules by having meassuring tape outside of the workroom and used it on a tanktop and a crotch from a pair of pants. Not only did her fellow competitors were upset at her and made her admit it aloud so she realizes what she did, Tim took immediate action, annuled her win and disqualified her himself.
- The Dividual: The image they project to the other contestants, since the twins keep being codependant and won't ever stop calling the other for help.
- Elimination Houdini: Stays in despite being in the bottom two twice in a row and the judges finding out she'd sewn the pants that her sister used to get in the top three that week (which they took as a strike against Claire for not managing her time properly).
- Fatal Flaw: Is not as good at design as her sister, often turning in well-constructed but uninspired looks.
- Finishing Each Other's Sentences: The other contestants even remark their habit of doing this and overennunciating all their sentences.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Claire has long hair often tied in a ponytail.
- No Indoor Voice: The main reason the contestants (and the viewers as well) can’t digest neither her or her sister is because they are constantly yelling each other’s names or asking each other for feedback nobody cares for.
- Non-Gameplay Elimination: After Claire won the Dixie Cup challenge, both Margarita and Michael were convinced that Claire had cheated, especially Michael. He turned out to be right because Claire had a tape measurement which she used in her hotel room, which was a violation of the rules. When Tim Gunn found that out and Claire confirmed it, he rescinded her win and sent her home.
- Oh, Crap!: Right after she admitted having tape measurment at the apartments and using it there to replicate four measurements, she quickly gets this reaction after realizing the others made her admit it on camera.
- Picked Last
- Sibling Team: She and Shawn work together as co-designers for regular clients, and most of their interview segments are shared. They also constantly help each other in the competition, coming to a head in "Models Off Duty" when Claire was unable to finish her outfit due to helping Shawn make pants for so much of the time allotted.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: They themselves present as this. Claire is the girly one and Shawn is the edgy one.
Shawn Buitendorp
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: She and her sister tend to overennunciate all their phrases.
- Catchphrase: Indeed
- The Dividual: The image they project to the other contestants, since the twins keep being codependant and won't ever stop calling the other for help.
- Fatal Flaw: Is not as good at construction as her sister, so while she can design decent outfits she often needs help in actually putting them together. This is why, after she and Claire lost a menswear challenge and had to create all-new looks against each other in order to move on to the next round, Shawn forfeited — she wasn't able to construct anything while Claire was already working on something.
- Finishing Each Other's Sentences: The other contestants even remark their habit of doing this and overennunciating all their sentences.
- Gender-Blender Name: She's named "Shawn", which also goes with her tag as "the edgy twin".
- Identical Twin ID Tag Shawn has a shaved head
- No Indoor Voice: The main reason the contestants (and the viewers as well) can’t digest neither her or her sister is because they are constantly yelling each other’s names or asking each other for feedback nobody cares for.
- Sibling Team: She and Claire work together as co-designers for regular clients, and most of their interview segments are shared. They also constantly help each other in the competition, coming to a head in "Models Off Duty" when Claire was unable to finish her outfit due to helping Shawn make pants for so much of the time allotted.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: They themselves present as this. Claire is the girly one and Shawn is the edgy one.
Samantha Rei
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Designs these kind of clothes. Sadly the judges both are bored by the look and feel her own outfits she wears to the shows often look more interesting and inspired. After two such discussions, she ends up out.
Aaron Myers
- Identical Stranger: Looks exactly like the Project Runway Season 15 Winner Erin. He even has a similar name.
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: Made the other neon pink fringe look of this season.
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: Mild mannered and his hair is blond dyed pink.
Deyonté Weather
- Camp Straight: He says in his intro that people find odd that a straight guy like him can have a career in Fashion Design.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: He is one of the few straight male competitors in the show and he tells the audience in his video interview that he is Happily Married and about to be a dad.
Kudzanai Karidza
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: After two fairly normal looks he decided to make a neon pink and yellow look with a fringe of colorful feather and zippers.
Sentell McDonald
- We Hardly Knew You: The second out.
ChaCha Nie
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Between the things he loves the most about the US are free refills.
- Funny Foreigner: Was rasied in Taiwan and has a quirky personality.
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: He loves colorful clothes, even combining colors that should not be together.
- We Hardly Knew You The first contestant out
