I ’m fabulously glamorous,” says Laura Bennett, 43, a pregnant architect, in the opening credits of Project Runway. And she is—while somehow managing to raise five children with a sixth on the way. She spoke to Jada Yuan.
So, what are you doing right now?
Sewing, believe it or not. It’s like I’ve got nothing to wear myself anymore, I’ve gotten so large. It’s ironic. I just swore over the last couple of months that I would never sew again, but here I sit, sewing.
Where do you live?
Near the Empire State Building. When I look out my window I can only see the side of it. I have to, like, cock my head to see the top.
How’d you meet your husband, Peter Shelton?
At a dinner party. I must have been the hot babe in the room at the ripe old age of 32 or something.
Do you get recognized a lot?
My son counts how many sightings per block. The other day we couldn’t walk a block without eight people spotting me.
You’re pretty distinctive-looking.
Well, I’m also huge and pregnant. As a matter of fact, that started to be a problem at the end of filming. I was too easy to spot.
How pregnant are you?
Seven and a half months and, I have to say, I feel huge. I think that sitting at a sewing machine for the last two months has not been helpful.
This is number six?
Yes, my daughter Cleo is 18; she’s from a previous marriage. And then the rest, all boys, are with Peter. Peik, he’s 10 years old. Truman is 7. He was named by a cocktail-party crowd when he was about 3 months old.
He didn’t have a name?
My husband could never commit to one. So poor Truman just went for months being called “the baby.” His birth certificate said Baby White Male. Finally, we were at this cocktail party with a bunch of my old friends and they voted on Truman. So we started calling him Truman, and then a couple years ago I actually changed his birth certificate. After that, we get very uncreative. The next one is Pierson, which means Peter’s son, who looks just like me. He’s 4. And Larson, who’s 3, looks just like Peter. We got it wrong, but that’s okay.
Is this one another boy?
Yes. We haven’t discussed a name yet, but apparently the Internet will take care of that. I often see it discussed.
On the show, was there any point where they edited you different from what you’d hoped?
No. I think the editing was very fair. Sometimes they made me seem like this sort of buttinsky design critic, and sometimes they made me look like this kind of tough fighting girl, and sometimes they made me seem like this sort of hormonal crazy woman. But I think that I was all of those things when I was there. Next: Spying on the Babysitter Gets Easier
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