Vogue Is Making A Reality Show About Emerging Designers

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In the unlikely event you are suffering from too few options for competition-based fashion-related reality television · sure, Fashion Star was just cancelled, but it feels like for every failure, three more new shows debut · you can now look forward to another entry in the crowded category. The Fashion Fund, starting on Ovation (that's a channel, apparently) this fall, comes with the imprimatur of Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In six parts, it follows the ten finalists in the 2013 Fashion Fund awards as they prepare for the competition, so it sounds a little "realer" than most reality shows.

Six hour-long episodes will follow contestants including Juan Carlos Obando, Misha Nonoo, and the boys behind Public School, Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne. The show will show them working in their studios, preparing for Vogue shoots and runway shows, and enduring the scrutiny of judges including Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, and Jenna Lyons.

This is the tenth year of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund contest. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out: the show is a co-production of Condé Nast Entertainment, so the company will doubtless have a lot of (if not complete) editorial control. The result come out more like a bland promotional video than like documentarian Loïc Prigent's masterful Sundance series, The Day Before, which was made independently. (Prigent followed designers including Donatella Versace and Michael Kors during the 24 hours before their shows.) But Wintour participated in The September Issue without taking control away from the filmmaker R.J. Cutler, and that turned out all right. With real emerging designers for subjects, and real money and industry credit at stake, it certainly sounds like this series has more interesting material than the average reality show.

— Jenna Sauers

· Vogue And CFDA Documentary Coming Soon [Vogue UK]
· 'Fashion Star' Canceled [Racked]
· Here's A Look From All 10 Of the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund Finalists [Racked]