“Project Runway’s” Elisa Jimenez Is Kind Of Weird, Wonderful

You might remember “Project Runway’s” Elisa Jimenez as the artsy, eccentric former puppeteer who wasn’t a gay man. Well, Elisa really showed off her 2008 Fall collection for New York’s Fashion Week and proved she’s still as wonderfully weird as ever with “Hunger World” a performance art-inspired fashion show:

There wasn’t a proper runway. The audience was arranged in semi-circles, the “models” walked in the center, most posing and doing some sort of improv performance or dance, before heading back out. Most likely a fashion week first.

Awko taco.

Each chair had a blown up surgical glove on it with ‘bless’ written on it…. backwards. Turns out, Elisa only writes backwards. [Ed. note: Oh she's just so quirky!] Each glove was meant to be a ‘touch’ from the designer to the audience. Hmmm.

The show was a theatrical representation of ‘The Hunger World,’ which Jimenez called a pseudo-fictitious world she started working on some 18 years ago. I still haven’t figured out what this Hunger World is, but from looking at the program and speaking to Jimenez, I know that her models were meant to be ‘marionettes’ and ‘puppeteers,’ ranging from a ‘Little Worm-Thing’ to a ‘Honey-Giver’ to a ‘Mistress of Tenderness.’ See if you can figure out who’s who in the video.

Surgical gloves? Little worm-thing? Honey-giver? This reminds us that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!

Elisa Jimenez shows Fall 2008 collection [Newsday]