It’s Challenging to Run in an Race That Has Already Picked a Winner

Michael Costello has been on Project Runway this season, a local designer with big dreams for his fashion future. He was treated poorly by the other contestants vying for the top prize, accused of being a shoddy craftsman, a cheater, and limited in his design aesthetic. Thus, it was no surprise that although he made it to the Final Four, he was not one of the top three designers, even though he was heads and shoulders a better finalist than Granola Gretchen. The final insult: he got a “bye” from Heidi, not the traditional German farewell.

Gretchen came across during the show as a lying bitch. She was the one who made disparaging remarks about all the other contestants, while putting her “poor me” self out there as the only contestant who has given up everything in her life for her career. She was totally two-faced, while her designs were patently one-dimensional. She could talk up a piece of crap and make it sound like caviar, but what surprises me is that the panel of fashion experts always ate the crap! Her final showing of 3 pieces from her Fashion Week collection was dismal, with a look of ready-to-wear that was surprisingly mundane, but she was selected for the runway show at Fashion Week!

Mondo and Andy were the top 2 designers, almost from the git-go, but Michael was always the most professional of all the candidates. He did not disrespect the other designers, but wisely kept his own counsel and let the others do the dissing. Michael's designs were always evolving, and his use of fabric (even when he didn't know the name of the material) was skillful. His models always looked womanly, with none of the obvious cheap short-cuts taken by some of the other designers to catch attention, rather than be good. When it came time to pick who should go and who should be out, Michael recognized that the best were Mondo and Andy: go up against the toughest and do your best to win. Gretchen, on the other hand, disparaged Mondo, Andy, and then Michael, but picked Mondo and Andy as the competition to beat.

My opinion is that it hurt the selection of the Final Three to have no unbiased guest panelist: Heidi Klum, Nina Garcia and Michael Kors already knew their favorites and were going to send them to the Big Show! Heidi gushed over everything Gretchen did, while pretending that she was schooling Gretchen in the elements of design, even to the point of not booting Gretchen off the show when she admitted in one of the final challenges that she was emotionally defeated and just could not come up with a decent final design or execution. No matter her excuse for her failure to perform week after week, Gretchen was kept on all the way to the Final Three.

I think reality shows are rigged games for people who are willing to roll with what happens now to further their own agendas down the road. It amazes me that small people become big wage earners not because of who they are and what they can do in the real world, but because they play a reality show game and create a persona to draw the media’s eye. Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a great example of a “nobody” who pushed her way into the public eye and now represents an allegedly conservative demographic by out-shouting the other panelists on The [Very Biased] View. All of the current and ex-wives on all of the “Wife” reality shows are another black eye on the mores and morality of today’s viewing public: we watch, so it’s our responsibility that they are on-air and in the media. The Situation is now earning in excess of $1.5 by promoting his gag-me tagline, as well as his life philosophy: gym, tan, laundry. Meanwhile, the unemployment lines swell with well-educated, highly-skilled workers who cannot find a job, much less a decent salary that allows them just to keep their homes.

I wish Michael Costello the best in his future because I am sure he has a future. Rumor has it that he has teamed with Mondo for post-Project Runway, and the two designers will open their own design company. They are both good designers and have earned a future in their chosen career, but I sincerely hope that we’ve heard the last of Granola Gretchen and her failure to launch her line, her career, herself.