PROJECT RUNWAY…

This last couple of weeks, I’ve been watching previous episodes of Project Runway. Unless you are one of the last remaining cavemen, I am sure you have seen or at least heard of this show. The show is pretty engaging as it has the elements of a real life drama--- tensions, conflicts and of course, flair and fashion. One talks of urban jungle and I must tell you, this show has some of the fine specimens of what the word means. Survival is the name of the game and contestants in the guise of respectable “designers and style makers” battle it out for a chance of a lifetime to have their collections sashayed in the runway.

As predictable as it can be, there are losers, winners, judges and the whole circus team. Oh don’t get me wrong, I do like the show very much, I really wouldn’t mind being cooped up in bed, espresso on one hand, whiling my time away watching it. If I have to define what my afternoon doing nothing means…this is it what it is…

To me, at the end of each show, Heidi Klum is the one that ends up as the sure winner. I am simply enamored by her. If you’d look as great as her after 4 kids, it undoubtedly would tantamount to winning the lottery 4 times over. Seeing her do the catwalk in vertiginous killer heels to deliver the line “Are you in or out?” is quite mesmerizing. How she actually gracefully manage such height with or without her bump, her pregnancy apparently hasn’t hindered her from hosting the show, is beyond me. I’ve been pregnant twice and 5 months into it and flat soft shoes where my shoe du jour!

One thing I cannot quite help but notice about the show though is just how vaguely familiar each of the designs were. Sure there may be some new elements, the designers’ personal take on how a certain dress is cut, nipped and tucked but there are familiar elements in it too. Pleating for instance can be done in various ways, big, small, asymmetric, diagonal, you name it, but at the end of it all, the pleating looks, well, just like what its suppose to look like---a pleat!

Certain form that flatters in 1960’s continues to be relevant in our present time if combined with the right styling, attitude and accessories. Even hippie pants, baggy trousers and shoulder pads had been coming in and out of the fashion scene. No matter which way fashion forecasters put it, there is some cyclical sense in the way the designs and cuts are churned out.

Didn’t people used to call short mid calf pants as pedals (short for pedal pushers) way back in the 50’s? And then fast forward to the present time, it now got a sassier name—Capri pants. Then I also just learned recently that these also go by the name Calypso or Pirates pants. Perhaps to avoid confusion, some fashion authorities did try to give a definitive distinction for these terminologies, but well, it does prove the point I am trying to drive at here, right? … No matter how much hawking and peddling and how very much abused the line “ This season’s all new must haves” is used, you can be sure that one design still is a bit of a reincarnation from the past albeit, tweaked and freshly styled.

Having said that, the one other thing I like of the show, aside from just totally wasting an uneventful afternoon in front of the TV or laptop whichever is convenient for me at the time, is the sense that if I don’t get the latest season’s must have, I really didn’t actually miss much.

That, and the feeling that I can actually still recycle past years’ apparels that now inhabit my closet, the ones I used to call “full of nothing to wear” and being able to wear it over and over again without looking like a total alien. On one note though, I still consider it alien if I see anyone still wearing full bell-bottom pants. You know, the ones people used to joke that wearing bell-bottom pants and crossing a river is a big no-no as the pants would surely dry out the river. Fortunately, this particular design had gone through a bit of make over, over the years too. In fact, this is now reborn to a new name –bootleg pants. One of the most flattering pant cut I have.

It does feel good and liberating having this realization specially that I don’t really have that much budget for this season’s must haves. Well for those who do have the budget to splurge then, that’s really good for you! And for those who don’t have, well, we can all just point a finger to Project Runway just like I did; we all cope in some ways hahaha! Have fun, fashion is not suppose to be taken seriously!