A Night Out With Jeffrey Sebelia
Project Now What Happens?
I THINK TV villains are funny,” said Jeffrey Sebelia, the newest victor in Bravo’s hit fashion reality show, “Project Runway.” The show’s finale on Wednesday drew 5.4 million viewers, making it the top cable telecast for the night and the highest-rated show in Bravo history. On Thursday night, less than 24 hours after being crowned king of “Runway’s” season three, Mr. Sebelia, 36, sat with an impish grin at Lotus in the meatpacking district, awaiting friends for an early dinner.
“Before the show started, I had my girlfriend, Melanie, get me a black hooded sweatshirt,” he said, “and I purposely wore that with sunglasses the first few episodes, just to be dark and mysterious.” Some viewers may add abrasive, divalike and unrelentingly competitive to that list of perfect-for-TV personality quirks, but who’s keeping track?
In truth, his button-pushing “Runway” persona was nowhere to be found, leaving in its place a stoop-shouldered man with a goofy grin wearing a gray T-shirt, a sweater and a plaid jacket of his own design with a pair of Rick Owens asymmetrical-front pants.
Mr. Sebelia, an elaborately tattooed designer from Los Angeles, was widely considered the most creative of the four finalists, and now has a trove of goodies awaiting him: a $100,000 cash prize, a 2007 Saturn, a spread in Elle magazine and a yearlong contract with the DMA talent agency in New York.
As Mr. Sebelia took bites of calamari and pad thai, in strolled his dinner companions, the actor Norman Reedus, whom Mr. Sebelia has known since he was 19, and Panos Galanopoulos, a fashion art director. “Congratulations!” said Mr. Reedus, pulling his friend into a bear hug.
“One for the bad guys!” crowed the designer, raising his water glass in triumph. No $500 bottles of Cristal at this table; Mr. Sebelia, a formerly homeless drug addict, has been clean for five years. Mr. Reedus, whose handsomely haggard face looks to be no stranger to late nights, ordered rum and Coke. The conversation turned to a meeting Mr. Sebelia had earlier that day at DMA. “I’ll crash the car and I’ll spend the money,” he said. “DMA: that’s the real prize.”
The men excused themselves for a smoke, and out on the sidewalk Mr. Sebelia showed off a cellphone photograph of his 2-year-old son, whose name, Harrison Detroit, famously snakes around his neck. He fielded congratulatory shout-outs from a half-dozen passers-by, then headed back inside, giving himself up to a quick photo for some guy’s sister’s birthday.
The group headed to the Upright Citizens Brigade in Chelsea for an improv show. When the car pulled up to the club, a college girl spotted Mr. Sebelia and stopped dead in her tracks.
“Oh. My. God,” she stuttered. “This is only the greatest night of my entire life.”
“Congratulations,” trilled her friend. “I’m so glad you won! Your baby is so cute!”
Mr. Reedus, who appeared in “Blade II” and “The Notorious Bettie Page,” went unrecognized.
Then a portly middle-aged man in an ill-fitting black button-down demanded Mr. Sebelia’s attention.
“How accurate is what you see on TV in terms of what really happened?” he asked.
“Well, it really happened,” Mr. Sebelia replied, the “duh” implied.
The men took their seats inside, where more people with flashing cameras crowded Mr. Sebelia.
“I hate cameras,” the reality TV star moaned without a trace of irony, his face stretched into a grimace. “I can’t fake a smile for more than two seconds. I think, this isn’t natural. Then I just get sad.”
He recomposed his features into a Chaplinesque sad clown face as the house lights dimmed.
nytimes.com
. I thought it was exactly how he described it, sexy and rarwwww!! It was a classier version of Babyphat. p.s. this is my very first post 
!
Very similar to my style, I love prints 
