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Qristyl Frazier

It wasn’t an auspicious start for the two Missouri designers in the season premiere of “Project Runway.” Both Qristyl Frazier, a St. Louis native now living and working in New York, and Ari Fish of Kansas City wound up in the bottom three after a challenge to design a red-carpet look.

Frazier, whose specialty is designing for women of all sizes and shapes — “I don’t call it plus size; I call it plus sexy” — created a slinky sapphire blue (or maybe purple; TV can be deceiving) number with a pretty drapey back but a horribly ill-advised bunchy print down half the front. The design left mentor Tim Gunn open-mouthed and speechless when Frazier asked him whether it was “dramatic in a good way.” And guest judge Lindsay Lohan (not that her taste is necessarily valid) suppressed a laugh when Frazier suggested that Lohan might wear it.

Fish’s design — eek! It wasn’t flattering on her model, but it wouldn’t be flattering on any human. The minidress was quilted together from silver metallic fabric until it looked like one of those space blankets you keep in the car trunk in case of a snow emergency. Where would a woman wear it? “The VMAs in like 2080,” Fish told the judges, adding that “I want her to also go receive her Nobel Peace Prize the same night. Kors complained that the model ‘looks like a disco soccer ball.” I’d have said: alien hooker from a no-budget sci-fi movie.

The third designer in the bottom three was Mitchell Hall of Savannah, Ga.,, who (in a fitting mishap) wound up having to send his model down the runway in a sheer caftan, underwear showing. Debating who should be eliminated, Kors said found the front of Frazier’s dress “a nightmare” and said he was concerned about her taste level. Hall, whose model was too big for his original dress, was told there are no excuses on “Project Runway,” and all the judges pondered Fish and wondered whether she was treating the competition as a joke.

A grateful Frazier was saved first. (Read more about her in Debra Bass’ Style File blog.)

“We did not know what was going on with your look, and we don’t think you did either,” Heidi Klum then told Fish. ‘It’s one thing to aim outside of the box, and another to miss it completely.” And so Fish, whose bio describes her as a ”clothing designer/cook,” ended her short run on “Project Runway.” “You have to take risks responsibly,” she mused. ”I think I learned that from this experience.” And if not, there’s always “Hell’s Kitchen.”