uh oh i rewatched project runway season 1 and now you have to hear about it

or you have to not read this letter. your choice.

so first just a reminder that if you donate to trans kids i will tell you a book to read! clearly i need more people to do this because i have reduced myself, in this moment of increasing trash, to rewatching project runway from the beginning.

now that i have finished season 1 i have some THOUGHTS. lots of them. abandon hope all ye who enter here bc this is LONG and i will never know that you closed your email now if you don’t want to hear!

i promise i won’t do this for every season, but there’s something weirdly pure about project runway season 1 because it’s such early reality tv that the formula—not just for this show, but for shows in general—isn’t really firm yet, which leads to some wild parts.

i’ll begin with some facts:

• this show was filmed in 2004. this is 21 exceptionally long years ago.

• the regular cast was set from episode 1: heidi klum, tim gunn, nina garcia, and michael kors. this surprised me!

• you can watch it, along with every other season, on peacock (thanks claire!). it first showed on bravo before moving to lifetime for a while.

• there were 12 designers, some of whom i would have sworn i had never seen in my life, because a lot has happened for me since age 24 so i had to block a lot of them out for my own good.

well. that got a little opinion-based at the end, so i guess it’s time for my Takes.

first off, HOW DID THEY FIND SO MANY STRAIGHT MEN DOING FASHION DESIGN??? look, i was a gay person in 2004. i know there were more of us than just jay mccarroll and austin scarlett. television was so specific. they must have worked hard to find all of those heteros. kevin! robert! mario? daniel! unreal.

second, production values were LOW. i don’t think they had actual television cameras in 2004, and they CLEARLY didn’t have hair people for the cast—even nina and heidi. there’s something weirdly refreshing but it felt like it was filmed on camcorders from their parents basements and put together in iMovie. just, so deeply low tech. and they made everyone sit in director’s chairs like they were kristy from the baby-sitter’s club! shocking.

third, fashion in 2004 was a true nightmare. rather than explaining, i will just show you the dress that won the grammy awards challenge and was described as “so grammys.”

fourth, anti-feminist culture was in a bad place. admittedly, we are in quite a bad place now. but a contestant called someone a feminazi. there was a challenge where a bunch of men, some of them upwards of 50 years old, were ogling teenage girls, many of whom were underage. a contestant was mocked—and i think we were meant to agree?—for not wearing lipstick while being judged. robert was clearly just like a bro-y lech and everyone was like “oh haha robert he is so charming.” also they kept calling the only two gays “flamboyant” when their gayness was REAL different from each other.

fifth, they didn’t have like… rules. people just went out. contestants decided they only needed 3 hours to make their outfit then left. models came and went willy-nilly. someone talked to the press at GREAT length afterwards about shit they should absolutely not have said and was just like, “it wasn’t a real interview it was just on the phone” and production seemed fine with it bc it gave reunion drama?

sixth, the show didn’t have structure in the ways we expect. they didn’t always have the same number of people on top and bottom, you couldn’t tell who was who, they didn’t talk to everyone, tim came in the workroom whenever he wanted, and all sorts of other things that made it clear that they were just doing a LOT of things based on vibes.

seventh, people didn’t know how to be good reality tv villains. wendy pepper (r.i.p.) was just so obvious. it’s like she saw richard on survivor and was like, “okay that won’t work for me but i love his energy how do i do something like that, but as a mom? oooooh i’ll pretend to be people’s friend and then use their weaknesses against them!” but then immediately fell apart and just started being terrible to people whenever given the chance, and then everyone started being so mean to her, and no one understands what the word “strategy” means (wendy called EVERYTHING a strategy, everyone else thought that there ARE no strategies even though jay CLEARLY HAD A STRATEGY of being less weird than he actually was to win!).

eighth, michael kors is awful and i am pretty sure he stays that way?

ninth, almost every single model is white and the “curvy” ones are a size 4. it’s a really stunning manifestation of a white supremacist beauty standard.

tenth, i literally cannot stop watching and am already like halfway through with season two. i watched a bunch of all-stars seasons first, then decided to pause those and go back to the originals. i can’t tell why this is so compelling to me—i think so much of what they make is ugly, so many of the people are shitty to each other, and so much of the formula is so predictable, and also i love it so much. do you have a show like this? IS IT PROJECT RUNWAY???

eleventh, and this is hitting me hard since i have now seen all three of daniel franco’s seasons, i sort of love him and think he is pure and good? also annoying and terrible at time management and too precious and i never want to have to meet him but i think he’s maybe a genuinely good person? very interested in your thoughts on this.

twelfth, people just were not consistently good designers, even given the fact that 2004 fashion was awful. like in later seasons, they would be given 10 hours and a brief to create a comfortably chic outfit out of brocade that cyndi lauper would wear. in this season, they were given all the cotton they wanted, 3 days, and a direction to create something related to the term “envy” and someone literally came up with this:

AND SHE DID NOT GET SENT HOME.

anyway clearly i have a LOT of thoughts. it was a much more chaotic and surprising experience than i might have guessed.

do you have project runway thoughts about any season that you want me to know before i get there?????

stay as safe as possible. also if you have made it this far and want an actual productive thought, i signed up for side with love’s action center emails—they apparently come once per week and give grounded action steps you can take against fascism. want to join me?

xo

eliz.