Anya's Stolen Win: Episode # 5

Some fans know that they film these episodes back to back with no rest days in between. Episode # 5 was a team challenge where Joshua McKinley not only aggressively intimidated a woman designer but also ended up taking credit for a winning garment which he had nothing to do with.

The contest was over making track and leisure clothing. Four males predictably won a strength and speed contest to determine whom would be team leaders. Anya and Becky ended up on Josh M's team. Becky was so frazzled by the experience that she faltered two days later in episode #6 and was out two more days later in episode #7. Anya's long dress was chosen to be manufactured and sold as Heidi Klum's HK FOR NEW BALANCE line on Amazon.com, but team leader McKinley got the credit for the win and credit for the design.

Look at RATE THE RUNWAY on Lifetime.com to see Anya's look and McKinley's look for episode #5.

Here are photos of what was made and sold by Heidi Klum.

Front & Back views:

ANYA'S Runway look...

Joshua McKinley's look

As is plain to see, McKinley's look is  not the long dress Anya made. McKinley's ONLY contribution was a red-orange racer stripe down the front of the Runway Dress which Josh put on, and Heidi discarded.

Had Anya been given credit for the winning look she would have broken the all time Project Runway record for highest ranking in a season, and Joshua McKinley would not have looked so good going into Fashion Week. Even if this error had been corrected, it would not have changed the record held by Daniel V, season 2, for most wins in a season with five. Anya's win would have made the 4th this season for her instead of the 3 she gets scored on the "official scorecards". Anya Chee would be tied in 2nd place with Kara Saun (season 2) and Emilio Sosa (season 7) with 4 wins.

http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/project-runway/season-9/scorecard

Currently the Official Scorecard for Episode 5 looks like this...

A corrected scorecard would look like this...

... giving Anya a higher rank than Bryce and everybody in the middle tied row. This would have increased Anya's final ranking by seven more points, giving her 76 final score, a full six points higher than any other designer ever achieved in 9 seasons of competitions.

Pictures Speak Louder Than Words: Who Anya Beat, Tied, & Lost To.

There were 12 challenges leading up to the Fashion Week showdown, where designers were ranked as winner, top 3, in, bottom 3, or out. Nobody is lower than OUT. Everybody is lower than the weekly winner, in between there is ranking from top to bottom, including equals who are not above or below each other but just tied. On week had two winners, episode 3 had 4 tied in the top and four tied in the bottom as team challenges, and episode 7 had 3 tied in the top and 3 tied in the bottom.

Anya decisively won season #9. She defeated the most designers over 12 weeks to earn her place at Fashion Week, the 4th highest score ever for 9 seasons of Project Runway. Anya also tied 20 other designers over six episodes where she was tied. Anya lost to higher ranking designers a total of 26 instances over 12 episodes.

Using the table compiled by WIKIPEDIA that looks like this, we can see a visual representation of Anya's rankings in Season 9.

Anya Defeated 69 designers over 12 episodes.

Click images for larger size if available.

Alphabetically in text, Episodes lost per designer.

Anthony Ryan E1, E4, E5, E7, E8, E10 (OUT)
Becky E1, E4, E7 (OUT)
Bert E3, E4, E6, E7, E8, E10, E11 (OUT)
Bryce E1, E2, E3, E4, E7, E8 (OUT)
Cecelia E1, E4, (Withdrew)
Danielle E1, E4, E5 (OUT)
Fallene E1, E2, E3 (OUT)
Joshua C E1, E2 (OUT) E6 (OUT #2)
Joshua M E1, E3, E4, E7, E10, E11
Julie E1, E3, E4 (OUT)
Kimberly E1, E7, E8, E9, E10, E11, E12
Laura E1, E4, E7, E8, E10, E11, E12 (OUT)
Oliver E1, E4, E5, E6, E7, E8, E9 (OUT)
Rafael E1 (OUT)
Viktor E1, E3, E7, E10, E11

Anya Lost to 26 Designers who got higher rankings one or more weeks out of 9 episodes where she was not the sole winner.

Anya Tied these designers over 5 episodes.



Episode #1

Episode #2

Episode #3

Episode #4

Episode #5

Episode #6

Episode #7

Episode #8

Episode #9

Episode #10

Episode #11

Episode #12

Ranking the Project Runway Designers.

Project Runway is a TV show -- they decide the rules, we watch (or not, if we don't like it).

It is easy to see that they are eliminating designers each week. Every week there are some who are "best" and some who are "worst". It is easy to rank the final two, one goes home, and the one who beat the loser stays for another week. You can figure out the ranking when three worst are standing there and one is told that they are safe and can leave the runway. It is not hard to figure that person ranked higher to the judges than the final two standing there. Usually they tell you who the winner is, who ranked highest of everybody that week, but they don't always tell you who was second best or third best. Sometimes there are two winners, or two losers. The ones who are just "in", not winners, not losers, but their scores have qualified them to move on to the next round are all tied, not higher or lower than each other, but certainly higher than the bottom three, yet lower than the top three.


I scored the nine seasons based on how many people were below each designer each week of the season. The season was measured from the first episode until going on to Fashion Week. Everybody knows who came in first, second and third each season. (Or you can look it up). What hasn't been clear is how many designers had to be beaten by each one of the season top placeholders.

By ranking the season with one standard method it is easy to see that the contest has gotten much harder and many more designers need to be beaten to stand out as the clear winners deserving to be at Fashion Week.

Jay McCarroll won his place at Fashion Week by defeating 37 other designers during the weeks of Season 1. It was a cakewalk. Next season things got decidedly tougher -- Chloe defeated 55 other designers over the weeks of her season. It was still medium hard for a few more seasons:  Nobody broke Santino's record of defeating 59 designers until season 5. For all his fame and celebrity, Christian Siriano's record of beating 55 designers during Season 4 would not have been good enough to get him into Fashion Week by Season 6, where Korto Momolu beat 69 other designers attaining her ticket to Fashion Week. That record survived until Season 8, when both Mondo and Gretchen defeated 70 designers each to earn their place at Fashion Week.

The current winner, Anya Ayoung-Chee defeated 69 designers fair & square, tying Korto for second place behind Mondo-Gretchen tied at first place. It is not the record, but it is impressive, 87% more challengers beaten than Season 1 designer Jay McCarroll, and 27% more successes than Christian Siriano winner of Season 4. The show used to be a lot easier way back when, with fewer challengers, shorter seasons, longer times to make collections. Season 9 was the toughest season in Project Runway history. Anya deserves respect for getting into the top 4 highest scores in Project Runway history out of 137 designers who took a risk by going on the show. Had Anya been given proper credit for Episode #5 she would be the all-time champion of Project Runway with the highest ever number of fellow designers bested.

Anya's Stolen Win: Episode # 5

http://anya-fan.blogspot.com/2011/11/anyas-stolen-win-episode-5.html

You can do all the math and counting yourself based on the examples from blog entry:
http://anya-fan.blogspot.com/2011/11/scoring-all-nine-seasons-of-project.html
... And using the visual graphics from blog entry:
http://anya-fan.blogspot.com/2011/11/compare-scorecards-for-all-nine-seasons.html

Here is the ultimate results for each of 9 seasons...

Season 1, Finalist Season Scores
Jay = 37 points
Kara Saun = 41 points
Wendy = 23 points

Season 2, Finalist Season Scores
Santino = 59
Chloe = 55
Daniel V = 51

Season 3, Finalist Season Scores
Jeffrey = 42
Uli = 56
Laura = 50
Michael = 51

Season 4, Finalist Season Scores
Christian = 55
Rami = 51
Jillian = 52

Season 5, Finalist Season Scores
Leanne = 55
Korto = 69
Kenley = 64
Jerell = 51

Season 6, Finalist Season Scores
Irina = 64
Althea = 67
Carol Hannah = 54

Season 7, Finalist Season Scores
Seth Aaron = 60
Emilio = 60
Mila = 63

Season 8, Finalist Season Scores
Gretchen = 70
Mondo = 70
Andy = 55

Season 9, Finalist Season Scores
Anya = 69
Josh M = 61
Viktor = 58
Kimberly = 44
Anthony Ryan = 61

Scoring ALL NINE SEASONS of Project Runway

You just can't trust amateur fashionistas. They watch Project Runway, get an extremely brief glance of several seconds of a garment on the runway coming & going, and think that they know more than everybody else, including knowing more than the $25,000,000 supermodel Heidi Klum who has worn EVERYBODY'S fashions, Michael Kors who sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clothes, Nina Garcia who edits a magazine that overlooks tens of millions of dollars of clothing, and guest judges with high qualifications.

How to score the contestants fairly is a problem. I choose to rank them based on how many other contestants they beat out of each weekly episode of the regular season going into Fashion Week. If there are 10 contestants in a week, the winner is better than 9 of them, the runner up in the top-3 is ahead of 8 of them and behind 1 , the lower one in the top-3 is ahead of 7 others. All the people who are not winners or losers are tied, equal, not ahead or behind each other, but they are below the top-3 and above the bottom-3, so they each get a rank of 3 (they are ahead of the 3 in the bottom-3). The bottom-3 has one person who is in but not in the bottom-2, so they have 2 others that they beat this week. The bottom-2 person who is in, not eliminated, has only one person below themselves. The eliminated person is zero, they have nobody lower than themselves in this week competition. So, one point for each person below a rank, but no points for people equal or above the rank. Sometimes there is more than one winner, Viktor & Joshua McKinley tied for the HK for New Balance competition, and sometimes team members all tied for higher, or lower, ranks giving the members of ties equal status, not higher or lower than other members of the tie, but higher or lower than other designers that week.

Early seasons had less designers. The competition was weaker, with fewer competitors, fewer distractions, less chaos and less commotion to damage the creative process. The winner of Season 1, episode 1 got 11 points for beating all the others in the competition, but in season 9, episode 1, the winner got 15 points because they had to beat 4 extra competitors. Season 9 was longer and harder and more grinding. The winners in Season 9 going into Fashion Week had only 5 weeks to make their best clothing, while Season 1 designers had five months allowance to do the same thing.

You can look at the two side by side tables below, Season 1 on the left, Season 9 on the right. At the bottom of each list is the scores of the top designers going into Fashion Week. Anya beat all the other desgners in her season, but she beat by a great margin Jay, winner of Season 1. Anya beat 68 designers in season 9 to get the right to go to Fashion Week. Jay beat only 37 other designers to get his place at Fashion Week. Christian Siriano only beat 51 designers during season 4 to get his spot at Fashion Week, and twice he was on the bottom-2 a whisker away from going home. You can go to the blog entry with the nine season scorecards kept by the impartial WIKIPEDIA to count for yourself the contestants beat each week of each season by the best of the best. http://anya-fan.blogspot.com/2011/11/compare-scorecards-for-all-nine-seasons.html

Season 1 Episode 1 Austin = 11 Nora = 10 Vanessa = 9 Jay = 3 Kara Saun = 3 Robert = 3 Kevin = 3 Alexandra = 3 Mario = 3 Wendy = 2 Starr = 1 Daniel = 0 Season 1, Episode 2 Kara Saun = 10 Robert = 9 Jay = 3 Austin = 3 Kevin = 3 Alexandra = 3 Vanessa = 3 Nora = 2 Starr = 2 Wendy = 1 Mario = 0 Season 1, Episode 3 Wendy = 9 Jay = 8 Alexandra = 7 Kara Saun = 4 Kevin = 4 Nora = 4 Vanessa = 4 Austin = 2 Robert = 1 Starr = 0 Season 1, Episode 4 Kevin = 8 Alexandra = 7 Jay = 4 Kara Saun = 4 Robert = 4 Wendy = 2 Austin = 2 Nora = 1 Vanessa = 0 Season 1, Episode 5 Kara Saun = 7 Jay = 6 Wendy = 2 Robert = 2 Kevin = 2 Alexandra = 2 Austin = 1 Nora = 0 Season 1, Episode 6 Austin = 6 Jay = 5 Robert = 4 Kara Saun = 3 Wendy = 2 Kevin = 1 Alexandra = 0 Season 1, Episode 7 Kara Saun = 5 Jay = 4 Robert = 3 Austin = 2 Wendy = 1 Kevin = 0 Season 1, Episode 8 Kara Saun = 4 Jay = 3 Austin = 2 Wendy = 1 Robert= 0 Season 1, Episode 9 Wendy = 3 Jay = 1 Kara Saun = 1 Austin = 0 Season 1, Finalist Season Scores Jay = 37 points Kara Saun = 41 points Wendy = 23 points

Season 9, Episode 1 Bert = 15 Anya = 14 Anthony Ryan = 13 Josh M = 3 Viktor = 3 Kimberly = 3 Laura = 3 Oliver = 3 Bryce = 3 Becky = 3 Danielle = 3 Cecelia = 3 Fallene = 3 Julie = 2 Josh C = 1 Rafael = 0 Season 9, Episode 2 Oliver = 14 Anthony Ryan = 13 Josh M = 12 Anya = 3 Viktor = 3 Kimberly = 3 Laura = 3 Bert = 3 Becky = 3 Danielle = 3 Cecelia = 3 Julie = 3 Bryce = 2 Fallene = 1 Josh C = 0 Season 9, Episode 3 Laura = 13 Anthony Ryan = 12 Kimberly =8 Becky =8 Danielle =8 Cecelia =8 Anya = 6 Oliver =6 Julie = 2 Josh M = 2 Bert = 2 Bryce = 2 Viktor = 1 Fallene = 0 Season 9, Episode 4 Kimberly = 12 Viktor = 11 Anya = 10 Josh M = 3 Laura = 3 Bert = 3 Anthony Ryan = 3 Oliver = 3 Bryce = 3 Becky = 3 Danielle = 2 Cecelia = 1 Julie = 0 Season 9, Episode 5 Josh M = 10 Viktor = 10 Bryce = 9 Anya = 3 Kimberly = 3 Laura = 3 Bert = 3 Becky = 3 Josh C = 3 Oliver = 2 Anthony Ryan = 1 Danielle = 0 Season 9, Episode 6 Anthony Ryan = 10 Joshua M = 9 Laura = 8 Anya = 3 Viktor = 3 Kimberly = 3 Bryce = 3 Becky = 3 Bert = 2 Oliver = 1 Josh C = 0 Season 9, Episode 7 Anya = 9 Oliver = 8 Viktor = 5 Anthony Ryan = 5 Bryce = 5 Kimberly = 2 Laura = 2 Bert = 2 Josh M = 1 Becky = 0 Season 9, Episode 8 Josh M = 8 Viktor = 7 Anya = 6 Kimberly = 3 Laura = 3 Oliver = 3 Bert = 2 Anthony Ryan = 1 Bryce = 0 Season 9, Episode 9 Viktor = 7 Josh M = 6 Bert = 5 Laura = 3 Anthony Ryan = 3 Anya = 2 Kimberly = 1 Oliver = 0 Season 9, Episode 10 Anya = 6 Bert = 5 Viktor = 4 Kimberly = 3 Laura = 2 Josh M = 1 Anthony Ryan = 0 Season 9, Episode 11 Anya = 5 Josh M = 4 Kimberly = 3 Viktor = 2 Laura = 1 Bert = 0 Season 9, Episode 12 Anya = 2 Josh M = 2 Viktor = 2 Kimberly = 1 Laura = 0 Season 9, Finalist Season Scores Anya = 69 Josh M = 61 Viktor = 58 Kimberly = 45 Anthony Ryan = 61

Compare Scorecards for ALL NINE SEASONS!

Anya outscored Christian Siriano season-vs-season direct comparison of winners. Like Anya, Siriano won three weeks, and was top 3 in three weeks, but Anya was only in the bottom 3 once while Christian Siriano was in the bottom 2 on two occasions. Only two of the other eight season winners tied, or beat, Anya's weekly scores for the season. The other six all had less wins + top 3 weeks and/or more bottom 3 weeks. Anya also had to fight more weeks against more competition than the winners of early seasons. Season #1 only had 11 other designers for Jay to compete against, and he had 5 whole months to sew the Fashion Week collection, plus he only needed to compete for 9 weekly contests before securing a place at Fashion Week. Anya had three more grinding shows plus had four more fighting competitors plus only got 5 weeks to make her final collection. Project Runway was both harder for Anya's group, a longer season, and had less time to do well for Fashion Week. Some seasons the finalists were also given sewing helpers to finish their Fashion Week collections from designers whom were offed earlier.

Check out the graphics that show the 9 season scorecards taken from WIKIPEDIA.

 SEASON # 1

SEASON #2

SEASON #3

SEASON #4

SEASON #5

SEASON #6

SEASON #7

SEASON #8

SEASON #9

Project Runway Season #1 -- Jay: 0 WINS, 5 HIGHS, 1 LOW
Project Runway Season #2 -- Chloe: 2 WINS, 5 HIGHS, 2 LOWS *
Project Runway Season #3 -- Jeffrey: 2 WINS, 2 HIGHS, 4 LOWS
Project Runway Season #4 -- Christian: 3 WINS, 3 HIGHS, 2 LOWS
Project Runway Season #5 -- Leanne: 3 WINS, 3 HIGHS, 3 LOWS
Project Runway Season #6 -- Irina: 3 WINS, 3 HIGHS, 0 LOWS *
Project Runway Season #7 -- Seth Aaron: 2 WINS, 3 HIGHS, 2 LOWS
Project Runway Season #8 -- Gretchen: 2 WINS, 3 HIGHS, 2 LOWS
Project Runway Season #9 -- Anya: 3 WINS, 3 HIGHS, 1 LOW

Chloe got 1 less win, but 2 more highs, but 1 more bottom 3, while Irina ties on wins and top 3, but had 1 less bottom 3. Christian Siriano performed worse, and twice was in danger of elimination in the bottom 2. Leanne was one more bottom 3 than Siriano despite tying on wins and top 3 with Anya. In the ENTIRE HISTORY OF PROJECT RUNWAY, only three designers ever won more weekly contests than Anya, and none of those won their season.