It’s August. It must be time to resume my weird, shameful love affair with Project Runway.
I still can’t figure out why I love this show so much, but I do. It’s definitely not the bitchy cat fights, since those make me want to hide my head under a pillow in shared human shame. I think it’s the fashion, as strange as that sounds. Because I don’t understand fashion. I never have, and I think at this point I just never will.
The part I like most about the show is watching the designers make art, and talk about it, and feeling utterly mystified because I have no idea how any of it works. I’m one of those people who really just needs a personal retainer of to tell me what clothes I should and should not wear.
Justine Larbalestier recently wrote a blog post about writers and our obsession with process porn. Writers really like talking about how we write rather than necessarily what we’re writing (because that’s a secret). Honestly, I think some writers like to talk about it a little too much, which is why I make a conscious effort to minimize that kind of navel gazing.
Perhaps the reason I like Project Runway so much is that it’s a little slice of process porn for a different kind of art, watching the designers struggle to come up with something and work through it. That’s actually the part of it I enjoy watching the most. Not the runway stuff at the end, or them saying snippy things about each other in interviews, but them scurrying around the work room and building their projects up, tearing them down, and then rebuilding them in search of their idea.
I just wish I understood the art itself. But then I remember I’m both intensely lazy and unable to feel comfortable in any clothes that aren’t specifically intended to be copiously sweated in to and I slink quietly away.
I’m loving all the female designers this season so far, by the way. My favorites are Sonjia and Alicia. I hope they stay in for a long time! (And I wish I looked like Alicia so I could dress like her. Yes. I’m aware this means fundamentally I want to dress like an adorable lesbian. I fail to see the problem with that.)