Thanks all for entering to win the Ross gift card. Jennifer is the winner. Congratulations and happy shopping! I'll be in touch with you soon!

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Hey teens, your best prom tip could make you the next Prom Style Star.

Beauty expert Cassandra Bankson has teamed up with Davids Bridal in the search that will lead to 10 winners of an "Ultimate Prom Package," and one grand prize winner of $10,000.

The Ultimate Prom Package comprises a prom dress and accessories from David's Bridal, a tuxedo rental for your date from Men's Wearhouse, a $250 Visa gift card good for use toward hair, nails and makeup, and your video featured at DavidsProm.com.

The contest involves making a prom tip video and uploading it to YouTube, completing the submission form and then copying and pasting the URL of the video at www.DavidsProm.com where you can also find more details about the contest.

Your video could be about anything from beauty to planning the perfect prom night. Some ideas:
How to feel confident at prom
Favorite prom hairstyles
Essential beauty products for prom
Sources for prom inspirations (i.e. celebrities, style experts, magazines, websites, videos)

The video should be less than 5 minutes long, include David's Bridal in the title and a link to http://www.davidsprom.com in the description.

March 3 is the deadline and the grand prize winner will be revealed on April 29.

Lifetime photos
The designers enjoy dinner on the Seine. From left, Uli Herzner, Emilio Sosa, Joshua McKinley and Anthony Ryan Auld.

"Project Runway All-Stars"
Episode 11: "Couture de France" recap

How lucky are we to have been able to tag along with the designers on their shopping trip to Paris and a voyeuristic peek into the House of Valentino?

Needless to say, the designers were ecstatic to be able to observe the process of creating an haute couture garment, spend $3,000 euros shopping for some of the fabrics of a quality worthy of the luxury houses, and do their sketching on the lawn fronting the Eiffel Tower. A very wish I was there moment!

At Valentino, they met with creative directors Pierpaolo and Maria Grazia, and were presented with tickets to Valentino's amazing haute couture show.

Of course, this being "Project Runway," they had little time to bask in "the dream." It was a 24-hour whirlwind trip, and next thing you know, they were back in the New York workroom, where they had 10 hours to create their garment. Impossiblé!

Needless to say, you don't learn couture techniques in a day, and their handiwork doesn't come close to touching that of the many hands of the women who have been doing such work for decades. But the inspiration definitely showed in their work.

Emilio's gown.

Emilio really rised up to the challenge, creating a beautiful, restrained and elegant red gown with a fitted bodice and full skirt that was an about face from his street-costume style. The only thing he didn't give up was color.

Emilio and Anthony Ryan ended up on top, though once again, Anthony showed his main talent is as a copyist. The sleek black gown he created was elegant with a touch of menace. Even so, his black gown, with peek-a-boo fabric appeared to mimic designs off the Valentino runway they had all just seen! I guess the judges don't know how close his designs have matched others' in the room through the entire competition because they gave him the win.

Meanwile, the judges couldn't decide whether Uli or Joshua should be sent home. For once, I actually liked the bravado of Joshua's creation. Only he took a risk in pairing fabric that most people wouldn't think to mix together, but it was a little like a pared down Lacroix. Its downfall was that it was ill-fitting in the bodice and proportions were off.

So, the two were given another challenge, another first in the competition's history. They were to face off, given an hour to deconstruct their garment and reinvent it. Uli compared it to the "Hunger Games," in which winning meant killing your friend.

At the end of the challenge, Joshua had pared his dress down to a charming dress that he said would have been the ready-to-wear version of his couture creation. Uli remade her ensemble in entirety, taking the nude lining the judges had made so much, and creating a sexy halter dress, topped with a black lace jacket with gold detailing at the shoulders.

The judges liked both of them, and Georgina Chapman said the challenge was supposed to have made it easy for them to send one designer home, but they made it just as difficult.

In the green room, Anthony Ryan and Emilio wondered why the judging was taking more than an hour.

In the end, Uli's total reinvention led to her staying. Now the three designers move on to creating their collections, but instead of the usual month-plus allotted on "Project Runway," they will have only four days.

Can't wait to see. Still rooting for Uli.

Uli's gown.

Joshua's creation.

Anthony Ryan's winning design.

Lifetime photos
This week's designs were meh. From left, creations by Anthony Ryan Auld, Emilio Sosa and Uli Herzner, the only one worth wearing in the bunch, though we've seen this dress many times from her.

"Project Runway All-Stars"
Episode 10: "All Stars and Stripes" recap

Although hometown designer Ivy Higa left the competition last week, I'm continuing to blog "Project Runway All-Stars" episode recaps through the season's end. As closure, you can read about Ivy's fashion journey from the Big Island to New York, and her thoughts about being on the show in her journal: ivyh.net/the-journal/2012/12/

This week, the remaining four designers met at the U.S.S. Intrepid where they are introduced to their models for the week, four women from different branches of the armed services. They will be dressing them in suitable garments for specific events the women will be attending.

Joshua McKinley is paired with an army captain who lost a leg after developing a blood clot. She will be attending a formal event honoring veterans, so he created a short dress with a fitted bodice, flared skirt and pretty illusion hemline with a black-and-white animal print he dyed green. For once, his design was restrained, accommodating her wishes for animal print without going overboard or obvious.

Anthony Ryan Auld designs for a woman in the Air Force who will be celebrating her 40th birthday.

Emilio Sosa is paired with a Navy veteran who needs a dress for her best friend"s bachelorette party in Vegas.

Uli Herzner is paired with a woman who just left the service, and wants a "long, flowing Uli dress" for  a wedding.

The guest judges are Katie Holmes  and designer Carmen Marc Valvo, a really fun designer I had the opportunity to meet once during his appearance at Neiman Marcus. In judging, he appears to be more serious than he really is.

Host Carolyn Murphy spoke of this week's presentations as being a phenomenal runway, but for me  it was just meh. It's sad that designers tend to show so little imagination every time it comes to dressing women who are not models.

Joshua's winning dress.

Joshua ended up winning the challenge, but I thought his dress was too girly for his subject, and too casual for her formal occasion. It fit her well, however, without making her look huge like Anthony Ryan's design did for his client, or like she found her dress at a sundry store, like Emilio's outfit.

Both Emilio and Anthony Ryan's  dresses looked like my 6th grade sewing projects, when I was just learning to sew. It was no surprise they were the bottom two, but they have also been the judges' darlings all season, so I wondered who they would send home.

For a while, it appeared Anthony Ryan might be going home for emphasizing his client's bust, when she wanted to minimize that area, but in a real cop out, the judges declared a tie, and both designers were saved, proceeding to the finale. In very simple math, I wonder how it could be a tie when there were five judges???!!!

Joshua had his first win. Though Uli's dress was superior, it was also a design she's already known for. It wasn't much different from the dress she wore in opening scenes, which her client gravitated to because of its flowing femininity.

I was hoping Anthony Ryan would go home, paving the way for Uli to win. I really don't want him to win because he displays so much attitude and ego for no discernible innovation or vision.

Lifetime photos
Ivy Higa at work on her Week 7 design.

"Project Runway All-Stars"
Episode 7: "An Unconventional Nightmare Before Christmas" recap

This week on "Project Runway All Stars," the designers met host model Carolyn Murphy at the South Street Sea Port, where Fawaz Gruosi, founder and president of de Grisogono Geneve, also awaited. The challenge had nothing to do with his company, and he was there just to announce that the challenge winner would receive a de Grisogono watch.

The designers were then instructed to visit the second floor of the retail area, where they would head to a certain shop to find the materials they would use in the dreaded unconventional challenge. (The episodes were taped over the summer, and this was one of the areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy; some businesses at the seaport still remain closed.)

The designers were distressed to learn they were headed to a Christmas shop with instructions to create a garment that offered no clue as to the source of the materials.

Christmas materials are typically obvious because of the colors, amount of shine, metallics and glitter, so this was a tough one, and the person who freaked out the most was Emilio Sosa, who went home during his season during another unconventional challenge.

I laughed a lot when Joshua McKinley pulled out what he thought was a package of blue material, but when he unrolled it, it turned out to be a cartoony "Happy Hanukkah" menorah wall hanging. Definitely unusable.

Hawaii designer Ivy Higa said she knew she wanted to create a flapperesque dress. Nothing remotely Christmasy about that, including a return to the color yellow, gleaned from a tree skirt.

Once again, she and Casanova were playing around with the materials, causing Uli Herzner to note that they're like "one person in two bodies," and someone else to wonder what would happen if one of them were to be sent home. Ooh, foreshadowing!

Interestingly enough, last week I noted that it seemed Anthony Ryan Auld had adopted Ivy's style for last week's challenge, yet no one called him on it, and this week she observed his design was looking a lot like Uli's. The ever easygoing Uli, who's looking more like she may end up being the last woman standing, also noted Anthony Ryan's design was looking a lot like hers, but different enough for comfort. You can see both designs below, but I like Uli's better. It's just more cohesive, like she started with a plan. Anthony Ryan's looks pieced together any way they happened to fall into place. And some of the snowflake materials were obviously Christmasy.

Uli Herzner's design. She's also blessed with the season's best model, with the best walk.

Anthony Ryan Auld's design.

The judges mixed things up a bit by calling on Emilio, Casanova and Ivy, and telling them that only one of them is safe. I was pretty sure Ivy would be the safe one. Her design was less flapper—the drop waist wasn't dropped down far enough—and more 1960s mod, which shares similar broad appeal. But she was the only one who created a look that didn't look as if it had been made with odd materials, much harder than going glam. The judges, however, considered it playing too safe.

I was really shocked that Emilio was declared safe. I think he should have gone home for a mess of a dress that was garish through and through and held together with glue. I think he knew he should have gone home as well. The only one worse was Joshua, who, because he had no fabric, had to resort to breaking up ornaments to create an armored bra, and ribbon to create some hideous shorts.

Uli was named the winner of the challenge and Ivy ended up on the bottom for the second week in a row, with her buddy Casanova, who had gone through a series of designs, and lacking materials in the end, had to piece together a creation made from castoffs from the other designers.

When told she was in, Ivy broke into tears for losing her friend in the workroom, so when they went back to join the other designers, they thought she was out. Casanova had to tell everyone it was actually him going home and he was touched that so many others in the room also broke into tears.

We're now halfway through the season and Ivy's now in the Top 6, already two places higher than she finished in her original Season 8.

Ivy's decidedly non-Christmasy design.

Casanova's tortured, Frankensteined creation.

A big no for Joshua.

Emilio was lucky to be saved considering the hot-glued mess he sent down the runway.