You may have noticed we are doing something different here on our web site. Suddenly, relatively short articles are appearing each day, instead of longer ones every 2-6 weeks. After an appalling span of over two months without writing, we concocted a punishment to fit our crime. We are writing each day, mini-essays if you will. I’m embracing this shorter form to see what it teaches me, possibly to discard some things, and optimally to steer towards rejuvenation as a writer.
Today, after a mere three days, those good intentions may vanish. For last night was the final episode of Season 4 of Bravo’s Project Runway. I will have volumes to say, and fear I won’t be able to keep it short. I am excited enough that my thoughts dart everywhere this morning. Understand that this show is dear to my heart – and understand how very, very odd that is. I stray no closer to anything resembling fashion than a Jones New York suit, blouse or knit top underneath, scarf or necklace, and something from my watch collection. Earrings, occasionally, and nice ones at that – but clippies folks, clippies. And my shoes? Please. Ask Jessica. I would almost certainly make a gay designer weep.
First off, I was delighted with this season’s outcome. The winner, Christian Siriano, was 21 throughout the season (he’s just turned 22). A bird-like thatch of styled, rockin’ black hair rises above his spectacles, and his jaw line is deeply angular. His affect, exaggerated. Physically, he is tiny. So slim. His energy is also avian – constant, keen, aware, assessing. He aggravated his peers by being “constantly in everyone’s business in the workroom,” as designer Jillian Lewis pointed out. But he’s fast with his own work. He considers deeply, but he’s rapid – at times, amazingly so. Challenges involving “extra” looks are common on Runway and tend to drive the frazzled designers into rages or tears. They also upset Christian at the outset. But when the clock started on the “additional look” in the couture challenge, for one example, he (and challenge partner Chris March) turned it out like no one else.
Late in the season, in the stock episode wherein Tim Gunn, resident den mother and design bodhisattva of Runway, goes to see the finalists at home to assess each collection’s progress, we saw that tiny Christian has a tiny apartment. I think he had a Murphy bed, or some other sort of pull-down bed, that descended, as he proudly showed Tim, to take up most of the available walking space in his work area. He said at the time, “I have to be totally organized. If I wasn’t, I’d go completely mad in this space.”
After the win, he says he’s spending some of his $100,000 to “take back my apartment.” He currently has a roommate, who will be vacating the premises. And when she does, he says, he is going to buy a really expensive bed and have himself a real, individuated bedroom.
During a quick read of the Bravo TV web site this morning, I
also gleaned that he’d sold a garment at a charity auction recently for $50,000. He donated the proceeds to his high school,
the
His two competitors in the finals were Rami Kashou and Ms. Lewis. The great thing about creative work is that everyone engaged in it – in any medium – goes about it differently. Some are quietly competent, almost grim. Others are frantically neurotic, constantly questioning themselves, seeking reassurance from anyone nearby, only to slip back into dire paroxysms of self-doubt immediately upon receiving it. Others just do the work, remaining more or less calm, evaluating the creation as they go and adjusting as necessary.
The three finalists respected one another this season and, although Christian occasionally had to admit to being “sassy,” and he did love to poke around in the workroom and comment on others’ efforts, there was a great fondness between the designers. The bond grew deeper as the finale at Bryant Park neared. It’s hard to explain why, but that gave me real comfort. I don’t go in for reality shows where people are constantly roughing each other up and tension escalates as they approach their ultimate goal. It’s demeaning to them and the whole process. It’s even worse in the creative or culinary arts. I guess I don’t care if someone is an ass on an isolated island, lumbering about dining on the native arthropods and deciding who to get rid of after the next bizarre physical challenge. But when fashion or food is involved, there is a deeper call to the human heart, and that call must be honored. One of the great triumphs of Runway is that it pulls in people who want the excitement of competition as well as those who revere fashion for all that it is, thus accomplishing the considerable feat of satisfying two very different fan groups at once.
There’s much more to be said. But I’ve put down too many words already for this new venture. The judges are amazing – Heidi Klum, Michael Kors, Nina Garcia – they too serve to take the show far beyond any reality show (one exception, Top Chef, which revs up for another season next week). Whatever happens on Runway – personalities clashing or decompensating, occasional disastrous garments, or even a designer nearly throwing in the towel on a challenge – it’s somehow all about the love. Love of style, innovation, and composition. And this season, love of each other as human beings and fellow designers. It was the best season yet. And I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.