Caught up in the moment
Chloe Đào is learning to manage her new celebrity after winning on ‘Project Runway.’

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Chloe Ðào arose early Sunday morning in a Miami hotel to catch a flight home to Houston. She’d spent Friday and Saturday there to attend a friend’s bachelorette party, probably her first days off since last June when she got entangled in the whirlwind of cameras and chiffon. They might be her last days off for a while, too. She is one hot commodity. The winner of season two of “Project Runway,” Bravo’s Emmy-nominated, fashion-based reality show hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum, has become a household name. The program, which first aired on Dec. 7 and culminated with Ðào’s victory episode that aired March 8, pitted 16 aspiring fashion designers in a contest for the $100,000 first prize, a new car and a spread in Elle magazine. “Tomorrow, I’m flying back to Miami to do ‘Project Runway’ casting for season three,” said Ðào, 34. “This season, they’re casting in L.A., Miami, New York and Chicago. “But,” she said, “I don’t take any of it for granted.” Ðào’s win on the series is a tribute to her determination and her work ethic, fueled by her parents. Born in Pakse, Laos, to Vietnamese parents two years before the fall of Sài Gòn, the entrepreneur spent the first six years of her life in Asia. In 1979, her mother and father took their eight daughters and immigrated to the United States. “We were really, really good kids,” she said. “We’ve all worked since we were little, since we got here to the States. We had a small chain of dry-clean shops, and a bar and snack stand at a local flea market where we would have to work every weekend.” She recalled the dread she and her siblings would feel as the end of every school week approached. “I remember that we hated Fridays because we knew we would have to start working. It’s OK, though; we always got what we wanted. We just knew we had to work for it... which has made me who I am today.” Of the eight girls, a couple of them became pharmacists, a couple of them got into computers, one became a hairstylist, and one a stay-at-home mother of three. And then there was Chloe. She entered the University of Houston to study marketing, but it wasn’t meant to be. Fashion tugged at her. She enrolled in the fashion-design program at the University of Houston and later at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. After school, she plunged into the fashion industry, her duties growing in responsibility, and decided in 2000 to open her own boutique, Lot 8, in Houston. While taping the show, Ðào relied on her sister and business partner, Sydney, more than ever. Sydney, who is in charge of public relations and sales, worked double time. “Sydney is the fashionista,” Ðào said. “I’m second to her. There are days, though, when I dress like a homeless woman in my garage.” When the opportunity to take part in “Project Runway” came along, posing the opportunity of a lifetime, Ðào was game. “My mom didn’t understand why I was doing the show. I don’t think she really understood the magnitude of it,” Ðào said. “She said to me, ‘You have a business here. Why don’t you stay and take care of it?’ In the family, only Sydney and I, who are into fashion, followed the first season. I was addicted, which is why I decided to try out.” And she was accepted. The filming took place in New York last June and July. Each of the season’s 11 episodes, which contained “challenges,” was taped morning to midnight, back-to-back. When she got the call saying she had been chosen for the series, she was told the contestants would be given six yards of muslin and $20 for trim just a few days before shipping off to New York. “We were supposed to create this garment that represented who we were as designers, and we had to bring it with us,” she said. “I think I got only five days. It was crazy to pack a month’s worth of clothes while having to make this piece. We brought our garments to be judged in New York, where we learned that, ‘Surprise!’ we weren’t actually the finalists; we were the semi-finalists. Two people got dropped that day.” Her favorite challenge? The “Clothes off Your Back” segment, where she had to redesign what she happened to be wearing into a whole new outfit. Her least favorite? Creating a gown for the model Iman. The fabric she had hoped to use wasn’t available and she had to settle on silk charmeuse, which is what two fellow competitors were using. Her new-found acclaim definitely has had a drastic impact on her personal touch at Lot 8, which got its name for the eight girls in her family. Duly noted as a hands-on manager, Ðào has to now adapt her tried-and-true business practices to cater to her rapid celebrity. “Since the season finale aired, nothing in the store has been mine. Once this settles down, I’m going to have to hire some cutters, and just focus on producing. Right now, I cut downstairs with my sister. I sell upstairs with my aunt and mom. The demand for my clothes is growing, but right now, there’s nothing of mine in there!” The flurry of activity surrounding Ðào has kept her from much involvement in the growing creative community in Houston. “How involved am I?” retorted Ðào. “I’m not involved at all. When you’re small, you’re doing everything. Literally, you have to be in your own world. I would love to support people if there was time, but right now, there’s just no time. I’m always either in the front selling, or in the back doing alterations.” Still, Ðào’s victory is just one more reason for Houston’s large Vietnamese community to take note of her achievements, which already had been proud of and delighted by her consistently flawless execution, her sense of style, and her simple, yet intricate, designs. Ðào admitted that she finds the adoration a bit intriguing. Regarding a recent offer to act as an honorary guest on Thúy Nga’s “Paris By Night,” she mused, “I would do it just so that my mom could see that I did it.” Ðào said she is part of a Vietnamese American community that is becoming more diverse in its choices. “I’m not technically second generation, but I consider myself to be,” she said. “I mean, here you have the Vietnamese punk rocker, the Vietnamese chick, the Vietnamese rapper. You are in America. You are what you eat and speak. It’s great to be an Asian American, not just an Asian in America.” In her field, Ðào has had to learn to appeal to all types of women who have all types of shapes. She also is a noted expert on the complexities of the female form. “We’re (Lot 8) in an affluent area. As I’ve said before, our customers range from 15 to 50 years old. They are all people who like clothes, who like fashion. They are all people who like to dress up and go out,” Ðào said. “Asian women, I think, are pretty lucky in the playing cards. We’re pretty petite, but we’re still curvy.”
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