'Project Runway' contestant visits Oly

Kit Pistol might not have lasted long on Bravo TV's "Project Runway" this season, but her design career didn't end there.

Pistol, who will bring her creations to Olympia on Saturday, is working on her first runway collection. The Los Angeles wardrobe stylist also is creating pieces for clients and has a line of her trademark hair bows and gray velvet T-shirts with her logo.

She'll show off some of her designs and pose for photos with fans at Sweet Life, which carries the bows and tees.

"She's one of my really close friends," said Erin Gillet, who owns the boutique that features feminine, even girly, fashions for women, babies and young children. "I talked her into it. We used to work together in L.A. for Betsey Johnson, and we kept in contact."

Pistol's playful designs fit in with the girly vibe at Sweet Life.

"My style is playful in an appealingly bold way," she told Julie Wolfson in an interview for LAist.com, a Web site about life in Los Angeles. "It is definitely a bit coquettish but tough ... street and high fashion combined. Oh, and I almost always wear a bow in my hair. It completes my vibe and makes me happy!"

Pistol was booted from "Project Runway" too early, many TV critics and fellow designers say.

"Alas, the perennially never-good-enough-or-bad-enough designer got aut'd for making an avant garde meets 'Little House on the Prairie' tiered apron dress," wrote Entertainment Weekly's Jessica Shaw. "No matter what you thought of the dress, though, you can't possibly be happy Kit was the member of her team who went home."

When TV Guide interviewed the final four challengers, two mentioned Pistol as someone who should have made it to the end.

"Kit should have had a chance," said Rami Kashou, another Los Angeles designer, who was among the three finalists. "If you look at a designer's work and you can consistently guess without knowing whose work that is, there's trademark there. I think that's what's important. Kit had that."

But Pistol herself said she was ready to go. In an exit interview with Entertainment Weekly, she said, "What you didn't see last night was more of the bantering on the runway. When they asked who should go home, I said myself. I felt very frustrated the whole season because I wasn't getting any positive or negative attention from the judges."

But she did get valuable advice from "Project Runway" mentor Tim Gunn, as she told LAist.com:

"To go with my instinct, and also that more is not more. Rats! Too bad!"