You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘design’ category.
I finally got around to watching the premiere of Project Runway, and what strikes me about the first episode of the new season (on a new network, no less) is how good this show has always been, not just at entertaining, but at saying something real about fashion-as-language.
It was a pretty easy challenge, actually. Designers had to make a red-carpet look for whichever awards show they wanted. Red carpet usually means gowns, which are often easier in the fitting than suits or jeans or separates. And there were no gimmicks, no making dresses out of plants or liquorice or whatever. I mean, if designing clothes is your thing, this is about the most welcoming challenge you could get, I think, especially in the first week, to just make something that looks good and is interesting in the very broad category of “evening wear.”
Unfortunately for her, Ari Fish’s response to this very straighforward silver platter of a challenge is an outfit she says will be a “bulbous, hexagonal, tessellation thing that catches the light.” All words that supposedly mean something, and if the final outfit had anything at all to do with any of those words and was still wearable on a red carpet, the judges might have thought it was crazy but at least conceptual or smart in some real way, but of course that wasn’t what happened. The look she created is that halter thing with the shorts that she said would go to the VMAs in 2080, and also possibly the Nobel Peace Prize. She got sent home, as she should have.
It’s not even the weirdness of the outfit that was bad. Weirdness is more acceptable in couture and the arts in general than most places, as long as it’s intelligent, and this is, after all, reality tv. The issue here, I think, is Ari’s unapologetic deference to whatever she decided she wanted to do, regardless of the need at hand. I mean, even Elise, one of the bywords of weird for this show back when she was spit-marking stuff, usually made clothes that were logical to the occasion. And Santino was flamboyant and kind of crazy, but he did get context. Like, that swan dress Bjork wore a decade ago made more sense than Ari’s. Also, silvery metallics? Have only been “futuristic” for the past 50 years or so.
That’s the thing about making “weird” or “incomprehensible” or “pseudo-intellectual” your whole schtick. It’s the functional equivalent of talking in gibberish to someone who genuinely wants to know who you are. It’s great that you are smart enough to make up your own language, go for it, sure, awesome, but unless you share some of those signifiers with the rest of us, it’s not a conversation.
I actually felt bad for Michael Kors, watching this episode. He’s sort of the ditz of the show, and he’s not couture at all, which I think makes him perfect for PR. He’s commercially successful, he makes reliably good stuff that people like and wear and want to buy, and will therefore be ignored or insulted by the designated bitches that are art critics, and I’m sure he knows that and I hope he doesn’t care. Because it kind of broke my heart a little when he said, “She’s one of those designers that you have to say to yourself, do I not get it? Maybe I’m not smart enough to get this!” Because I think he is smart enough, giggles and all; he’s certainly got no reason to have to prove himself to anyone, and it kind of sucks that this girl who is perhaps legitimately talented (from where I was sitting, those little silver shapes look reasonably well-sewn) but maybe also overly committed to the idea that she is a ”unique snowflake” and desparately misunderstood would even raise that doubt.
