Lifetime Television might have something with it’s new “behind the seams” look at the models of Heidi Klum’s Project Runway. And I have to say—these models have restored my faith in the fashion industry.
Since 2003, America’s Next Top Model has held viewers in thrall with its disturbing (yet absolutely fascinating) ability to generate obnoxious reality TV, year after year after year. Billed as a competition to spot supermodel potential, the show has only gotten more—as Tyra might say—“fierce” as the seasons roll on. And by that I mean “fierce” as we would apply the word to a half-starved lioness running down a poor, hapless gazelle across the plains of the Serengeti and then eviscerating its twitching prey in front of a morbid camera crew filming from the relative safety of their jeep, which they’ll use to take the footage to the nearest headquarters of National Geographic in order to produce a new documentary to run late at night on some nature channel for cringing insomniac audiences all across America.
Those are the women of America’s Next Top Model.
All right, so I’m exaggerating—but only slightly. Those girls are vicious. Consider a case from Season 5, in which a box of stolen granola bars spiraled into a veritable blood feud between two contestants. Clearly, these models need to spend some time sorting out their priorities.
And that’s why—with the specter of Tyra Banks saying “You wanna be on top?” in the back of my mind—I was so pleasantly surprised by the new series Models of the Runway, a 30-minute addition to Thursday’s Project Runway, in which the events of the episode are viewed through the lens of the lovely models we have in previous seasons only seen briefly (namely during the fittings in which Tim Gunn famously flits around shouting “Make it work!”).
Spellbound by the eccentric designers and their challenges, we viewers tend to forget that Project Runway represents two competitions—one for the designers, and a tangential one for their models, whose fates are, to a certain extent, closely tied.
The element of model/designer loyalty gives Models of the Runway a character quite impossible in a program like America’s Next Top Model. Of course the models in Klum’s show are in it for themselves—they have a shot at a spread in Marie Claire magazine and $25,000 worth of L’oreal Paris Skin Genesis products, after all—but because their individual fates rest in the hands of generally well-meaning designers (rather than sadistic judges), there’s less of that cutthroat atmosphere.
In fact, most of the girls in Models of the Runway seem—dare I say it?—normal.
Articulate, grounded, and genuinely kind, Project Runway’s models appear far less prone to the histrionics, water-works, or scheming of America’s supposed “next top models.” And interestingly, the lack of screaming, crying, and scheming doesn’t destroy the entertainment value of the show.
Project Runway viewers hear every week what Heidi Klum and her panel of judges have to say about the competing designers’ work, but it’s particularly interesting to see how the models react—it’s their chances hinging on these often-bizarre outfits getting turned out every 24 hours. And with a collection of design aspirants serving as the panel of judges determing which model is “eliminated,” the suspense can be more palpable than in even ANTM. The designers, after all, aren’t necessarily basing their decisions on talent or performance—the two central factors seem to be personal loyalty and personal design aesthetic, a rather capricious foundation for life-changing decisions. Take episode 8, when the models spend some time speculating who might be eliminated. Figuring that the deciding vote will probably fall to Logan Nietzel, one of the models asserts that he’ll definitely pick her co-competitor Kojii, because she has the look he wants—in other words, “Kojii’s is so pale!”
In any case, it’s up to the designer. And with the control out of their hands, for the most part, the models of Runway have far less tumultuous interpersonal relationships. One of the models, Celine, comments that: “To make so many girlfriends, especially when they’re all models, is kind of cool. To live with them, laugh with them, I think is really an experience that I don’t think I’ll ever have again. It’s really innocent, and really nice.”
“Innocent” and “nice” are not two words that have ever been applied to America’s Next Top Model. But in this case, in this show, I believe them.
Models of the Runway is, all in all, a wonderful antidote to the lurid melodrama of its predecessor, and well worth taking the extra half hour after Project Runway for. In the words of a designer after a particularly difficult elimination decision—“We have enough drama in our lives.”
Auf Wiedersehen, Tyra.
Related posts:
Isabela Morales is a History and American Studies student who rabidly reviews indie science fiction at http://thescattering.wordpress.com/