I Miss Project Runway, Even Though It's Apparently Still A Thing

I had literally erased all knowledge of Project Runway from my brain until I saw a tweet about the upcoming season from Jezebel the other day. Its content "Stressed-out contestant runs away from Project Runaway set, another suffers a breakdown" (cheery stuff, right?!) plunged me back into the crazy crazy wonderful land of budding fashion designers, because OH! The fun I had watching that programme!

I should explain something right off. There are basically only two seasons of Project Runway that I've seen in full, which is something I've only just realised- I stopped watching it when they went to L.A., partly because what's the point if they're not in New York, but mainly because nobody seemed that interesting, but that's ok because I'm fairly convinced that I watched it at its peak, and that there's nothing that could top Season 2, aka clearly the best season of Project Runway. (Feel free to contradict me. I will fight you to the DEATH.)

Because, really, let's consider this rationally. I mean, if you saw this season, I'm positive that you'll know exactly who I'm talking about (and if you didn't, I'm so sorry. There'll be something here for you tomorrow, promise!) because the personalities? Amazing. There was Santino who's such a fucking star and whose impressions of Tim Gunn were completely hilarious; there was Nick, who I still get excited about seeing in this one episode of The Hills he was in (he is/was a teacher at FIDM, where Lauren Conrad was a student) and who my mum, kind of misguidedly fancied; and, well, everyone else was clearly awesome too! There was this one episode where this designer called Andre (who was, obviously, really sweet and awesome too!) went missing, and Tim was worriedly going 'Where's Andre? Has anyone seen Andre?' and this is still a thing that you can say in my house, and everyone will know what you're talking about. And this was like 7 years ago! Season 2: clearly the best.

And it was also the best because, well, there was hardly any bitching. I don't know how true this is of later seasons, but I know for a fact that in Season 5, there was this one contestant (I don't remember her name, because I think this is a season that was on when I was at Uni/away from the satellite TV) who it seemed to me was getting horrendously bullied by the other contestants, which I was just not cool with at all. And this just wasn't something that happened back in the halcyon days of season 2- there was drama and tension, sure, but it wasn't dependent on people being mean to each other, but just on the contest itself. Unless, you know, I'm just romanticising it all in my brain and everyone was just mean to each other at all times...

Interestingly, (or not, depending on how you're finding this post... I already dismissed you if you didn't want to talk about Project Runway!) my favourite contestant wasn't in season 2, though: he appeared in Season 4, and as far as I can tell, he's really the most successful winner of Project Runway, or at least the only one whose name I've ever heard mentioned again. Christian Siriano was clearly the standout designer basically the whole way through the season, but he was also the cutest little ball of energy with a whole lot of confidence, very little modesty, but also not very much arrogance. He was just the awesomest awesome, and in the two seasons that I partially watched after his one, there were really no personalities to match up to his. EVERYONE WHO IS NOT CHRISTIAN SUCKS, OK?!

So. Basically, it's good to know that Project Runway is still around, and that there's the potential for such amazingness to happen again. Having now been reunited with my memories of it (that I have, as you can see, so kindly shared with you!) I feel like I might have a look out for it if/when it returns to British screens, and also when I figure out what channel it might possibly be on... This is definitely a plan, and one which is solidified by the fact that it went back to New York after just one season in L.A., which proves that they must know at least something about what they're doing still! So... yeah. Project Runway. It is/was good. Look into it.