Technology on the Runway: A Look Back at the Technology of Project Runway Season 7

Tonight marks the end end of Project Runway, Season 7. From Anthony’s charm to Emilio’s ego to Mila and Jay’s ongoing spat, I have to say this was a fun season to watch. But it wouldn’t have been the same without the stylish tech tools used throughout the season.

Like every other season, Tim Gunn continued to encourage this season’s designers to “use the Bluefly wall thoughtfully”. For anyone who’s not a Project Runway fan or social shopper out there, Bluefly.com is a top fashion and lifestyle e-commerce sites where shoppers can find luxury goods (think L.A.M.B., Prada and Zac Posen) at discounted prices. This season, like the others, the Bluefly wall served as the one stop shopping location for any accessories that the designers didn’t make themselves.

But the show’s technology went further than the usual collaboration with Bluefly and a fun Twitter account to follow: (@ProjectRunway, an account with more than 20,000 followers).

As announced back in January, the real showstopper of the season was the integration of Hewlett-Packard and Intel technology. Throughout this season of Project Runway, designers didn’t merely sketch on paper, they were instead each given an HP Touchsmart tm2 tablet PC to sketch on with digital pens.

And, for the first time in Project Runway history, contestants were given the opportunity to create garments based on patterns they’d created using HP TouchSmart PCs and Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Patterns were created using screens that read pinches, rotations, flips and drags by just the touch of a finger. Vivienne Tam (basically the fashion spokesperson for HP) even stopped by. But, as Jonathan proved, a smart color palette still counts, no matter how high tech fashion may get.

Fans could even get involved with the tech hype by entering the season’s HP Envy 15 contest by predicting the top three finalists of season 7.

Well congratulations to Seth Aaron (my favorite!) for winning Project Runway and a $50,000 prize package from Intel and HP!

For more details about the technology featured this season, buy skins based off of the designers’ work throughout the season, visit ProjectRunway.com/hp. And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out Tim Gunn’s blog. Project Runway may have just helped the a lot of the world realize how important technology will be to fashion in the future, but it’d never be the same without the show’s fashionable wordsmith and mentor.

Project Runway, if you really want to get tech-friendly, I hope you bring back more wearable tech artists, like Diana Eng, in the future! Now that would be fashion meeting technology.