I cannot begin to express how excited I am about the new season of Project Runway. It is the only show that I am truly religious about, to the point that I abjectly refuse to make any plans on Wednesday nights that could potentially cut into my viewing time. I do not miss it. Ever. Even though Bravo reruns it about 17 times the following day, it just isn't the same. I can't deal with the knowledge that there are other people in the universe who know which designer got kicked off, and I would surely have to avoid opening my internet browser entirely while at work lest I accidentally stumble upon a mention of the outcome.
Tonight will be the third episode of the season, and I already am forming opinions about who I like and who I don't. I have history of rooting for the pretentious, insufferable, cooler-than-thou rock-and-roll designer. The only exception was season one, when I backed Austin Scarlett, favored for a wide variety of reasons including his name, his hair (which consistently looked like it had been hot-rollered), his soft spot for hot pink lip gloss, the fact that he wore things like ascots and sassily knotted silk scarves, and his barely modernized Marie Antoinette aesthetic. Not wearable in the least, but pretty. Season two, I loved Santino Rice. He was total bitch, but oh my God his clothes. Like buttah. The fact that he lost to Chloe Dao is a total travesty. Then, last season, I was all about asshole extraordinaire Jeffrey Sebelia, who, despite an unfortunate neck tattoo and allegations of cheating, won.
It's a little early to lock in a favorite contestant, but so far, I'm leaning heavily toward Christian Siriano. His sculpted, asymmetric hair is a little emo for my tastes, and I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that we wear very similar glasses, but he had me at "I sleep on the floor at home. I'd rather buy clothes than a bed." Because I totally slept on a futon for almost two years until my parents broke down and bought me a real bed. Mattresses are mad expensive, yo...you can buy some serious apparel with that kind of bank! Everyone keeps describing his aesthetic as being shades of Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood...or, I suppose, an emo version thereof, because he certainly isn't very punk rock. (Of course, I'd argue that in this day and age, the only way to really be punk rock would be to dress in Polo Ralph Lauren and register as a Republican. I mean, really, what are we rebelling against in 2007? Good taste? Judging from some of the hipster getups I've seen recently, yes, we are. When I wear vintage, I look like trouble. When some people wear vintage, they look like the Dollar-a-Pound bins at the Garment District threw up on them. Your clothes are not ironic; it's just ironic that you think you look ironic when you actually look like a cross between the Urban Outfitters bargain basement and Mugatu's Derelicte campaign. I'm such a bitch. I cultivate it and will happily announce it to the world. You know you dig it. And man, do I love to digress or what?)
Anyway. What I was about to say when I was rudely interrupted by my rambling internal monologue - you have no idea what it's like to live with that thing, by the by - is that I see shades of Marc Jacobs. For reals. And we all know how I feel about Marc Jacobs. (Who, incidentally, has apparently just tapped Victoria Beckham to star in his new ad campaign, which is sort of weird and incongruous but makes me indescribably happy because I personally am forever torn between the desire to look effortlessly cool a la Marc or to be tarted up and painted-by-number a la Posh Spice, and I feel like this could potentially facilitate a joyous marriage of or at least some sort of harmony or symbiosis between my oil and water-esque fashion urges. Also, it bears mentioning that my fantasy alter-ego has VB's coif, which was perhaps best described by the Fug Girls as her asymmetrical salute to Simon LeBon, even if in real actual life I will probably never have the ovaries to get it - oh my God, shut UP stupid stream of consciousness!) ANYWAY. Everyone else is making simple little dresses while he is turning out beautiful, rigorously constructed jackets and multiple pieces. Bringing his A game.
But...that brings me to the reason that last week's episode made me angry. It was a competition to make a two-piece outfit that would potentially be sold in Sarah Jessica Parker's Bitten line for Steve and Barry's, which meant two things: it had to look good on a wide variety of body types, all the way from a size two up to a - gasp! - 16, and it had to retail for under $40, which meant that the materials budget was $15. The outfit that won was a tent dress topped with a vest. Now, let's talk about tent dresses and who they look good on. Picture, if you will, a Venn diagram. Circle A is women who are taller than 5'9". Circle B is women who have body mass indices of less than 20. The overlapping area encompasses all of the women in the universe who look good in tent dresses. I happen to be one, and I think that I speak for all of us when I say that we are over looking like we're trying to hide a pregnancy. It was a good silhouette for us for about five minutes - in the summer, when it's hot out, a babydoll is airy and comfortable. But there is just no need to perpetuate this madness. My body is slammin'; I don't want to hide it beneath billows of fabric...and if my body wasn't slammin', I would just look like a sack of potatoes. This is the exact problem I have with Erin Fetherston's new collection at Target. I am a grown woman with a waist and hips and I have no desire to look like the fruit of a torrid affair between a little French schoolgirl and a cream puff. God!
The winner was so obviously not chosen based on the design that was most flattering to the widest cross-section of women, it was based on the design that required the least in the way of construction and could be sewn most easily and efficiently by nine year olds in Ecuador. And the open vest over it? No. I'm fond of vests. I'm wearing a tuxedo vest at the very moment (over a tee shirt, thereby making a hypocrite out of myself after I went on yesterday about Miss Tina Fashion's simultaneously long-sleeved and halter-topped dress, but really, how else do you wear a tuxedo vest except maybe with a tuxedo or to holiday parties all by its lonesome - SHUT UP RENEE - like a seriously boss halter top made out of menswear) but I would not wear it open over an unattractively voluminous abomination of a dress. Me-ow.
THEN. Christian was in the bottom two! Granted, his turtleneck dress was nothing revolutionary and made even the model look a little chub, but what the judges took issue with was his zip-front jacket, which they said was much too 80s and very Addicted to Love. I will admit that it did have a certain air of Hungry Like the Wolf-era Duran Duran about it, but in the best possible way, all graphic and structured and delightful. They also said it would not flatter most women. Which, okay, true. But neither does a dress containing the same approximate yardage of material as a king size bedspread! My personal belief is that they simply realized that Ecuadorian nine year olds simply could not adhere to such a standard of tailoring. But that jacket, with a black wifebeater, jeans, and my black BCBG stilettos, the ones with the cutouts on the top of the foot? The stuff of fantasies. Well, my fantasies anyway.
Also, I'd like to point out that even though the challenge was to design for the hoi polloi, what designer aspires to create boring, mass-market clothing? I don't see how you can fault a guy like Christian for wanting to make something stunning rather than something bland even if it allegedly won't have such broad appeal. Which I refuse to believe anyway considering the fact that some of the GO! collections at Target have been fairly directional and fashion-y and they've certainly sold. Maybe Michael Kors was just jealous that other people are able to create interesting garments at low price points while his diffusion line is total late-in-life soccer mom and rigged the voting accordingly. (Oh, and while we're on the subject of the King of Jet-Set American Fashion, watch him on one episode and tell me that Will Farrell did not base Mugatu on him. The voice, the aggressively fake tan...everything but the hair. Try to envision him yelling "Oh,I'm sorry, did my pin get in the way of your ass? Do me a favor and lose five pounds immediately or get out of my building like now!" at a post-baby Heidi Klum. You know I'm right.)
Anyway, here's hoping that tonight's episode will give me more to rant about. Because I love me some ranting, that's for sure...
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