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Project Runway, Keffiyehs and Botox
May. 18th, 2013 10:03 amTo keep myself sane while I write florid prose about places I've never been, I've been watching back episodes of Project Runway. Somehow I missed Seasons 10 and 11 entirely.
Of course, I dress like a bag lady myself.
Partly this is economics: I don't have any money to spend on clothes.
Partly, though, it's the fact that I'm 61 years old and the clothes that really appeal to me are youthful clothes.
Just wear them! you say? Absolutely not. I remember how horrified I used to be my mother's outfits. She dressed "youthful." She used to scuttle about in off-the-shoulder tee shirts, miniskirts and – God help me – tights and leg warmers well into her 50s. It didn't look good.
Granted, "youthful" today is a different aesthetic. Horizontally striped jerseys, elaborately knotted keffiyehs, drop-crotch pants. I have the figure to pull those kinds of looks off, but again I am 61 years old. I think I have to figure out something to wear that's cool but doesn't make me look like a cougar version of Gustav von Aschenbach lurking around the public toilets of the Venice bus station.
DeeDee wore the most brilliant dress to the concert last weekend – it was black printed with this pattern of Chinese characters in pink and yellow, lightweight, mid-calf. It moved when she walked. I would look great in that dress, I thought. It was the first piece of clothing I've seen in a couple of years that I desperately coveted.
Project Runway's 11th season – I'm halfway through watching it – is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, there's the team dynamics. The way the younger designers so obviously targeted the Older Woman and the Fat Woman.
The Fat Woman gets a pass because she's a Native American.
But the young 'uns are circling that Older Woman like jackals with bibs. I mean, she could have been Oscar de La Renta in a bad Tootsie wig, and it wouldn't have mattered.
Have to say, none of the designs I've seen so far have done anything for me. Not sure why they only give the designers 24 hours – come one! it's a TV show! no one's gonna know if you give them 24 hours or 48 hours! – but the construction problems were very, very evident this season. It is virtually impossible to sew a well-constructed piece of clothing in 24 hours.
So to me at least the Older Woman's flaws as a designer were not all that apparent until the episode where she finally got eliminated. I will admit that her final hurrah – a Shantung cocktail dress in a really hideous pink – was ghastly.
The other interesting thing about Project Runway Season 11 is the Botox factor.
How hideous the Botox makes women like Heidi Klum and Kristen Davis look.
Although I suppose it's a combination of the Botox and the plastic surgery.
Kristen Davis's inability to manipulate her own facial muscles has left her with one eye in a perpetual squint. I mean, her face is just this ghastly laminated marionette face. Does she honestly think this looks better than a few wrinkles? It doesn't.
Heidi Klum is a great beauty. Flawless facial proportions. And a couple of times when she was trying to look bemused, her forehead actually got crinkles so maybe she isn't doing Botox, maybe she goes for one of the less extreme dermal fillers. But once again, she is getting older, nature intended the perfect geometrical planes of her face to soften a bit, flesh out. And they're not doing that. The result is something a little gaunt, a little strange and not at all beautiful.
Of course, I dress like a bag lady myself.
Partly this is economics: I don't have any money to spend on clothes.
Partly, though, it's the fact that I'm 61 years old and the clothes that really appeal to me are youthful clothes.
Just wear them! you say? Absolutely not. I remember how horrified I used to be my mother's outfits. She dressed "youthful." She used to scuttle about in off-the-shoulder tee shirts, miniskirts and – God help me – tights and leg warmers well into her 50s. It didn't look good.
Granted, "youthful" today is a different aesthetic. Horizontally striped jerseys, elaborately knotted keffiyehs, drop-crotch pants. I have the figure to pull those kinds of looks off, but again I am 61 years old. I think I have to figure out something to wear that's cool but doesn't make me look like a cougar version of Gustav von Aschenbach lurking around the public toilets of the Venice bus station.
DeeDee wore the most brilliant dress to the concert last weekend – it was black printed with this pattern of Chinese characters in pink and yellow, lightweight, mid-calf. It moved when she walked. I would look great in that dress, I thought. It was the first piece of clothing I've seen in a couple of years that I desperately coveted.
Project Runway's 11th season – I'm halfway through watching it – is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, there's the team dynamics. The way the younger designers so obviously targeted the Older Woman and the Fat Woman.
The Fat Woman gets a pass because she's a Native American.
But the young 'uns are circling that Older Woman like jackals with bibs. I mean, she could have been Oscar de La Renta in a bad Tootsie wig, and it wouldn't have mattered.
Have to say, none of the designs I've seen so far have done anything for me. Not sure why they only give the designers 24 hours – come one! it's a TV show! no one's gonna know if you give them 24 hours or 48 hours! – but the construction problems were very, very evident this season. It is virtually impossible to sew a well-constructed piece of clothing in 24 hours.
So to me at least the Older Woman's flaws as a designer were not all that apparent until the episode where she finally got eliminated. I will admit that her final hurrah – a Shantung cocktail dress in a really hideous pink – was ghastly.
The other interesting thing about Project Runway Season 11 is the Botox factor.
How hideous the Botox makes women like Heidi Klum and Kristen Davis look.
Although I suppose it's a combination of the Botox and the plastic surgery.
Kristen Davis's inability to manipulate her own facial muscles has left her with one eye in a perpetual squint. I mean, her face is just this ghastly laminated marionette face. Does she honestly think this looks better than a few wrinkles? It doesn't.
Heidi Klum is a great beauty. Flawless facial proportions. And a couple of times when she was trying to look bemused, her forehead actually got crinkles so maybe she isn't doing Botox, maybe she goes for one of the less extreme dermal fillers. But once again, she is getting older, nature intended the perfect geometrical planes of her face to soften a bit, flesh out. And they're not doing that. The result is something a little gaunt, a little strange and not at all beautiful.
