Tom McMahon has found The Project Runway Tim Gunn Bobblehead.
I think everyone will be getting one of these for Christmas.
For those of you who are not fans of the show yet, Project Runway airs every Wednesday night on Bravo TV at 9:00pm central. The program is a competition among fashion designers to see who can survive each week’s challenge to with a Saturn roadster convertible and a paid internship at some design studio in New York. Even the losers on this program have had some success in the fashion industry after leaving the show (some arguably more than the winners), so it’s actually a very high stakes competition. In addition, the contest is mostly about the talent and the creativity of the contestants, and it’s less about the personalities. But this is a show about fashion, so the personality conflicts are definitely evident.
Each week the remaining designers are given a challenge and a set time to complete it. Then the designs are marched down the runway and judged by a panel of three fashion experts (sometimes one of the panelists is a celebrity). A winner is picked for the weekly prize. A loser gets picked and is told by Heidi Klum “auf widersehen.”
Tim Gunn is the head of the Parson’s school of design, and he acts as an adviser to the designers as well as our reporter in the workroom. He honestly tries to save the designers from screwing up. Whether or not they listen to him is a different question. But he really is the star of the show, and is just the perfect guide to the workroom.
The best part about Project Runway is that after you’ve watched it for a few weeks, you begin to pick up on what the judges are seeing and what they mean by their criticisms. You also get a close look at the creative process (which is always fascinating to me). Even with no eye for fashion, you can learn what goes into the decision making of the designer, what kind of editing they have to do, what kind of fabric choices, etc.
