Santino Rice

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Santino Rice

Santino Q. Rice (born August 20, 1974), a St. Charles, Missouri native, is a fashion designer living and working in Hollywood. Rice participated as a contestant on the second season of the Bravo reality show Project Runway and was one of the three designers selected to show at Olympus Fashion Week, along with Chloe Dao and Daniel Vosovic and ended finishing third behind them.

Santino was commonly viewed as a very talented designer who elicited criticism from the judges for going over-the-top on many designs, adding unnecessary items such as feathers, beads, sequins, and trims. Although many felt that most of his basic designs were nicely thought out, the extra embellishments were criticized as being "cheesy." The judges criticized these tendencies repeatedly, telling him that he over-embellished, but the criticism seemed to have little effect. Rice talked back to many of the judges, particularly Nina Garcia, when they critiqued his over-the-top style, regularly defending his over-decorated designs. Ironically, when Santino presented a less extravagant version of his designs on the season finale, the judges were confused by his lack of usual style and embellishments.

Contestants on the show were often irritated by Santino's arrogant behavior, but also were highly amused when he did his frequent impressions of the fashion director at Parsons, Tim Gunn. When we first saw the impressions, it was the "Flower Power" episode, and Andrae Gonzalo was outside. Rice was mocking Tim Gunn when he said, "What happened to Andrae?" He also mocked Tim's catchphrase, "Make it work!", quite often, and did an impression of Tim with Andrae at a Red Lobster that elicited many laughs.

On the "Reunion" episode, other contestants were given the opportunity to hear many of the hurtful things Rice said of them. In a typical example, Rice said of fellow contestant Diana Eng, "I can't stand the sound of her voice!".

[edit] Project Runway

Rice was a contestant on the second season of Project Runway. He lasted throughout the season, landing a third place finish after showing during New York Fashion Week. Rice won in the first episode, the Road to the Runway challenge, and the fifth episode, the Social Scene challenge. He also was in the top 3 during the second episode, the "Clothes Off Your Back" challenge, the third episode, the "All Dolled Up" challenge, and the eleventh episode, the ""What's Your Line"" challenge. He was also in the bottom two in the fourth episode, the "Team Lingerie" challenge, the sixth episode, the "Window Shopping" episode, the seventh episode, the "On Thin Ice" challenge, and the tenth episode, the "Makeover" challenge.