#what do you mean Tim Roth's american accent is bad?

[mickeyluggage]

One thing about me is I'll never be able to tell when an actor is faking an accent on screen unless I already know where they're from. I am absolutely incapable of differentiating a native american accent from a poorly endorsed one by a british actor. I do not understand the line between genuine british speaking and the parody of it.

Do not get me started on australian or scottish

[ginnyzero]

Project Runway Hanging by a Thread

(Originally Posted in 2018)

The future of Project Runway is in doubt. Back in November, after the Weinstein scandal broke, A&E rescinded their contracts for Project Runway, including a separate contract for a movie, and sued the company for breach of contract alleging that Harvey used the show as a way to gain access to young models (horrifying if true.) Because of the Weinstein Group going into bankruptcy and the lawsuit, the rights and licenses of Project Runway and all the spin offs are for sale. (A&E and another company both want to buy them.)

I have little doubt that Project Runway will go on in some form in the future. It’s a well-liked program with several major celebrities attached. It has been imitated but no other fashion show (24 Hour Catwalk, Launch My Line, The Fashion Show, Fashion Star and so on) has been able to duplicate its success.

There are two names that we can thank for Project Runway’s success, Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum.

I’ve been working on my latest fashion project (an expanded collection of my Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad wolf club dresses) and the last day or two have had Bravo’s answer to Project Runway moving to Lifetime back in 2008 on YouTube in the background, The Fashion Show. And it wasn’t pretty.

From my list you can see that I’ve watched a lot of fashion competitions. All of them have been cancelled but Project Runway. Not that they didn’t have some good ideas to bring to the table competition wise. Most of them do not have the right mix of personalities of the hosts and mentors and judges to create a sympathetic viewing audience. Even the Project Runway spin offs have a difficult time coming up with a good combination of judges and a sympathetic mentor. Alyssa tries, she really does, but she’s still not as successful as Heidi.

Tim Gunn’s success hinges on his beautiful attitude that he wants everyone on the show to succeed. No other mentor I’ve seen can manage his style of honest sympathy and gentle loving critique. Tim Gunn cares for every contestant and when they aren’t doing their best, it upsets him because he wants them to push and grow and become better designers (and better people.) He also gives honest and helpful feedback that people even in their living rooms can understand because it’s not laced with industry terms or popular culture references. And he can do this because he listens. He tells the designers to talk to him and then he stands there and listens. (And his pose while he does this is very important because he’s thinking as he is listening.) Then, once the designer is finished, he gives feedback.

It was very telling to me that in the first season of the Fashion Show when Isaac Mizrahi and Kelly Rowland were being both mentor and judge (don’t do this darlings) that they listened and then didn’t give critique. Instead, they’d go and talk about it to each other out of ear shot of the designers and then wonder why the designs were so wrong and then have to say the same things again to the designer that they’d said to each other on the stage. It was like watching school girl’s gossip instead of watching a show about developing talent!

Many of the mentors that I see brought onto these fashion shows are brought on because of their connection to some part of the shows sponsorship or producing team with little thought or care about how these mentors come across on the screen. Production spends so much time screening the candidates for the show and then don’t take the time it feels to screen test or even test run the mentor they’ve selected. It’s the mentor that’s going to be there season after season and the candidates are always changing, so more care should be taken in selecting mentors and not less!

The host is just as important as the mentor. Heidi Klum can be controversial because she supposedly plays favorites, she shows too much leg and some still aren’t sure why she has any authority on fashion. But Heidi Klum manages to pull off that cheerful girl next door type of vibe. You could imagine living next door to Heidi Klum. She’s friendly. She fits in with her bubbly smile and her blonde hair and tanned skin. She’s that mother from your PTA. Americans like this. At the same time, being that she’s originally from Germany, she has a hint of “otherness” about her that also appeals to people. The expert is a stranger with a briefcase syndrome or in this case a German accent. She’s also very natural in front of a camera and can make canned phrases sound natural.

This is much harder than it sounds. Alyssa still has trouble with the cadence of Project Runway signature catch phrases. In the second season of the Fashion Show, they changed out Kelly Rowland for Iman and the poor woman sounded like a robot. (They also changed all the catch phrases and that didn’t help. You have to maintain brand.) Being in front of the camera for so many hours a day when things aren’t scripted for you is difficult!

So, soon there will be new producers and owners running this big franchise of Project Runway that (let’s be honest) is primarily geared to American audiences because it features American fashion. I know what I want to see.

More Tim Gunn and not less.

Forget drama in the sewing room. Back to basics, design and critique and mentoring sessions with Tim. And if they can’t get Tim to come in and mentor All Stars or Junior, then he honestly needs to be the major voice in choosing the next mentors that reflect his style that is the Project Runway brand. No more cold dead fish mentors. Ugh. I think the closest was Henry Roth of the first season of Australia. He had energy.

Speaking of drama in the sewing room. More talent. Less personality casting. I’m talking casting people like the twins from the latest season. (Serial reality show celebs should be a major no no.) Or people that only work in recycled materials. Or people that are so abrasive and egotistical that all they do is cause drama because no one wants to work with them and they don’t want to work with anyone else. Project Runway has never had a problem about diversity, thank goodness. They have a problem with bringing in designers of aesthetics that are so niche and so out of the box that they can’t connect to the judges or to the American audience.

Oh, and enough menswear designers already. Please, do a Project Runway: Menswear if you want to showcase menswear designers.

Models of all shapes and sizes. The last regular season of Project Runway did this as an experiment and it was a raging success. So much so, that the season of All Stars that aired right after it got criticized for not doing the same thing (even though the two shows had been taped at the same time. People forget this.) It’s time for more diversity and better body images presented on the runway and in fashion magazines and Project Runway has a national audience to push this change into the magazines. This is a huge step forward and may save us the embarrassing and cringe worthy episodes where designers don’t know what breasts are and say things like “Models are supposed to be walking hangars without curves to mess up the line of the clothes.”

Look, a model going down the runway is a standard size six. I’m a standard size four (six in outerwear) and that means I wear smalls, extra-smalls and size zeros in vanity sizing. This doesn’t expressly make me happy! Vanity sizing hurts people of all sizes, okay. If we can push that thin is best off the runway, maybe we can push the vanity sizing out of our stores and when I go in a size four will be a size four will be a size four everywhere.

More time.

The designers need more time to sew their designs. Period. Project Runway is becoming instead Project Pretty Dress. Things such as pants, jackets and shirts take time to drape, draft and sew properly. So instead of good two or three piece outfits, we get evening gown followed by a cocktail dress followed by an evening gown ad nausea.

Example, last season of All Stars (newbies versus vets) they did a distressing challenge. Meaning, they were to make new fabrics look like they’ve been through hell. And it was paired with the theme of Post-Apocalyptic Fashion, meaning Mad Max and waste landers. Of course, they were only given one day in the workroom to accomplish their feats of both making it look like it was after the end of the world and to make the fabric look torn, burnt or shredding or worn in some manner. (They were also to come up with a story. I laughed hysterically over some of them, a queen, really?)

It was a parade of evening gowns.

Look, the last thing you’re going to wear after the world has been devastated by a climate changing event is an evening gown. Now, some of these stories are “She was escaping from said climate changing event,” but still! (That’s not exactly what the brief called for either by the way. Post. Post. After! Not during!) Loot some trousers and find some running shoes! Protect your skin!

It made you wonder if they’d ever seen Mad Max. I wasn’t expecting leather and studs because that has been done to death. I was hoping for some thought about protecting my soft squishy parts and being pretty! (I like my soft squishy parts and I like being pretty.)

More time is especially important now that the judges are getting up close and personal with the designs. These designers are now being critiqued on their sewing skills as well as their design skills. If they’re going to do this, then give the designers the respect they deserve and give them the time to beautifully finish their garments. Those “It feels so unresolved” comments might go down too, if they have more time to actually finish their designs.

Less Sponsors.

The dreaded sponsors challenge. Does anyone remember the season where they were sponsored by a water company and ended up going “glamping?” Or the one where there was the burger company and they had to remake some really bad suits and got free endless fries? (That might have been the same season.) Look, doing Heidi’s stuff is bad enough especially since she keeps changing what she’s doing. But these companies that have nothing to do with fashion, err, Candy Crush, coming in and throwing money to get their name in an episode is ridiculous. I am even leery about the movie challenges. Just stop.

You know the great challenges are the challenges set by people like Isaac Mizrahi. I loved his color challenge because he was so careful in his selections. (He’s come a long way since The Fashion Show.) I love Nina Garcia challenges. Then there are the basic challenges, the unconventional challenge, the avante garde challenge, the accessory wall sponsor challenge, and the hair and makeup challenge. (Though better ones for those need to be found.)

Things like the black light challenges or the rainway that made the designers think about fashion in a new way. Those were the great challenges. I even liked the wind runway. Otherwise, get back to the basics of fashion. The JCPenny challenge with the menswear fabrics was great because it forced them to think upper moderate budget rather than ready to wear. Give them fashion categories, give them budget categories more than just a budget at Mood. Make them prove they know about fashion more than “I want to make clothes.” Yeah, can you make clothes for the everyday woman in their price budget or just pretty red carpet dresses? (Most can only do the latter.)

More fashion industry judges.

Enough celebrities. Please. Bring in buyers from Macy’s and Bergdorf’s and Saks, bring in magazine editors. I don’t know and I don’t care what a certain actress thinks about fashion because they’re most likely paying lots of money to be styled by someone who does know about fashion. So, I’d rather hear from their stylist. This is what I liked about Fashion Star. In Fashion Star, the designers presented to buyers and the buyers would right then bid on if they’d actually buy that item to stock in their store or not. Terron Schaefer of Saks was such a lovely person, bring in him. Bring in big name designers. Bring back Michael Kors for at least one episode a season by hook or by crook. Give the American Public people who are authorities in fashion.

(And keep Kelly Osbourne in the Juniors judges because I love how supportive she is to these young people. She is the exception to this rule.)

More team challenges.

Okay, the designers hate these. I think they’re good for them. That’s one thing about the Fashion Show that I really appreciated was the fact that the designers were at first separated into two fashion houses to create collections instead of individual pieces. This is how the real fashion industry works and nothing creates drama faster than a team challenge. (This is like makeover episodes on Top Model. The designers know they are coming but still cry all the same!)

If they do team challenges, they can create runway shows and do mood boards and have to present these to Tim to get approval and really show their vision as a team rather than the travesty that a lot of team challenges end up being. Another thing I liked about the Fashion Show is that they had to make and present mood boards. Mood boards are incredibly important in giving direction!

More Mood and Mini-Mood.

Because of sponsorships increasing in the show, the time spent at Mood has been less and less. And I understand that Mood isn’t expressly happy with the show either, because the entire store has to be shut down in order for the show to tape there and this loses them revenue in buyers. At this point, the viewing audience is used to and wants to see the designers using ‘real fabrics’ in order to make their garments. If there are less sponsors for “unconventional” challenges, then there would be more challenges where the designers need to go to Mood.

But Mood has provided Mini-Mood before. Mini-Mood was a room in the set where Mood put a lot of fabric for the designers to choose from. This way the designers were a) limited in choice but b) still got to use ‘real fabrics.’ And let’s face it, the designers need to be limited because there was almost an entire season of neoprene one year. (No neoprene in Mini Mood. No. Bad. Smack hands.) Or, if it is easier on Mood, then maybe provide Project Runway with access to their warehouse instead?

Or, they can do like the JCPenny challenge and have the sponsors provide the fabrics. This will once again ground the show in reality because there are processes where the designers choose from a selection of fabrics from a manufacturer to use for their products. It may also cut down on the “you only work in chiffon, choose something else” or just the random bad fabric choices or people being chewed out in Mood for picking fur and not realizing the show is “cruelty free.” (But we still use leather. Sure.)

Lastly, less scripting of the entire season.

People know the reality show tricks by now and they aren’t buying them anymore. If they show a designer calling their family or opening up, yep, that designer is about to go. Producers keep on bad designers for their dramatic personalities has to stop. Designers that repeat and repeat the same design need to be pulled aside and be told “Change or go home” much sooner than they are. Touting a win for “plus size” fashion feels hollow when the line didn’t have the creativity of the others (and next to no plus sized woman would wear it. The models looked uncomfortable.)

Authenticity is important. Project Runway can be good without having accusations of cheating or big fights in the workroom or bringing in styles that don’t mesh with the judges. Talent. Design. Good attitudes. Take a cue from Project Runway Junior and keep those positive vibes going even in the adult versions of the show.

And more group hugs from Tim. Because everyone needs hugs.