Ellen Gray: Philadelphia designer Kristin Haskins-Simms awaits her debut on 'Project Runway'

PROJECT RUNWAY. 9 p.m. tomorrow, Lifetime.

ON THE ROAD WITH AUSTIN & SANTINO. 10:30 p.m., Lifetime.

KRISTIN HASKINS-Simms' road to Lifetime's "Project Runway" has been neither short nor straight.

At 38, the Philadelphia designer behind the line Strangefruit (www.be

strangefruit.

com), who graduated from Germantown Friends School and the University of Pennsylvania - where she majored in English - isn't one of those newly minted fashion-school grads who've so often intrigued the judges. Her master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, earned after a stint working in finance, was meant to bolster a career in graphics, not clothing design.

But Haskins-Simms, who took classes as a child at the Fleisher Art Memorial, fell into graphics while temping at a graphic design firm years ago and then fell into fashion while fooling around with T-shirts, is one of the 17 contestants who'll be introduced tomorrow night as "Runway" launches its eighth season, at a new time - 9 p.m. - and a new length - 90 minutes.

"For me, it's been trial and error," the Germantown-based designer said last week in a phone interview from Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where she was vacationing a few days after filming wrapped. "I think that's how I got to where I am. I never wanted to be a fashion designer. I never imagined being a fashion designer. But I just started experimenting . . . I just started deconstructing T-shirts and I made a jacket out of an old T-shirt and, 'Oh, this is fun.' And then I wanted to use regular fabric to do it. And sometimes it was hit or miss, but after a while, I sort of got it down."

Though she wasn't watching "Runway" in Season 1, when Philadelphia University's Jay McCarroll won, she eventually got hooked.

"It was my virtual classroom, and I was learning a lot, not just about technical aspects" but about "creating a collection, like what is involved in creating a collection and a narrative between the garments," she said.

The way she sees it, not studying fashion formally has mostly been to her advantage. "Even in my casting interview with ["Runway" mentor] Tim Gunn, he said that I do have a fresh approach because I don't really know all the rules . . . I'm not hindered by all the technical aspects of fashion. I just do what I like and what looks good on me, looks good on women," she said.

What about the sewing machines, traditionally a stumbling block for less-experienced contestants? "I was a little bit nervous at first about using the machines on the show because they were industrial machines," she admitted.

"I use my grandmother's home sewing machine, which is completely different. But once I got used to using the industrial machines I was like, 'Oh, my God, I love these.' They were great."

She's also a bit nervous about how she'll be portrayed on the show. "But then, because of the amount of film and how much we were on TV, I mean the truth is going to be there, no matter what, so I don't think they're, say, going to purposely try to make someone look bad," she said hopefully.

One person who probably has nothing to worry about is Gunn, who, said Haskins-Simms, "is exactly the way he is on TV."

If anything, she said, he spends more time with contestants than he's shown doing. At one point, she asked him a question off camera, "and he continued to talk to me, it wasn't like, 'Oh,

we're not on camera, we can't speak,' and he actually gave me some additional advice."

They may not have won "Project Runway," but Season 1 romantic Austin Scarlett and Season 2 bad boy Santino Rice aren't ready to declare their 15 minutes over.

Not when Lifetime has 30 minutes a week to spare.

With "Models of the Runway" having gone wherever it is "Project Runway" models go when they're not being used as human pincushions to further contestants' careers, Scarlett and Rice have teamed up for "On the Road with Austin & Santino," in which the colorful but oddly matched pair engage in acts of mercy for the fashion-deprived of flyover country.

In tomorrow night's premiere, that means making a party dress for a Texas cowgirl who'd like to be the belle of the ball but has only worn heels once in her life, an exercise undertaken with so much good will on both sides that I only cringed once or twice.

But as a companion show to the elongated "Runway," it's as tonally off in its own way as "Models" was. Kinder and gentler, sure, but still assuming we're more interested in the personalities than we are in what they produce, suggesting that three seasons in, Lifetime still doesn't completely understand the appeal of the designer original it fought so hard to acquire.

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.