Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Like The Producers Even Care What I Think
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2010 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
New season of Project Runway is happening. Last week's challenge (make a nice party look OUT OF BURLAP SACKS) provoked decent innovation, which pleases me. But I predict that no more than 20% of the challenges this time round will make the designers make clothes for real men and women with healthy normal bodies. As I've said before, that's just dumb.
I find the majority of clothes created on the show unwearable and ridiculous. Zillions of overly revealing skirts and dresses, nearly no pants, forget about pockets, and evidently menswear is some dark continent. On the rare occasions that designers serve as models, and therefore must create clothes for men, they and the judges commiserate over how rare and difficult it is. That sounds like utter crap. Please e-mail me if it isn't.
Here's an idea: just learn to make pants, and menswear. Then you'll learn a skill that no one else evidently thinks is as important as frippery for like 3% of the women in the US (much less the world), and you can carve out a niche as the magical wizard who can make clothes for the majority of humanity!
Comments
Martin
26 Jan 2010, 22:11 p.m.
I don't know anything at all about PR, but my thoughts:
The thing about menswear is that the fundamentals of male fashion haven't changed substantially in about eighty years now - and the more formal the dress, the less it's changed. So while they could probably do something with casual fashions, they would have a hard time playing around with more formal styles. Also, I would be very annoyed if they managed to successfully influence men's fashion, because I have every intention of wearing my suits for the next eighty years.
Also, tailoring (for men or for women) is a very different skill from dressmaking. A skirt or a dress either looks good or doesn't; pants or a suit can only really be evaluated for one particular person.