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Pooing Fabric
Season 4 of Project Runway begins. And that means Dave White sits around with friends and eats cupcakes and passes judgment.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted November 16, 2007
Pooing Fabric

Vivienne Westwood is wearing a stripey metallic dress, a tilty baseball cap on her orange hair, and a button at the boob area that says, “Fuck U.S.,” and she’s holding a big ax. She looks like she wants to chop down America. If I were a somebody instead of an Internet nobody, she’d be in my house dressed this way and I’d hand her my personal list of celebrities, political leaders, and random people I don’t enjoy for her to set about dealing with, but it’s really just an ad for her clothes in the latest issue of Purple, this extreme fashion magazine that my husband/partner/whatever surprised me with the other day. What got into him, I don’t know. It’s not like he usually runs around thinking, Wow, check that out. A $23 French magazine. I bet Dave wants that. I think he got it for me because it came with a bonus magazine of Dash Snow photography and he knows I’m kind of a Dash Snow admirer. Again, I don’t know what got into him. He also hates my taste in art. Mr. Snow recently had a show here in Los Angeles at Peres Projects gallery where he invited guys to masturbate on one of the pieces, which just proves that no matter what rad idea you think you have, someone else did it first and got plenty of press coverage for it already. Anyway, thanks husband/partner/whatever; I’m totally gay for you. 

So yeah, that was my first fashion excitement of the week, seeing that Vivienne Westwood ad. And I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe some of you have never bothered to read these Project Runway recaps here before. Here’s how I do it: 

  1. I watch the show a couple times.
  2. I make sure there are at least a few friends in my presence. Not dumb friends. Dumb friends never have interesting things to say. You keep the dumb friends around because they’re nice or they make you good food to eat or they’re rich. But you don’t consult them for smart words.
  3. I write what I saw. Because sometimes you can’t get to the episode. Maybe your TiVo didn’t change the channel properly and you wound up with whatever else is on at that time, Cane or whatever. Maybe you don’t have a TiVo. Whatever your situation is, please don’t write to me and tell me. I’m super-busy with fashion thoughts. And it’s not because I’m a gay. It’s because I’m awesome. 

First thing I saw this week was the tail end -- thanks, stupid TiVo -- of the Jeffrey Christ Saturn commercial. He won it as part of his big triumph last season. In the commercial his final line is, “This doesn’t suck at all.” What’s that? Wisdom? A T-shirt? The bons mots just fly from his mouth. 

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OK, the new opening credits. Now, I’ve been kind of busy lately and I haven’t been on the PR Web site yet to study up on the new contestants. I’ll do that while I’m cloistered away with the husband/partner/whatever’s family over Thanksgiving, but for now I feel like the show should do its job and introduce them to me itself in coherent way on this first episode. So here’s Heidi Klum in front of a hologram show logo. After seeing her on Oprah recently with Seal, where Heidi felt no embarrassment in describing the dong-announcement bicycle shorts Seal was wearing when she first laid eyes on him and where they practically humped each other on O’s couch, so overt and demonstrative is their superlove, I get the feeling that he’s always standing next to her when this show is filming, trying to lick her neck, and when she smiles about something, that’s when he actually hits the target, and they have to digitally erase him from each shot. That’s what I think. 

As I said, I have no idea who these people are yet, but one of them is a very large man wearing a leopard print “shirt” that I think he stole from a house that was being wrapped and fumigated for termites. I already want to call my pal Vivienne to come and delicately ax this article of clothing from Mr. Plus Size, whatever his name is. 

Oh, wait, are you offended that I’m mocking the fat guy? Too bad. I’m allowed. I’m fat too. It’s one of the privileges (besides eating whatever you want) of being fat -- you get to call out your own people. And that means I get a total pass for ripping this fellow and his shirt crimes. At this point, a friend in the TV viewing room says, “He’s a bear, right? Is he a hot bear? Do you like him?” Sometimes my friends say inexplicable things to me. Because who I find hot or not is completely not the point here. The point is that this particular bear is dressed in…well…that. 

More faceless chicks and fags (and Tim Gunn) pass by too fast for me to take in. There’s time. And then they’re right into the action. No goofy American Idol-style audition segments. No freaked-out delusional people. Wonder why. But I guess if it keeps the premiere to a lean one hour, that’s less work for me. So I’m happy, I guess. 

First up is some guy named Rami Kashou. He was born in Israel. He designed something for Jessica Alba once. Then they show some still photographs of stuff he made and it all looks like it’s from a Chico’s ad. Then they show him at a shouty political rally in Jerusalem where he’s holding up a sign that reads “Death to Palestine!” OK, that was a lie. 

Big bear is named Chris March. Been a costume designer for 20 years. Makes things for drag queens that all want to the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti hat. He’s now wearing insanely ugly shirt # 2 and the show’s been on for exactly 90 seconds. 

Christian Siriano. Too gay to function. His boy-wig is slipping off his head. Tells us he was accepted into a university in London where he got to “work with” (a.k.a. was in a big crowded room once with) Alexander McQueen and my new best pal Viv. So maybe his boy-wig isn’t slipping. Maybe Miss W. lopped off one side with her pet ax. He’s very excited to see that they get to sleep in beds at their group home. He claims not to own one and that he’d “rather buy clothes than buy a bed.” 

Carmen Webber used to be a model. Now she’s in a Kelis tribute band. 

Jillian Lewis is an illustrator and designer for Ralph Lauren. I like her because she looks like young Gilda Radner in that old Saturday Night Live Jewess Jeans sketch. 

Kit “Pistol” Scarbo shows up. No telling what her deal is. She’s already in epaulets, though. I hope that nickname means she really carries a gun. If there’s one thing that could de-fagify this show quickly, it’s the threat of actual violence. I vote yes on that. 

Kevin Christiana has a beard that’s doing some things I don’t understand. How much time does a person have to spend in front of a mirror to sculpt facial hair into little filigrees and demonic horn shapes? Are there stencils now? Can you just pick out the style you like (“I’ll take the ‘System of a Down’ please.”) and go home to work your clipper magic? Anyway, he makes jeans and he’s fed up with that. Me too. Not with Kevin. I don’t know him. I’m fed up with jeans. All the jeans. All the appliqués and pewter buttons and embroidery and gross washes and metal studs and stuffed animals and pork chops you see dangling from these pieces of denim shit everyone (at least in Los Angeles) can’t get enough of. It’s like dead stock from Chess King got belched out of a sewer somewhere and landed on a table at Urban Outfitters. So good move there, Beardy. 

Jack. I don’t know anything about him. He’s tall and muscular. Severe face. Gay arms. Possibly even bigger gay arms than Robert Gay Arms from last season. 

Steven Rosengard looks like the Causasian Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals. Remember them? They had that hit that one time. Anyway, you see him drawing a naked guy, demurely omitting the wiener from the sketch. “Damn, I wish I could remember this guy’s phone number,” he jokes, all funny and ha-ha. Like the kind of funny and ha-ha zingers they used to pop off about semen and butt holes on Queer as Folk. 

Elisa Jimenez calls herself an “accidental fashion designer.” She mostly designs giant, nightmare-inducing marionettes. She made clothes for herself (body-obscuring hooded capes like the kind the band Sunn 0))) wear on stage) so that she could perform with the marionettes. Why is it that I never get invited to theater like that? All I ever hear about is some struggling actor friend’s one-man show. Why doesn’t my life work better? 

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Dave White is the author of Exile in Guyville. He also thinks the Rodarte girls should be the next copresidents of the United States. Find him at www.imdavewhite.com.
Keywords:  Dave White  Project Runway 

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