Ever wondered what the fashion scene is like in Tennessee? Well, our interview with panda girl is your ticket in. Her sets are a fun mix of brights, florals and even a bit of rock n roll. What we like most about her is that she’s not committed to one specific layout style. panda girl is always trying new things!

Here are some of her sets:

Tell us about yourself.

I live in Tennessee and I’m really into fashion and photography, which turns out to be a really great combination. My only job right now is to go to school and get good grades, and to look stylish at all times!

How would you describe your sense of style/fashion?

My style changes a lot. One day I may wear my skinny jeans, leather boots, army print tank top and chain necklace, and another day I will wear an old floral dress that used to be my grandmother’s that I’ve cut and hemmed, worn with a denim jacket and cowboy boots (cowboy boots are an essential item for almost every Tennessean’s closet.) But I guess my style more than often leans to the flirty or bright colored side.

What’s hot in your ‘hood right now?

Here lately I’ve been seeing quite a few girls at my school wearing TOMS, although I personally don’t much care for them. The biggest trends I’ve seen, even though Tennessee isn’t the most stylish state (haha), are florals, lace, sundresses with sweaters or denim jackets, and skinny jeans with converse or boots. We have a very wide variety of styles.

What’s one thing you wish people would wear more of?

I sort of wish the 80s would come back. Not the weird, technicolored yoga 80s style, but the punk rocker style with lots of studs and leather, which I suppose is already starting to come back. I also love the men’s style back then with the jeans and high school sport team jackets or leather jackets.

How did you discover Polyvore?

My mom was Googling fashion sites for me because I’m so in love with fashion and style, so when she came around to Polyvore it was perfect! It’s not like those other dress-up games on the internet; it allows more creativity.

Tell us a little about what you use Polyvore for and why. What do you like about Polyvore?

I absolutely love Polyvore! I use it to express my style, and I also use it to learn more about the fashion world and how style evolves from one thing to the next. I used to think great fashion was matching everything perfectly in all the same color! Thanks to Polyvore I now know what really good fashion and style is. I like Polyvore because it’s the perfect place to keep all my fashion brainstorms in one place, and a better way to show others my ideas.

If you could share one tip or trick with a new Polyvore member, what would it be?

Trial and error. Try LOTS of different layouts. When I first started Polyvore, my layout was horrible and so were my outfits! But that’s how you learn, by your mistakes. Also browse Polyvore and study other people’s sets. See what looks good together, which colors match best, and what’s in style at the moment.

Do you have a favorite fashion designer or style icon who has influenced you?

I don’t have a “fashion icon” because I believe that you can get the best point of view of fashion if you combine knowledge from all the designers and stylists. You get something new every time!

What online stores do you like to clip from?

I clip from anywhere I see something I like. I’ve never liked just one brand, I like to pick and choose.

What are your 3 favorite sets of the ones you’ve made?

What’s your favorite set created by another Polyvore member?

It’s just so perfect for fall and I love the fall colors. I also love the layout because it’s not the average square or rectangle shaped set, it’s unique.

Are your real life outfits similar to the ones your create on Polyvore?

In a way they are similar. Except that I don’t wear heels, and 3/4 of my sets have high heels in them. Also the things in my sets are really expensive! I find that sticking to the sales racks at my favorite stores is the best way to go, while also getting stylish clothes. If I could afford my sets, I would buy them all!

Got any feature requests for the Polyvore team?

On the “top products” page that you update every day, or any collection page, it would be a lot easier to add an item to “my items” if there was a button right there under the item, instead of having to click on the item, go to a new page, and then add the item.

Today’s interview is with Rachel, who has been a member of Polyvore for four years! She’s a great inspiration within the Polyvore community and has won several contests to date. With over 3 million set views, she’s truly an uber-creator with an eye for both fashion and art.

I’m 26 going on 27, and a bookkeeper/student. I live in Orange County, California with my husband and three dogs. I work for a small non-profit art organization and we focus on bringing art programs to the Los Angeles area community. In October we’re shutting down the streets of downtown Los Angeles for a politically charged parade featuring slogans from 30 contemporary artists! It’s a dream job and I’m so lucky to be able to participate in these amazing programs.

I want to continue learning about fashion and expanding my wardrobe. My current job consists of meeting very important people and occasionally celebrities. I don’t want to be clueless about fashion around them.

Polyvore has significantly changed my life. Since I found Polyvore almost four years ago, there’s literally only one week I wasn’t on the site and that’s because I was in Europe with poor internet connection. Polyvore has helped me find my current job, led me to great people, and allowed me to express myself with fashion and art. I’ve met two of my Polyvore contacts in real life and I now consider them close friends. I’ve had the opportunity to win fabulous prizes and learn about what’s in style. I’m able to use the shop page to help me find items within my price range. Essentially I don’t know what I’d do without Polyvore.

I love jeans! I wear them almost everyday, unless it’s summer. I love to dress them up with cute boots, flats, or heels. Since I live near the beach, there’s a very laid back vibe. My outfits usually reflect that attitude.

Alexander McQueen, Lanvin, H&M, Kate Spade, Betsey Johnson, Coach, Michael Kors, and Marc Jacobs.

There are no words to describe how excited and grateful I am for Chicago and Lollapalooza! This trip is really going to make my summer amazing. Foo Fighters are at the top of my list for must-sees while at Lollapalooza. Thank you so much for the opportunity to win such amazing prizes!

Implementing a color organizer search option for my items that I have already saved and tagged. Sometimes I’d like to look through my tagged accessories by color. I’ve been on Polyvore for a long time and I’ve saved so many items. This would really help me search through my items when I’m creating a set.

Today’s interview is with StreetWhit, who’s been styling up a storm on Polyvore for the last 4 months! Since she’s been a member, her sets and contest entries have been blowing us away. Most recently she placed in Kate Betts’ style influencer challenge.

My name is Whitney and I’m 23 years old. I’m currently searching for a job in the fashion industry!

I would love to work in fashion someday, whether it’s design or merchandising. I enjoy everything about it and I believe that it would be a great fit for my lifestyle! I think that being a buyer or a visual merchandiser would be a great career.

I looked forward to being on Polyvore every day. It has really become a creative outlet in my life. Whether I’m stressed or I just want to express myself in a certain way, I rely on Polyvore. And when I say that I am addicted, I’M ADDICTED! It’s actually made me want to do something with fashion graphic design (thanks Polyvore team!) I also love the way Polyvore reaches out to the fashion community and allows us to interact with the fashion obsessed all over the world!

Very street, hence the Polyvore name ‘StreetWhit’! I always try to walk out of the house with an edgy, chic outfit on. There always has to be some sort of twist to my outfit, whether that means pairing a plain oversized sweatshirt with black skinny jeans, booties, and a diamond necklace or rocking my leather jacket with a babydoll dress and high heels. I love the element of surprise in a street outfit.

Balenciaga, Donna Karan, Proenza Schouler, and Burberry have my heart!

For feature requests, I really can’t think of anything at the moment because you all have everything a fashionista needs! 

Dress by Zoe Hong

Last week, I worked with the Oscars® Designer Challenge 2011. It is a pretty cool concept: Up-and-coming fashion designers submit sketches of red carpet dresses and the best ten dresses are selected by a jury then the dresses are featured in the Challenge. The winning dress is worn by that girl who hands out the Oscars to each winner, so the visibility is global fabulosity. If you think about it, its a better reality show that The Fashion Show or some of these other Johnny Come Lately fashion contest shows because you cannot beat having your dress on the Oscars telecast and on the Red Carpet. Yes, I told Toni Thompson, who has spearheaded this project, that it would make a great reality show, but sadly, the Oscars dont see things the same way.

The Black Swan is the key inspiration for most of the hair styles shown in the Challenge.

The hair for the presentation to the media was done by Roy Teeluck and his crack team of hair people that he flew in from New York and Miami. The make-up was done by Bruce Grayson and his team of Los Angeles based beautification experts. Here are a few of the final entries but click to oscar.com and register to vote for your favorite dress. The Oscars Designer Challenge in on!

Dress by Katelyn Bischoff

Here Roy did a low-up-do.

Dress by Clay Sadler

A high pony tail is always a great look.

Dress by James DeColon. Talk about Black Swan…I mean…

This exaggerated up-do is kind of Bride of Frankenstein fierce.

Dress by Octavio Carlin

Yet another low-up-do.

Dress Boris Powell

Up with curls.

Valerie Mayen took this wool coat with leather trim to a casting session for this season’s “Project Runway.” Judges were suitably “wowed.” She’d made a bid to get on the show once before, in Season 7, but just missed the cut.WANT TO WATCH?Season 8 of “Project Runway,” in an expanded, 90-minute format, premieres at 9 p.m. Thursday on Lifetime.

Inside Valerie Mayen’s cavernous warehouse studio on East 30th Street in Cleveland is a wall covered with a series of dry erase boards, a massive “to do” list. (Some notations required the writer to stand on her tiptoes). One entry reads “Hell Week” in bold, black letters, followed by a conga line of errands and appointments. It’s a reference to the few frantic days in June before the 29-year-old designer had to fly to New York to compete in “Project Runway.” “I had all that to do to get ready,” says Mayen, looking surprisingly rested and ready in a sassy mini with zigzag pattern, a little something she whipped up during a few spare moments while filming Season 8 of the reality staple.

The sounds of jackhammers and idling trucks bleed in through her closed windows; dust whirls through shafts of sunlight in her hall, courtesy of the construction going on outside her building. Mayen likes the grit, and even the grime, of her adopted city. She moved here nearly a decade ago to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art as an illustration major. After graduation, she studied at Virginia Marti College of Art and Design before striking out on her own and launching Yellowcake, her line of clothing and accessories. Mayen originals are known for their impeccable construction and clever geometric silhouettes.

She isn’t the first local to sew, cut and edge her way onto the popular Lifetime cable show, which commands some 3 million viewers an episode.

Season 5 was a veritable old-home week, with three Ohioans sweating and stitching their way through increasingly difficult challenges (“Create a look using only materials purchased from a Gristedes grocery store!”). All were eventually bidden auf Wiedersehen by Teutonic host Heidi Klum before the season finale. Seven Hills native Stephen “Suede” Baum placed fifth, Terri Stevens of Columbus finished seventh, and Kelli Martin, also of Columbus, only lasted a few episodes.

Valerie Mayen (standing, far left) is one of 17 designers — the most in the show’s history — competing for cash and other prizes this season on “Project Runway.”

In season 6, Althea Harper of Dayton made it all the way to Bryant Park, where she showed her collection at New York Fashion Week. (Harper was bested by the nasty but gifted Irina Shabayeva.)

And last season, Painesville native Jesse LeNoir — OK, so he moved out of state when he was 3, but still — hemmed and draped his way to a less than thrilling 10th place.

But with Valerie Mayen, Cleveland finally has hometown talent in the running. If she wins, she’ll receive $100,000 from L’Oreal Paris to put toward her line, a fashion spread in Marie Claire magazine, $50,000 in computer goodies from HP and Intel and the opportunity to design and sell a collection on Piperlime.com.

Though she has been sworn to secrecy about whether she’ll be one of a few designers competing for the purse Thursday, Sept. 9, at Fashion Week, she promises fireworks.

We have a couple of things to do for the finale, Fashion Week, the reunion show, that kind of thing, but we’re pretty much done.

I really wanted to make Cleveland proud. . . . I gave myself some faux challenges before I left so I knew it was something that I could do. I gave myself a day for each look and then I just gave them away to friends of mine. I had a really good time. It was hard work but it was pretty much how we had to do it on the show — we had less than a day. The motivation really was just to not make a fool of myself.

I think I do have a cheerful disposition — that’s something I’ve been really blessed with. I am a Christian, and I do pray and I did have my Bible there with me while we were filming. The short bursts of free time that I did have at night before I went to bed or in the morning, I would read some Scripture and pray.

Two designs from Rudi Gernreich, most notorious for inventing the first topless swimsuit, known as the “monokini.”

Oh, yeah. He’s kind of like the uncle or the grandfather I never had — he’s just such a cool guy and he’s so easy to talk to. Very encouraging, very soothing.

Definitely David Bowie — without a doubt. I LOVE David Bowie. I would love to design a really fantastic, amazing winter coat for him. Or, like a leather jacket. Anything he wanted, I would make it. If he wanted purple bloomers, I would make them. There’s little I wouldn’t do for David Bowie.

I would have to say Rudi Gernreich or Paco Rabanne; they’re two of my all-time favorite designers from the ’60s. They were pioneers of their time and I really like that about them. Rudi’s probably my all-time favorite, but I also love Rabanne — he did the entire costume design for “Barbarella.” I really like things that are very architectural and geometric with bold colors.

Yellow cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles is the classic confection, [it's what] June Cleaver and Donna Reed would feed their kids. But yellow cake is kind of like the epitome of the underdog. Everyone loves chocolate cake, but what about yellow cake? Yellow cake is often overlooked and really underrated. We give 5 percent of our profits to the City Mission and local and national charities, so we support the underdogs. And we are the underdogs [because] people have their misconceptions of Cleveland. So why not embrace our underdog status and make it our mantra?

We don’t have to be New York, we don’t have to be L.A., we can just be Cleveland and really relish the fact that we are who we are.

A model shimmers in a Paco Rabanne chain-mail minidress, Paris, 2003.

I think people do give us a bum rap, but the only way to change that stigma is to make high-end fashion and daring fashion more available to Clevelanders. It’s like any trend — it takes a few pioneers to pave the road and let people know that it’s safe and it’s OK to wear certain things. . . . Cleveland is a blue-collar town, so it’s not like we’ve got events and parties and soirees to go to every night of the week. We go to the park, we fly kites, we ride our bikes, we shovel snow — it’s a different mentality. But I think people in Cleveland still want to feel glamorous and special and beautiful just like anyone else does. . . . I talk about Cleveland a lot in the show, actually — I was really, really boasting about Cleveland.

Some people were like, “You’re from Ohio — what’s in Ohio?” And I explained it and told them all the good things about it. Some people were like, “Yeah, I flew through there once.” Some people kept calling it Cincinnati and I was like, “No! It’s Cleveland.”

At yellowcakeshop.com. Or they can just call me here at the studio (216-236-4073) and set up a time to do a fitting or see what we have here in stock. We don’t charge people for consultations or for fittings — we just have people stop by — we have 15 girls to help!

Yep. They’re all from Kent State, CIA, Virginia Marti and one from Ursuline.

The viewing party is going to be at Melt in Cleveland Heights and we’re asking that people get there early, at 8 p.m.; show starts at 9. It’s gonna be kid-friendly. There will be lots of food! A Cookie & A Cupcake is donating 300 cupcakes!

No! Just show up. We’re gonna try to do a different restaurant every week, so if anyone wants to sponsor us and host a viewing party, we’ll definitely put them on the list.

It’s good! It’s pretty dramatic and I’m not just saying that because I was on it — there’s a lot that goes down that people won’t even believe. It’s pretty shocking stuff.

Bebeto Matthews, Associated PressCleveland designer Valerie Mayen had just a month and a half to prepare 10 looks for the “Project Runway” show at Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week on Thursday. This tomato-red showstopper stood out from the crowd. NEW YORK — Nothing says New York Fashion Week like 11-year-old girls in faux-fur dresses and mirrored sunglasses.

But this year, the too-cool, black-clad fashionistas gathered at Lincoln Center to vet the looks of spring 2011 were treated to a bright, brash dose of Cleveland style courtesy of pixyish designer Valerie Mayen.

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Mayen, 29, has wowed “Project Runway” judges throughout the show’s tumultuous season 8 with her innovative creations — like the darling cocktail dress she made from hundreds of party-store napkins — and impeccable construction.

And Thursday, among a sea of sun-bleached hues, her vibrant palette exploded off the runway.

“Latinas, we don’t shy away from color,” Mayen told the packed theater filled with power brokers, celebs and hangers-on before unveiling her 10-piece collection.

“I wanted to bring something really crackerjack,” she said, vibrating with good-natured energy. Her inspiration for the looks? “If Rainbow Bright and David Bowie had a love child,” giving a shout-out to the Thin White Duke, the one person in the world she’s said she’d most like to design for.

Mayen’s debut at Lincoln Center doesn’t mean she’s one of the top three finalists on the Lifetime reality-TV series. That little piece of information is being jealously guarded until the last episodes air over the coming weeks.

Contestants are under wraps, too. Mayen and nine designers who have yet to be told auf Wiedersehen by supermodel Heidi Klum — at least formally on TV — were unavailable for comment before and after the 10 a.m. runway show, sequestered like jurors at a mob trial.

Among those craning to see Mayen were platinum-haired granny Betsey Johnson, a slimmed-down Harvey Weinstein and a blown-up Jessica Simpson, appearing as a guest judge alongside “Project Runway’s” regular inquisitors Nina Garcia (showing baby bump), Klum (showing surprisingly little leg in a red pantsuit, an unexpected departure from her usual hemlines cut to the earlobe) and Michael Kors (black-out shades, natch).

Lifetime TelevisionDesigner Valerie Mayen: “Oh my lands,” she said as she emerged from backstage to introduce her collection at New York Fashion Week on Thursday. “Is this bananas or what?”

When Simpson arrived, enveloped by an entourage, her much (and cruelly) commented-upon weight gain caused a catty stir in the audience. So much for USA Today’s prediction that “fuller bodies are definitely in” for spring.

Mayen styled her models in matching blonde and brunette bobbed wigs with severe bangs, giving them the look of futuristic flappers, the perfect complement to her aggressively modern collection that pays classic attention to craftsmanship and detail.

While her colleagues sent whispering grays, quiet nudes and soothing browns down the runway, Mayen’s designs shouted out loud with saturated jewel tones, the designer unafraid to pair a lipstick-red sleeveless vest and a fluorescent-pink dress with tulip layering.

Then again, what would you expect from a woman who named her label after that dessert classic of the 1950s, Yellowcake? Echoes of Mayen’s heroes, mod pioneers Rudi Gernreich and Paco Rabanne, the costume designer for the Jane Fonda space-vixen fantasy “Barbarella,” were evident in her runway pieces as was her love of architectural and geometric shapes.

Seven Hills native Stephen “Suede” Baum was on hand to cheer for the home team.

“Did you see our girl?” he said. Mayen’s “was one of my favorite collections,” he gushed. (That’s no lie. Consider his Tweet minutes after the end of the show: “totally luved Valerie, Michael C., n Mondo’s collections! Congrats cast of Season 8!!!”)

“I love that it was very forward, very futuristic. As the economy’s killing everybody, we’re looking for something fresh and new, something to capture our eye, and hers definitely stood out in a really good way. And I think the colors were awesome,” he said, sporting a burst of fuchsia in his signature Mohawk. “And you know I like my colors.”

“I’m definitely rooting for her.”

Bebeto Matthews, Associated PressShort shorts were as plentiful as camera-toting fans at the “Project Runway” fashion show Thursday in New York, appearing in virtually every collection. These peacock-blue hot pants are by Cleveland’s Valerie Mayen.

Other fans? Jay Manuel, Tyra Banks’ right hand man on “America’s Next Top Model,” looking dapper in a camel fedora, and his pal, celebrity stylist June Ambrose.

“The construction of those garments was genius,” Manuel said.

For the beturbaned Ambrose, a music-video veteran famous for putting Missy Elliot in a Hefty bag and making it look like the must-have piece of the season and dressing a young Sean “Puffy” Combs in his signature shiny suit, Mayen’s collection reminded her of “Japanese anime” with a touch of the sci-fi flick “The Fifth Element.”

Though Ambrose appreciated Mayen’s “fit,” and the way she built garments around the body, “I loved the energy and the gumption and the nerve that was sustained in that collection. I like her a lot.”

Now, if only Ambrose can give Bowie’s people a jingle, Mayen might be finally be asked to make something fabulous for her style icon.