Wrapping Up "Runway" Season 8

I've finally caught up with the most recent season of "Project Runway" that wrapped up last week. Now that all shouting has died down, I wanted to weigh in on one of the most dramatic seasons yet. I've written about "Project Runway" before, and emphasized that my interest in the show isn't really so much about the clothes as it is the chance to see artists at work. This season highlighted another aspect that I also find appealing: the struggle to judge creative work.

Early in the season I was worried that the competition was going to be overshadowed by the "Mean Girls" re-enactment being played out by several of the contestants, which pitted one designer with less than impressive technical skills, Michael Costello, against several of the more aggressive designers, particularly Ivy Higa and Gretchen Jones. Michael kept winning challenges week after week and was turned into a pariah because his rivals couldn't understand that the judges were after a good designer rather than a good tailor. This lead to no end of drama, which I generally despise. If I wanted to watch people being catty and machinating to screw over one another, I'd watch "Survivor."

However, as the season rolled on, the judges proved time and again that they were not after good television, but good design. I fully admit that I don't have the training or the eye to tell which contestants were better than others after a certain point in the game, so I generally found the eliminations unpredictable. However, I knew that if the producers wanted to keep the tension high, Ivy would not have been eliminated in the tenth week and a designer with a big personality like Casanova would have lasted longer than eight rounds. It feels like a stroke of luck that the two designers with the most emotionally charged personal stories, Michael Costello and Mondo Guerra, made it so close to the end.

I didn't manage to avoid the spoilers about the eventual winner of this round of "Project Runway," because of the storm of controversy that followed in its wake. For those of you who haven't heard the results yet, you may want to avert your eyes now: Gretchen Jones beat the audience favorite Mondo Guerra to take the top prize. Everyone has been weighing in vehemently for and against the decision, but there's no denying that this was an outcome that caught a lot of people by surprise, me included. This has nothing to do with the relative quality of the work presented by the two designers, but because Gretchen's win went against all the unspoken rules of dramatic television that I had unconsciously internalized and applied to the show.

Gretchen was a far less charismatic television presence, difficult to sympathize with, and was set up as an antagonist figure in several of the earlier episodes, including a team challenge where she was called out by mentor Tim Gunn for bullying the other designers. Mondo, a more reticent, less self-assured designer was far easier to root for, especially after he made "Project Runway" history by revealing to the judges and the audience that he was HIV positive in the tenth week. This isn't the first time the show has elevated designers with difficult personalities. Jeffrey Sebelia and Irina Shabayeva come to mind. However, those designers consistently turned out quality work that was bold and eye-catching. Gretchen won with a collection that seemed very staid and conservative compared to Mondo's.

I honestly have no idea whose clothes were better from a design standpoint, but the usual path to victory involving taking risks and embracing a personal vision obviously weren't enough this time around. With no clear winner and faced with a deadlocked panel, the judges started bringing up more interesting points in their discussion, like which designer's work best fit the direction that American fashion was currently heading in, and the importance of the aspirational versus the practical. It was one of the best debates on the show in some time, and I wish we could have heard more of it. My pet theory is that Mondo lost points for having a style somewhat similar to the last "Runway" winner, Seth Aaron Henderson, which made Gretchen's collection look like a fresh departure by default.

Whatever the reasoning, I'm glad that "Runway" remained a design competition instead of a popularity contest and the judges weren't afraid of a choice they must have known would come as a shocker to a good chunk of the audience. It's fitting that just as the negative drama was deflated, the positive feel-good ending was given the boot too. They're two sides of the same coin, and the show's avoidance of these tactics has gone a long way towards maintaining the legitimacy of the competition.

Here's to the winner, Gretchen Jones, and to many more "Runway" seasons to come.