Project Runway Premiere Date Materializes

Bravo

The countdown to the catwalk has begun.

Lifetime has announced that the long-awaited new season of Project Runway—the sixth overall and the first at its new network home—will begin airing on Aug. 20.

The season, which has been in the can for months, will mark the first time the reality hit is set in Los Angeles and sees the return of newly knocked-up host Heidi Klum, mentor Tim Gunn and judges Michael Kors and Nina Garcia.

Sixteen wannabe couturiers will battle it out both to avoid Klum's "auf Wiedersehen" and to earn praise from a rotating roster of guest judges, among them Christina Aguilera, Eva Longoria Parker, Lindsay Lohan and Rebecca Romijn.

While the top designer has presumably already been chosen—the season's three finalists sent their designs down the runway during New York Fashion Week back in February—the real winner here (not counting fans) is Lifetime.

Thanks to a deal the network brokered with NBC Universal (owner of Project Runway's previous home base, Bravo) and the Weinstein Company over their legal dispute, the show will run on Lifetime for the next five years.

Joining Project Runway on its August premiere night is the new companion series, Models of the Runway.

(Originally published April 21, 2009, at 11:25 a.m. PT)