Harvey Weinstein’s brilliant, and inevitable, business model for Project Runway now includes a new cash infusion: dollars from the magazine. When he was first shopping the show around in the early 200s, most magazines passed on the opportunity to be attached, and Elle was the only taker. It’s been a brand boon for the Hachette fashion book, but after the fifth season, they’re gonna lose it. And whoever wants the opportunity to work with Runway, now on Lifetime, will have to pay for the privilege. Seven figures, anyone?

Sad news, gays. Project Runway season four contestant Jack Mackenroth, who had to leave the show after a staph infection, will not be auditioning for the show’s fifth season. “During my short stint on season 4, I was never in the bottom three and I won the menswear challenge, which is my field of expertise, so I feel like I accomplished most of what I started.”

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Earlier today we brought you news that Nina Garcia had signed an editor-at-large contract with Elle that would keep her there through Sept 1, just long enough to shoot the fifth (and Bravo’s final) season of Project Runway. Interesting that the announcement came with an expiration date, we noted.

And here’s why: We were just told Nina is heading to Marie Claire as fashion director, effective .. Sept. 2.

Well so much for Fashion Week Daily’s “exclusive” news that Nina Garcia was heading to Hearst’s Marie Claire after her dust-up at Elle. News just arrived that she’s signed a deal to stay on at Elle, as editor-at-large, through Sept. 1, 2008.

And how many job announcements do you see that come with an expected termination date?

Right, just this one, because it means Garcia gets to stick around for the fifth season of Project Runway while Elle’s Robbie Myers figures out how to hang on to the TV show, now that Cosmopolitan, Glamour, In Style, Harper’s Bazaar, as well as Marie Claire, are all said to be vying for a deal.

Putting to rest any notion that Nina Garcia would take Elle’s Robbie Myers up on her offer to stay on in some fashion, the Project Runway judge is heading to Marie Claire, as was rumored. [FWD] She’ll officially join the staff in September, as fashion director, replacing Tracy Taylor, who left. Sadly, there’s no update about whether Runway will hop beds from Hearst to Hachette Hachette to Hearst, but Harvey Weinstein is said to love Garcia, so if keeping her on the show means switching to MC, perhaps he’ll do it.

“A spokesman for The Weinstein Co., which produces the show, said the reports were inaccurate. Contract negotiations between “Project Runway” and its primary judges — Michael Kors and Garcia — are still continuing, and according to sources close to the show, negotiations for sponsorships and magazine partners for season six have yet to begin. Garcia is also still negotiating the terms — or the severing — of her relationship with Hachette Filipacchi Media, Elle’s parent company.” [WWD] And this concludes the explanation for why the future of Nina, Elle, and Project Runway is dragging on longer than the sale of a daily newspaper. (NB: Poo on Women’s Wear for calling The CW’s Gossip Girl “Gossip Girls.”)

Nina Garcia has finally made her decision: She’s not sticking around Elle to be Joe Zee’s playtoy. She’s heading to Marie Claire, which, not so surprisingly, has stole the lucrative Project Runway magazine contract away from the Hachette title. [P6] She probably won’t even have a real office over there at Hearst; simply a place to stash her handbag while running to PR tapings.

Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz of production company Magical Elves are the duo responsible for turning Project Runway into ratings and publicity gold. That’s why NBC was angling for ‘em, and now they’ve got ‘em, signing the twosome to an exclusive deal, effectively stealing them away from the Weinstein Co.’s fashion franchise just as they’re moving from Bravo to Lifetime. Cutforth and Lipsitz will remain producers for Bravo’s Top Chef and NBC’s Last Comic Standing.

Oh, what’s that? NBC owns Bravo? Yeah. It was basically Jeff Zucker’s way of brushing the top of his hand underneath his chin at Harvey Weinstein.

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Marie Claire’s Joanna Coles is said to be leveraging Elle’s up-in-the-air status as a Project Runway partner to scoot her own magazine in the door as the heading-to-Lifetime show’s magazine brand.

In other semi-PR related news, Ugly Betty, the ABC sitcom that’s been serving as a dumping ground for Runway personalities Christina Siriano, Nina Garcia, and Elle’s own Robbie Myers and Joe Zee, will see Lindsay Lohan grace the set. She began shooting her cameo on Saturday for the same episode Elle v. Mode softball game that had Naomi Campbell at bat. “Lindsay arrived on set 45 minutes early,” a source told Us, which totally means she’s on the wagon again.

How else will the new non-Bravo Project Runway screw things up, aside from moving to Lifetime and possibly filming without Nina Garcia? By moving to Los Angeles, the city that pretends to be a fashion capital with its own fashion week but is really just a town where Victoria Beckham pushes her crappy jeans at Kitson. [EW]

Lifetime, not content to serve just one historically oppressed group (womyn), is now going after the gays. By stealing Project Runway from Bravo and commissioning projects like Carson Kressley’s How to Look Good Naked, it’s clear the channel is finally catering to the audience of homothethuals it always managed to attract. Except as the Observer points out, the channel is a bit too earnest, a bit too P.C., a bit too Middle America. Army Wives, anyone? It’s everything that isn’t Bravo, the sassy and smarter channel.

And as if to show they’ve got something to prove, Lifetime is making the biggest mistake of all: They’re bailing on Golden Girls and Will & Grace – the show for those who still find Sex and the City too edgy – which is the only excuse our DVR ever had for tuning in.

And you thought Nina Garcia’s guest spot on Ugly Betty, airing Thursday was the only extension of the Elle brand into ABC primetime. Not so.

Now comes word that editor Robbie Myers and creative director Joe Zee are pulling a Me Too! and will also appear on the show, which actually fits in quite nicely with the rumors we reported back in December about the twosome holding talks with Ugly’s producers. (Those meetings, which included America’s Next Top Model’s producers, also yielded the Elle reality show Fashionista.) Myers and Zee will represent Elle in a softball game against the show’s Mode magazine, with Naomi Campbell guesting for the true-life magazine. (Easy joke: Will she be swinging at BlackBerrys?)

This, on the heels of Garcia having just been spotted (and trying to go unnoticed) leaving Hearst’s glass tower, where it can only be assumed she’s establishing her quote.

NEENER NEENER NINA Elle is floating names of possible Project Runway judges to replace Nina Garcia for Season Five, including some of her old assistants. Queue the scare tactics to get Nina to sign on the dotted line! [WWD]

ELLE-O, GOODBYE Harvey Weinstein wants Nina Garcia back on Project Runway whether she accepts Elle’s backhanded offer or not. [WWD]

Maybe-outgoing Elle fashion director Nina Garcia and Project Runway winner Christian Siriano filmed their Ugly Betty appearances last weekend, as Jossip was the first to tell you about, and now comes the photo evidence: This shot of the duo with the cast might be the last time Garcia was photographed as a Hachette employee. Sad!

Why do the post-Elle Nina Garcia rumors keep circulating? Because no decisions have been made, which means it’s conspiracy theory time! Though she’s no longer the magazine’s fashion director, Elle’s Robbie Myers understands her relationship with Project Runway may hinge on her foe’s involvement, which is why Myers is so ready to offer Garcia an editor-at-large assignment. That would at least keep her on the magazine’s masthead, but only through season six, according to one rumor mill, which means she’d be done wit Elle by mid-October. Meanwhile, Harvey Weinstein, who is taking the show to Lifetime, could possibly keep her on the show sans Elle affiliation. She would simply be listed as “author and Blackberry ad face.”

In what can only be described as good news for Lifetime as it successfully swindles the Project Runway brand away from Bravo, new research shows TV viewers are loyal to their favorite shows, and not the networks they’re broadcast on.

Analysts at Accenture see this as a ripe opportunity for content creators (producers, directors, self-absorbed video bloggers) to start putting their commodities on “multiple platforms and distribution channels and find new revenue streams by doing so.”

Perhaps that’s why the Weinstein Company is so enthused about its new deal.

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Under the original deal struck between The Weinstein Company and Bravo, Project Runway cost the NBC Universal channel $600,000 per episode. That was not enough for Harvey Weinstein, especially when Bravo started taking all the credit for the show’s success. So Harvey started going around NBC’s back to try and make the show more lucrative on his end, striking product placement deals without telling Bravo suits, even though they had already lined up major sponsorship deals with brands like L’Oreal and Tresemme. Bravo’s deal with Macy’s totally dried up when Weinstein insisted a rep for Wal-Mart, which it had an arrangement with, appear in the finale. In Weinstein’s new deal with Lifetime, the lady network will be paying upwards of $1 million per episode, a nice 66 percent fee hike. And reality television was supposed to be the cheaper alternative.

The reason Bravo lost Project Runway to Lifetime is because the show’s producers, The Weinstein Company, wanted to force NBC Universal to buy up some of its “second-tier” film projects as part of a contract renewal. NBC balked, but Lifetime was up for the offer, so they took the bait, agreeing to buy “stolen goods.” Or at least that’s the series of events according to NBC and the lawsuit they filed yesterday against Weinstein. And they’re also claiming any cash a court ruling might send its way as punishment to Weinstein for breaking their contract – which promised NBC right of first refusal – wouldn’t be good enough. They want to be back in negotiations.

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Bravo parent NBC Universal filed suit against The Weinstein Company today after, in a shock to them, losing the network’s biggest show, Project Runway, in a backroom dispute with producers. If things go accordingly, Lifetime will snap up the show, with a new season airing in November. “Weinstein officials said that NBC had filed the suit after ‘declining to compete for the right to have Project Runway‘ and the legal action was simply, NBC trying to ‘disrupt the series moving to Lifetime.’” [NYP, Variety]