Project Runway

As I’ve probably said before, I really don’t care about so-called high fashion (and I have a closet full of jeans, t-shirts, caps, sneakers, and well-worn boots to prove it) but, that said, I love Project Runway :-) And after a year’s absence…a year during which Bravo tried to clone Runway with wan pretenders like Shear Genius and Top Design…it’s back!

Mrs. Seal is back in all of her Teutonic fabulousness, judges Nina Garcia and Michael Kors are back with their supercilious snarkiness, and, best of all, the ever-unflappable, ever-dapper Tim Gunn is back as the mentor to this year’s crop of designers.

The designers this year all seem to be more experienced as a group than previous groups of contestants…many of them have already put out collections and/or have their clothes worn by celebrities…and that seems to me to bode to a more competitive…and cutthroat…competition. Cool.

The show hit the ground running this year…eschewing showing the preliminary judging in favor of just introducing the finalists and throwing them into the business of creating fashion right away. Most of the designers rose to the challenge of designing and creating an outfit that represented their fashion outlook, a few didn’t, and, as Heidi Klum says on every show, one was “out”.

Too early to say who is going to breakout either as the one to beat or the one the other designers want to beat up (first round winner Rami said that he had set the bar for the competition and I can’t disagree with him…and young Christian, with his pretentiously asymmetrical hairdo, affects being full of his own greatness but he seems too non-threatening to really pull it off) but the gloves usually don’t come off during the first week of the show.

Here’s looking forward to a scintillating season of Project Runway. Make it work, people, make it work.