So Dawn and I ended up further discussing Project Runway over lunch. She is of the opinion that the correct dress won because it is most in step with current fashion trends and color pallets. I still maintain that you might as well be wearing a potato sack.We were talking about how tricky these type of challenges are to judge. Which considerations should be weighted the most? How much the model likes the dress? How much the dress represents the designer’s style? How much the dress shows technical competency? How much the design is innovative? While I think most people would agree that all of those factors are important it seems like you have to decide which is the foremost criteria in order to rank submissions.
Dawn thinks the judges should have used how much the models liked their dress as the foremost criteria since the challenge was essentially to make a custom dress for each model. She also thinks they instead used the industry’s definition of what is innovative. She also sees it as an unavoidable conflict of interest in judging being that Nina is in the business of trying to dictate what fashion is instead of reporting on what people want to wear. Giving credence to what people actually want to wear to prom is less important than selling the editorial idea of what they should want to wear. [I’m sure if I’ve mischaracterized any of Dawn’s thoughts she’ll correct me in the comments]
I know better than to care if the model likes their dress. In Project Runway world that’s a sucker’s game. I think we’ve seen more than one challenge where a designer has made an outfit for a client that they have loved….if the client were paying for it they would have been happy…and that designer gets crucified for sacrificing their vision just to make some worthless client happy. How dare they. If you have reasonable construction you just have to scream and yell that this is your vision. How dare the judges not respect a designer with impeccable construction and a strong vision. Taste is subjective.
That’s a regurgitation of my earlier rant…but so be it. Ranking how I would judge things is a bit trickier. For this challenge I think I would have ranked designs by technical competency, personal style (designer’s), innovation, and finally whether or not the clients like it. Although I can see how a persuasive argument for a different ordering might be made.
I guess I’ve never really thought about judging this carefully before. It hadn’t explicitly occurred to me that the judging criteria might change from challenge to challenge.
[Dawn commented on my other post while I was in the process of writing this one]
5 comments:
Out of curiosity, who do you think should have won last night?
I remember liking Sweet P's dress last night...I think I liked the color. Looking back at the gallery right now I'd have to say that I would pick either Chris' or Jillian's... I'll tip it towards Chris.
I think "How much the model likes the dress" isn't quite on point. I'd suggest "how much the intended market likes the dress." In this challenge, that just happens to be the model. That was treated as an important criterion in previous episodes this season (Sarah Jessica Parker, Tiki Barber, the episode with the ladies that had all recently lost weight). In the first two of those, the client picked the winner. I don't know that that would have been possible in the latter or this one where each designer had thier own client.
Somehow, I had assigned the losing red dress to Ricky and thought he was out and the pseudo-organic bubble dress to Kevin and thought he was in. And now that I've gone back and read Tim's Take, I'm a little sad.
I'm just glad my pony is still in. I had bets on Sweet P, and she is still doing okay. I agree that sometimes the judging doesn't seem fair at all or to have any particular rhyme or reason.
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