Heidi Klum Gives Glamour to Guantanamo Bay
By Matthew Congdon

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Spoiler alert! What upcoming Project Runway challenge will have you totally held captive and ready to talk? Rumor has it our favorite primetime cable chic patrol will soon be heading south to help keep the fashionable at bay, Guantanamo bay, that is.

It seems Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn, and their gang of grasping Gallianos have been enlisted to launch an operation petticoat on those overly fatigued enemy combatants. The mission? To do a little lifting of both hemlines and morale, plus maybe pinning down a few secrets, too.

So how did the front lines of the global war on terror find their way to the front row of the catwalk? Ask Donnie Rumsfeld, say Seventh Avenue insiders.

"Don's just gaga over the show," confides one close friend and bridal designer. "It really takes his mind off the huff and puff going on at the Pentagon. I mean, hey, even the Supreme Court started getting all negative nellie over Guantanamo.

"He just felt that a Project Runway tie-in could lend some positive spin, you know, maybe even boost national security. I can't tell you how many times he's joked about how he'd rather face Hillary on a Senate panel than face Nina Garcia. If she can't get those style-starved detainees to talk, no one can."

Another source close to the producers tells us, "At first we were a definitely hesitant, but Mr. Rumsfeld made a passionate case for creating a Project Runway Guantanamo challenge. It gives the designers exposure to the world of functional design, and it gives the detainees exposure to, like, ten minutes of non-solitary confinement. It's win-win."

An insider at the Pentagon says, "Our aim is to show that these guys are doing swell. With a fresh new look, who needs to worry about bringing formal charges? Plus, with their spirits high and their guard down, they can't help but dish about uranium stockpiles. It's a little trick Donnie learned from Diana Vreeland."

And how do they intend to glamourize those gloomy gulag gusses?

"Eighty-six those orange jumpsuits," says Project Runway judge and ambassador of American sportswear Michael Kors. "Really, who wants to look like a concentrated glass of Tang?"

With a tight budget, tighter time restrictions, and the tightest security, the project proved to be a close call right down to the barbed wire. As usual Tim Gunn played the watchful warden of wardrobing, helping the designers "make it work" while making it easy for the detainees to stare down the barrel of that Gunn.

Contestant and pageant diva Kayne Gillaspie went sleek and slim for a whole '30s Bonnie/Clyde look.

"Luckily fittings were a breeze. With all those hunger strikes, these guys have figures to die for! Winning hearts and minds, maybe—but we're totally winning their waistlines."

Usually pattern-crazy contestant Uli Herzner played it safe with a simple powder blue, very Shawshank Redemption-style jumpsuit.

"Too serious", said Tim, "looks like he's on his way to a convention. You know, just not in Geneva."

Meanwhile contestant Vincent Libretti, known for his erratic creations and even more erratic behavior, stapled together a burlap sack hood, gushing, "I'm all about this hood—I think it's a killer. I just get off on it. I don't think I'll even give him anything else to wear, just the hood."

Comments from the models/detainees were verboten, but we did manage to get a quick response to our question of how was it to work with Vincent?

"Torture, absolute torture."

So what was the outcome of this very special Project (never) Runaway?

Unfortunately we aren't a liberty to speak, but as Heidi says, "In fashion, either your in or your out, but at Guantanamo, you're all still in."