VietNamNet Bridge - Project Runway first season just ended, Vietnamese fashion designers immediately have a new playground – the Fashion Star, which has completed enrollment period to enter the official race. Two competitions of the international fashion world have come to Vietnam, where the fashion design industry has long been named “young.”

Hoang Minh Ha is the winner of Project Runway

In fact, Vietnam’s fashion industry is young but it had domestic fashion design competitions from many years ago.

In 1999, the Vietnam Collection Grand Prix the first season was initiated by designer Minh Hanh and the Fadin Mode Academy and was warmly welcomed by fashion, art students, young designers and the public.

The competition discovered talented designers for Vietnam, such as Le Thanh Phuong, Cong Tri, Nguyen Sa and Nguyen Quoc Binh. Until now, Cong Tri, who won the idea prize in 2000, still holds a strong position in the fashion industry of Vietnam. It also had positive influence on the formation of the modeling team in Vietnam. In the early 2000s, performing in the Vietnam Collection Grand Prix was the honor for any model.

The models showcasing BST earned topper Jeffrey Sebelia Project Runway America 2006

In 2010, after 11 years, the competition suddenly stopped due to many reasons, the biggest of which was the shortness of the contest itself in the great changes of fashion, especially when Vietnam Collection Grand Prixvan kept the idea of honoring the decoration collections rather than the ones for applications. However, in the last year, Vietnam Collection Grand Prix still attracted tens of thousands of designs.

In the wave of reality television shows in Vietnam in recent years, fashion is not an exemption. Four years after the end of the Vietnam Collection Grand Prix, Project Runway came.

With foreign format that highlights the entertaining feature on TV, Project Runway, of course, is very different from Vietnam Collection Grand Prix.

Replacing senior designers in the jury are "hot" names on the catwalk and the fashion market. Contestants must be not only designers but also tailors, who can make products from A to Z.

Instead of imaginative topics of Vietnam Collection Grand Prix such as "Balance" (2006), "Space" (2007) and "Pioneers" (2009), Project Runway asked contestant to make specific products. The winners of Project Runway the first season are those with products for applications and business.

Recently, Fashion Star was launched, with cash prizes of up to VND1.5 billion ($75,0000). The program also gives participants the chance to meet with investors of American fashion brands like H&M, Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue. More specifically, the representatives of these brands will auction the contestants' designs on stage. The players of Fashion Star must be experienced designers and they have to submit sketches of two collections Haute couture and Ready to wear.

It can be said that from the Vietnam Collection Grand Prix to Project Runway and now Fashion Star is the 3 levels of development needed for a fashion designer: from drawing to the realization of the sketches and finally entering the fashion avenue with real opportunities.

However, whether Vietnamese fashion designers can take opportunities from this American-format dream?

TT&VH