Runway a Project worth watching
As a certain wellknown German woman once said. ‘‘Fashion – one day you’re in, the next day you’re out.’’
That certainly seems the likely fate of the 14 Kiwi designers who have signed up for the first edition of Project Runway NZ (Mondays, 7.30pm, TVNZ2 and Ondemand) based on Monday’s first instalment.
Maybe it was the editing or fickle judging, but one almost felt sorry for them, as the feedback from World’s Benny Castles and FQ’S Sally-ann Mullin seemed to change, depending on whether they had the designer in front of them or not.
Christchurch’s Caitlin Crisp’s ‘‘fun and flirty’’ dress suddenly became a colour that virtually no woman would wear, and Nicole Schmidt’s ‘‘sexy and eyecatching’’ look was later described as ‘‘like a woodland fairy costume halfmade at my son’s birthday party’’.
To be fair, despite some of the apparent flip-flopping, the judges and their critiques were certainly the highlight of the opening episode.
Castles, in particular, established himself as the king of the one-liner, more Michael Kors-cutting than Zac Posen-sniping.
One outfit was ‘‘Flashdance-meets-bladerunner’’,
Benny Castles, above, established himself as the king of the one-liner.
Perhaps the most disturbing and probably unsurprising revelation was how many of them already knew each other. One had even interned for another. While the familiarity is not necessarily a bad thing, it did perhaps highlight a potential clear favourite for the show.
Kerry Ranginui has been a pattern maker for Karen Walker for many years and seemed to demonstrate early that he’s far more advanced than most of the others. If he dominates the competition, as he could well do, that could lessen interest very quickly.
And in a way, it was also a pity that the cards didn’t fall Nicole Schmidt’s way.
The tarot-reading, fulltime mum certainly displayed plenty of chutzpah (and a definite point-of-view) in her brief time on the show. However, she did make the fatal mistake of saying, ‘‘I don’t want to be that loser who goes first’’.
Her loss though is others’ gain and there are definitely other characters among her fellow competitors.
With her bright blue-lippy, Beth Hornsby-hunt certainly made a splash, Lenon Wakauwa brought the drama and tears, while Benjamin Alexander (the winner of the first challenge) has no qualms about being the potential villain.
‘‘It doesn’t matter if you are a pattern maker, at the end of the day, you can’t learn taste,’’ he said dismissively of rival Kerry.
Based on the Scandinavian soda-inspired opener, it’s also clear product-placement will be key to the show. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get too tortuous for the designers or audience.
A first episode will always have to do a lot of set up work, so while it wasn’t without its flaws and exposed seams, Project Runway NZ shows enough promise to have me interested in seeing more.