Pardon, Your Slips Are Showing
'Project Runway' Hopefuls Get a Wobbly Foot in the Door, on an Unforgiving Stage

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006

NEW YORK

The Bravo television series "Project Runway" taped its finale Friday morning under the tents of Bryant Park, the same place where established designers such as Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera, Bill Blass's Michael Vollbracht, Vera Wang and "Project Runway" judge Michael Kors had debuted their spring 2007 collections earlier in the week. While the other shows had attracted celebrities on the order of Usher and Janet Jackson, the "Project Runway" audience was treated to the likes of Austin Scarlett (from "Runway" Season 1), Nick Verreos (from Season 2), and the current cast.

And that was just fine. Guests and Bravo employees squealed with delight: I didn't know Andrea was so tall! I love Kayne! Kayne, this is my daughter; she loves you! Malan!

Four designers presented collections. One of them served as a red herring, to keep the audience from knowing in advance which three designers had made the finals before the secret was revealed on television.

So Michael Knight, Jeffrey Sebelia (whose girlfriend has a matching faux-hawk), Uli Herzner and Laura Bennett all showed collections. If the winner were chosen based on pure enthusiasm, Sebelia would almost certainly emerge victorious. As he introduced his collection, he was jumping up and down and thrusting his fists into the air. How nice it would be to see an old hand like Ralph Lauren come out at the end of a show bouncing happily in his perfectly distressed cowboy boots.

The collection, Sebelia said, was inspired by a book titled "Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural," although it was utterly unclear how a book on folklore influenced the clothes. The first garment was a red and white polka dot dress with the straps and buoyancy of a deployed parachute. It set the tone for a collection that was not nearly as tough and energetic as one might expect. It was also the high point. The collection soon meandered into dullness and repetition.

Herzner showed a mix of her signature crazy-quilt prints, as well as a group of less chaotic metallic silver dresses, including a simple but striking shift. Bennett focused on cocktail and evening attire and stayed true to her reputation for beautifully constructed, restrained and elegant grown-up clothing.

It was Knight who offered the most disappointing collection. He called it "street safari" and said it had been inspired by his own search for identity as a designer. He would do well to keep hunting. The clothes were a startling combination of Yves Saint Laurent safari dresses and Baby Phat tawdriness. Good taste, which has been a hallmark of Knight's time on the show, seemed to have deserted him. And he served as an example of how a talented designer can so easily lose his way.

"Project Runway" succeeds because it brings the public into the secret club of fashion. It is pure entertainment, of course: No Seventh Avenue designers are making evening gowns out of materials found at the local recycling plant -- although a few are coming close. The audience correctly senses that it is learning a little something about the way the fashion industry works.

And what drives that point home is not the challenges that the contestants must complete, but the industry experts who are brought in as judges. Kors is a successful designer who has been kicked around by the industry and overcome huge hurdles to build a business. Nina Garcia, a fashion editor at Elle magazine, makes decisions about which clothes appear in that publication. And guest judges have included retail experts, celebrity stylists and the sorts of well-heeled women who actually wear the pricey clothes that dominate the runways.

The guest judge for the finale was Fern Mallis, who runs New York's fashion week. She is not the kind of glamorous celebrity judge who would be a ratings hit. But in terms of industry legitimacy, she's a thousand times better. As part of her job, she sits through virtually every fashion show in Bryant Park. She has seen the good, the awful and the blatantly ridiculous.

"Project Runway" convinces the fashion industry's decision-makers to take the show seriously. So why shouldn't the audience?

The show makes people believe they just might be witnessing the advent of the next great American designer. Yet each time one of those contestants fails miserably at a challenge, the audience is given a tiny reminder of how difficult it is to succeed in fashion.

Even award-winning designers struggle to create clothes that are consistently fresh and enticing. Calvin Klein's Francisco Costa, who was just named womenswear designer of the year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, presented a collection Thursday evening that wobbled and floundered and occasionally tipped over into "ugly." Costa, who was also a "Runway" guest judge this season, has every advantage. He's not trying to pull together a collection in a couple of weeks with only $8,000, although at times it looked as though that was precisely what he had done.

Calvin Klein is an established brand, but in many ways, Costa is like many other new designers as he tries to establish himself as a lasting talent on par with the company's namesake. Klein, Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan are American fashion's reigning triumvirate. It may be impossible for another designer to come along and build a business akin to Lauren's billion-dollar brand. The nature of the fashion business has changed dramatically since Lauren was just starting out, and megabrands built on a single designer's vision may no longer be possible. The best Costa may be able to do is keep the women's ready-to-wear division alive, keep it from crumbling so that the brand becomes nothing more than underwear, fragrances and sexy marketing.

New American designers don't have to plaster their brand name all over the world. But they will have to establish themselves as having a consistent vision. The average person with a passing interest in fashion can describe fashion's big guns in only a few words. Lauren is preppy and tasteful. Klein is minimalist and sexy. Karan is sensual and womanly.

What is Costa? He certainly is not carrying on the Klein tradition. His clothes can be girlish, tailored, artsy and sometimes even deconstructed. His collection for spring owed an enormous debt to designers Issey Miyake and Helmut Lang. It was a mix of austere layers with futuristic cutouts. But there were also dresses with romantic pleats, folds and layers that sometimes stood away from the body in unflattering ways. It was as though the idea of the dress, and how cool it might be, superseded the importance that it flatters a woman's figure or at least is something that she can wear with ease. One often had the feeling the dresses had been crafted on a wooden mannequin in an artist's studio but had never been tested on a warm body until they were on the runway and one of the models nearly tripped over her hem.

In the last few years, much has been made about a rising group of designers such as Behnaz Sarafpour, Sari Gueron, Doori Chung, Phillip Lim and Zac Posen. Their talent is undeniable. Any one of them has the ability to craft a beautiful dress. And there are subtle distinctions between them. Sarafpour's clothes tend to be classic and tailored, Chung is known for the fluid drape of her clothes. Gueron has excelled at dressmaking. Lim's work is sporty but with a nod to the esoteric. Posen is a showman. But they all still face the challenge of truly distinguishing their work from the pack.

Sarafpour struggles with consistency. Her last few collections have lacked energy and creativity. It is if her attention has been absorbed by other things. For spring, she offers a few black-and-white prints, skinny pants, cap-sleeve dresses and trapeze coats. But so does everyone else.

Gueron has embraced what might be called "day gowns." They are long cotton dresses that aren't especially formal even as they sweep the floor. The dresses are beautifully made and romantic, but mostly impractical. And as much as one loves the sweet fragility of her clothes, they can easily get lost in a cacophony of voices. These designers don't need to make clothes that are the equivalent of coarse, rude shouting. Even a whisper can be heard if the speaker has something captivating to say.

Posen is certainly the best known of the emerging generation. By force of personality, famous friends and talent he has propelled himself into the spotlight. (He, too, has been a "Project Runway" guest judge.) Posen has a reputation for the complicated construction of his clothes, their Old Hollywood glamour and their drama. Often Posen's clothes can be overwhelming. Or he will fail to make good on an elaborate idea. To his credit, the collection he showed Thursday night emphasized one of his less flamboyant talents: his skill for blending unlikely proportions and surprising details. He mixed a mannish charcoal-gray cropped jacket with a frilly blush-colored skirt, for instance.

Chung and Lim have among the most distinctive voices in the crowd. Chung's collection for spring, shown Friday evening, hits all of the main notes that have dominated the season: volume, neutral colors, sweetness. But she makes it all distinctively her own.

The blousy tops have a splash of caviar beads at the shoulders. She plays with the idea of the tuxedo by using cummerbund details and making sly references to tuxedo shirts. And her trapeze dresses have multiple layers that catch the eye as the models turn to reveal a sudden splash of color.

Lim, whose collection is known as 3.1 Phillip Lim, had one of the surprising presentations of the season. His show was confident and artful as models walked down a long, narrow storage space and posed atop wooden platforms. Lim's most striking piece was relatively simple: He transformed an oversize white T-shirt into an easy dress and decorated it with white sculpted roses. He took an idea that has been belabored on the runways and made it special. His version will be the one that will be remembered six months from now.

A great failing of so many designers is that they have a passion for clothes and for the craft of design, but they haven't identified a niche that has gone unfulfilled. They haven't pinpointed some garment or sensibility they can refine and execute better than anyone else ever has. They make pretty clothes, but the stores are crowded with clothes that can be described as pretty, and bankruptcy courts have borne witness to the demise of more than one business that prided itself on its pretty frocks.

More of the younger designers should take a lesson from Karan, who identified a specific kind of woman for whom she wanted to design. She didn't choose some mythical creature who spends her time on private jets jumping from St. Barts to Saint.-Tropez to Aspen and back again. And she didn't dig up some vague character who is ageless, creative, smart, sexy and time-starved -- a description that could basically describe most women.

From the beginning, Karan spoke most profoundly to a high-end professional woman who did not want to navigate her business life dressed in a stiff suit and floppy bow tie. Karan gave that woman business clothes that left her femininity intact. Over the years, her audience has expanded far beyond that. But Karan's message has remained distinct.

Her collection for spring is filled with silk and jersey dresses that wrap around the body, as well as airy caftans. These aren't work clothes but they are the kind of garments that her professional women might like to wear in their downtime. Karan has a knack for being able to blend luxury and ease into an almost rustic, barefoot sensibility. She creates clothes for women who are too complicated to settle for pretty. These are the clothes a hardworking woman wants to wear when she finally manages to take that week's vacation at the spa.

There is no other designer whose personal style is so wholly reflected in her work. When Karan takes her bows, she wears clothes from the collection. She doesn't send out miniskirts and halter tops and then appear in a caftan. On Friday afternoon she wore a slouchy, sleeveless olive dress with a Sherpa bag slung across her shoulders. She looked comfortable. She looked as though she had picked up the bag from some interesting trip abroad. She looked rich. She looked a lot more interesting than just "pretty."

In a season like this, filled with voluminous dresses -- that observers have taken to calling chicken dresses, because they make it look as though a woman's head is protruding from a giant torso covered in plumage -- a designer such as Ralph Lauren is especially appreciated. Calmly and confidently, he showed a collection dominated by white, black and platinum that eloquently made clear why he has been successful for so long. He doesn't engage in trends.

He has identified a way of dressing, a way of identifying oneself. On Friday morning, his models walked the runway coolly ignoring the industry's obsession with volume and flora. His models called to mind admirably stylish women who have decided to tune out the hullabaloo going on all around them.

Lauren's first model walked out in a black polo shirt and a pair of easy black trousers. What was the high design in that? Nothing, really. That look wasn't about showing off some virtuosity of ruching and draping.

Instead, it was a statement of attitude. Was it Coco Chanel or the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland who once said that elegance is refusal? The meaning of that statement was never clearer. Elegance is refusing to be held hostage to trends. It is the refusal to play dress-up when all one really wants to do is be well dressed. How hard is that?

If viewers learn anything about the fashion industry from "Project Runway," it may be a fuller understanding of how difficult it is to create beautiful, surprising and wearable clothes. They will get a sense of the relentless nature of fashion and the constant demand from the public to be wowed. And perhaps the next great American designer will speak boldly, confidently and with the smarts to know when to say, "No, thank you."