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Thursday, August 14, 2025

Making the cut

...for Anya's boy's club

by

20140126

Anya Ay­oung-Chee was born to Trinida­di­an par­ents in New York City but moved to Trinidad at the age of two. She pur­sued graph­ics and in­te­ri­or de­sign, and was Miss T&T Uni­verse 2008. De­spite learn­ing to sew just four months be­fore au­di­tion­ing for the pro­gramme, she won sea­son nine of the pop­u­lar Amer­i­can TV show Project Run­way in 2011.

Through win­ning the com­pe­ti­tion, Anya earned US$100,000 from L'Ore­al Paris to be­gin her own line, Pi­lar. She al­so was fea­tured in a fash­ion spread in Marie Claire and re­ceived a US$50,000 tech­nol­o­gy suite by HP and In­tel for the chance to de­sign and sell mer­chan­dise. She is cur­rent­ly part of the new Amer­i­can re­al­i­ty show Un­der the Gunn on the Life­time chan­nel. Here, trav­el and lifestyle pho­to­jour­nal­ist Sean Drakes, based in the US, takes a be­hind-the-scenes look at her role in the new show.

"In the work­room it gets kind of tense. There all sorts of psy­cho­log­i­cal games that start to hap­pen. My men­tor­ing is al­so go­ing to be about how to play the psy­cho­log­i­cal games," ad­vised Anya Ay­oung-Chee to her four mentees. Well, that teas­er ex­cit­ed radars: who wouldn't want to peep the play­book used to ne­go­ti­ate the il­lu­sion of hon­esty and au­then­tic­i­ty some use to get ahead in the re­al­i­ty TV game?

There is no de­bate: Anya has an abun­dance of tal­ent and am­bi­tion. To make the cut to join her boy's club, each de­sign­er en­dured her soft-spo­ken scruti­ny. In case you missed her notes: Anya's not fond of ner­vous en­er­gy, as wit­nessed with Na­talia, or over-styling, which is Os­car's trade­mark; and your gar­ment bet­ter not un­der­whelm, as ev­i­denced by Stephanie. Yet each of Anya's re­jects got plucked from ob­scu­ri­ty by men­tors Nick Verre­os and Mon­do Guer­ra and giv­en the chance to knock her out.

Anya's charged with groom­ing four young men for run­way bat­tles that will change their lives. Brady Lange's style is re­laxed and youth­ful; Shan Kei­th chan­nels the ur­ban vibe that Anya digs; and Blake Smith and Nicholas Ko­mor are mel­low souls that de­liv­er edge with up­mar­ket fi­nesse.

From the 15 can­di­dates, on­ly 12 be­came mentees, ad­vanc­ing to chal­lenges to be judged by en­ter­tain­ers, ed­i­tors, and the di­vine Ms Klum. Anya filled three slots in round one of mentee se­lec­tion, and found her­self "in a bind," to quote Mr Verre­os, with just one va­can­cy and many bold voic­es to choose from in round two. "I didn't ex­pect this sev­en to be as strong as they are; they are push­ing the bound­aries more," ad­mit­ted Anya.

Men­tor Nick re­vealed his ar­rows are aimed at Anya: "I don't know how Anya is gonna dis­cuss con­struc­tion with these de­sign­ers when she bare­ly fin­ished a gar­ment her whole sea­son [on Project Run­way]."

The road ahead is no stroll in the park for these men­tors. Their brand and street creds may be taint­ed based on the point­ers they pass to their con­tenders. Tim Gunn, the show's pa­tri­arch, is there to spoon serv­ings of wis­dom. "Men­tor­ing is very in­di­vid­u­alised based on the de­sign­er with whom you are work­ing," he ad­vised. Anya's ap­proach to de­sign, busi­ness and men­tor­ing is in­formed by her men­tor at 6 Car­los Street. We as­sume as she tweaks her team, she'll im­part that she learned the 'M' in Meil­ing is for metic­u­lous, which should be ev­i­dent in the de­tails of a gar­ment.

The for­mu­la for se­lect­ing teams felt like the recipe for pael­la. Anya was glued to gut moves and used gen­der to her ad­van­tage. On the flip side, Mon­do was hard­nosed and deemed over-de­sign­ing a red flag, dis­miss­ing de­signs for be­ing safe; while Nick scored for peo­ple "who can do every­thing, not some­thing that's in stores now; I want to see the fu­ture of fash­ion." Odds are that Shan and Brady won't get much play­time with the mind games of the work­room; we'll be tun­ing in to see how long team Anya can make it work.

�2 Next Sun­day: Game on: Anya sews in­to bat­tle.


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