‘Project Runway’ Contestant Takes Jab at Karlie Kloss’ Marriage to Joshua Kushner

The Thursday episode of Project Runway saw a little bit more than just fashion when one contestant served some shade to host Karlie Kloss, commenting about her marriage to Joshua Kushner during judging.

The contestants had been assigned to create an upcycled look for Kloss to wear to a CFDA event in Paris, and contestant Tyler Neasloney was on the receiving end of a harsh critique.

“I cannot see Karlie wearing it anywhere, honestly,” designer Brandon Maxwell told him, to which Neaslony replied, “Not even to dinner with the Kushners?”

Kloss’ mouth then dropped open in shock.

Joshua Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Donald Trump and husband of Ivanka Trump. Kloss has said in the past that she shares “liberal values” with her husband and that being related to the Trumps has “been hard.”

Neasloney was ultimately eliminated during the episode and apologized to Kloss. “Karlie, I want you to know that I’m not a jerk,” he said. “I’m professional, so what I said earlier had no hidden agenda, no meaning, nothing like that.”

He added to Bravo’s The Daily Dish that he was glad he had the chance to speak to Kloss before leaving.

“I just don’t like being misunderstood, so that’s why I felt like I had to clarify,” he explained. “I’m not a nasty person. I thought we were on a friendly enough playing field. So Karlie, at the end of the day, she’s a human, so I don’t want her to just hate me or feel awful about what I said. I set the record straight at the end of the episode, so I really sincerely hope there are no hard feelings.”

The model also shared a tweet thanking Neasloney for his work.

Neasloney told The Daily Dish that he has “a lot of respect” for Kloss and felt comfortable joking with the judges after the previous week’s episode.

“Coming off of Episode 3 where we had this really awesome banter, both me and Karlie, me and Brandon, me and Elaine [Welteroth], me and Nina [Garcia], I felt like we had built a really cool rapport. I was laughing, they were laughing, we were going tit for tat. There was shade, there were jokes, and it was really fun,” he said. “So I came into the Episode 4 runway after being in the bottom twice before that in a row, I came in there being like I’m friendly with the judges now. We’ve spoken, we’ve kikied, we’ve laughed. I can be my normal self.”

The designer added that he’s felt “misunderstood” since the episode aired.

“So that’s what is bothersome about some of the coverage, both press and Twitter, is a lot of people are treating it as this non sequitur,” he said. “It was not a non sequitur; it was entirely related to the aesthetic of the look.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Kevin Mazur/MG19