Project Runway 2012 Premiere: Two Designers Will Quit This Season

Project Runway season 10 premieres on Lifetime Thursday night and we already know one startling fact about the new season: two Project Runway 2012 cast designers will suddenly quit the show. Project Runway, which has received 24 Emmy nominations and 1 win, returns this year with 16 new designers, but apparently a couple of them will decide along the way the competition is too tough to stick it out.

Project Runway 2012 features a very diverse cast, made of of eight women and eight men from widely varying backgrounds and ethnicities. Former Victoria’s Secret supermodel Heidi Klum will be hosting as usual, and our favorite mentor, Tim Gunn, will be back to help the contestants “make it work.” Also returning this year are judges Michael Kors and Nina Garcia.

This year, Project Runway 10 will reportedly be adding even harder challenges and crazier twists for the Project Runway 2012 cast. According to host Heidi Klum, this apparently leads to two of the Project Runway 2012 cast designers to actually quit the show.

“We had two that left us this year; two designers that couldn’t make it work,” Klum said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “We’ve actually never had this happen before, that people would just leave us early and kind of leave in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping, which was very awkward. We didn’t really know what to say.”

Klum lashed out against the Project Runway 2012 cast members who quit, saying it was “very strange for grown-ups to do that… you would expect that from a child. It’s a very childish move to do that.”

The Project Runway season 10 premiere will feature a first on the show as the designers will have to strut their stuff in front of a massive audience in the middle of Times Square. Each Project Runway 2012 cast member will have to make one outfit that showcases their designer style and show it off on a live runway. Klum told the Huffington Post she’s wanted to do a live show in Times Square for years.

The winning designer on Project Runway 2012 will receive $100,000 from L’Oréal Paris to start his/her own line, a fashion spread in Marie Claire magazine, a 2013 Lexus GS 350, a $50,000 technology suite by HP and Intel to create his/her own vision and run his/her business and the opportunity to design and sell an exclusive collection at Lord & Taylor. Lord & Taylor is the Project Runway 10 retail sponsor and will outfit this year’s “accessory wall.”

Tune in for the Project Runway 2012 premiere on Lifetime at 9 PM ET/PT.