Kali­fa Clyne

For­mer T&T Miss Uni­verse rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anya Ay­oung-Chee pulled out yet an­oth­er last-minute win and man­aged to steal both the Project Run­way com­pe­ti­tion and the fan favourite com­pe­ti­tion. Af­ter some very com­pet­i­tive vot­ing last week­end, Anya won the fan favourite com­pe­ti­tion by over 60,000 votes. On Thurs­day's fi­nale episode, the four re­main­ing de­sign­ers-Joshua McKin­ley, Kim­ber­ly Gold­son, Vik­tor Lu­na and Anya-were giv­en $500 each to pur­chase fab­ric to fin­ish their col­lec­tion, or in Anya's case, save a col­lec­tion that was met with dis­ap­proval the pre­vi­ous week from the judges.

Af­ter­wards the fab­ric shop­ping ex­pe­di­tion host Tim Gunn checked in with the de­sign­ers. He seemed slight­ly dis­ap­point­ed with Joshua's ad­just­ments to his line, say­ing: "it was Four Sea­sons and now it's down­town." He seemed sat­is­fied with both Vik­tor and Kim­ber­ly's looks with the ex­cep­tion of Kim­ber­ly's re­worked bub­ble skirt. As Gunn moved on to de­liv­er Anya's cri­tique the de­sign­er seemed to have giv­en up, telling Gunn she knew the new looks weren't her best and how much she ap­pre­ci­at­ed the com­pe­ti­tion.

Back­stage at Mer­cedes Benz Fash­ion Week, Kim­ber­ly lost her sewing kit and Anya came to the res­cue, telling her com­peti­tor: "If you need any­thing else, just let me know". Kim­ber­ly showed her col­lec­tion first, fol­lowed by Joshua. Vik­tor then fol­lowed. Anya closed off the show, in­tro­duc­ing her col­lec­tion by speak­ing about her coun­try, her de­ci­sion to name her col­lec­tion To­ba­go Love and her de­ceased broth­er Pi­lar. When the judges met af­ter the fash­ion show they con­grat­u­lat­ed the de­sign­ers be­fore of­fer­ing their cri­tique. Kim­ber­ly left the run­way first, fol­lowed by Vik­tor, who judges felt showed two dif­fer­ent col­lec­tions.

At that point Anya and Joshua re­mained. Anya was then an­nounced the win­ner and her fam­i­ly mem­bers were in­vit­ed on­to the run­way to cel­e­brate with her. Trin­bag­o­ni­ans im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed cel­e­brat­ing on so­cial net­works with posts con­grat­u­lat­ing Anya while some hoped some­what un­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly for a pub­lic hol­i­day to cel­e­brate her vic­to­ry. Af­ter the Run­way, Anya's fel­low con­tes­tants ad­mit­ted sur­prise that she had won but al­so point­ed out that she had gained the judges af­fec­tion. Anya in the mean­time used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to again speak about T&T and the Caribbean and the sup­port shown her dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion. She re­vealed then that she would be mov­ing to New York but that Trinidad would al­ways be home.

About Anya

Anya Ay­oung-Chee was born to Trinida­di­an par­ents in New York City but moved to Trinidad when she was two years old. She at­tend­ed St Joseph's Con­vent in Port-of-Spain and stud­ied Graph­ic and In­te­ri­or De­sign in New York. Ay­oung-Chee was the T&T del­e­gate for the Miss Uni­verse pageant in 2008. In 2008 she be­came a spokes­woman for the Unit­ed Na­tions As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and served dur­ing her reign as Miss T&T.