Project Runway Season-Premiere Recap: Hitting the Door

Project Runway
22 for Season 22
Season 22 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Welcome back to the workroom! I’m Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi, and I’ll be recapping Project Runway again this season as the series lurches itself back to life after a noticeably diminished, but still fairly entertaining, season 21 on Freeform, Disney+, and Hulu. Last year, we all missed what Project Runway once was — the presence at New York Fashion Week, the presence of Nina Garcia (she really was gone a lot), the presence of taste. I kid, I kid. The Project Runway concept is still strong, and I’ve really warmed up to Christian Siriano as a mentor, and we can spend the next 10 weeks arguing about the wisdom of adding Tyra Banks to this judging panel. Did the executives or producers in question simply not watch Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, or did they look at all the headlines generated by Banks’s (allegedly) awful ATNM behavior and think, “Yes, adding Tyra makes as much sense as the concept of ‘hot ice cream’”? We’ll never know.

It’s the 22nd season of Project Runway, and to mark this auspicious occasion, there are 22 contestants to start things off. How long will all 22 stick around? Not very long at all. Six competitors will be out in this first challenge. Heidi Klum (wearing an outfit with huge goofy sleeves that look like she walked through an exploded paper shredder) yodels at the contestants during their initial meeting at the Oculus transit hub at the World Trade Center, and then she and Christian literally twirl on their way out the door. No offense to Heidi, but I have a hard time really buying her as whimsical. Oh, and Joseph McRae, voted out by his fellow designers in season 21, is back. Another thing I don’t buy: That any of the other designers would want to work with Joseph on a team challenge when he’s so bold (and loud) about dubbing this season “the fucking Joseph McRae show.”

The final thing that isn’t being bought in this episode: materials for the designers’ first challenge! In what I can only interpret as a sign that this season’s budget was perhaps even more slashed than season 21’s, the 22 designers are presenting their best looks from home. (I am assuming this is because fabric for 22 designers for this first week would nearly double the episode’s materials cost, compared with season 21, which started off with only 12 designers.) Instead of designing, this first challenge — for which the contestants have two hours each on two days — is really about editing, styling, accessorizing, and how well the designers can take Christian’s advice as he goes around the workroom. Six designers will win and get immunity for next week, 10 designers will be in the middle, and six designers will be out by the end of this first challenge. A lot of these people are convinced they are going to be in the top, and here’s my immediate reaction to some of these outfits: Congratulations, your amount of confidence scares me. 

Season 21 of Project Runway had twins Jesus and Antonio Estrada; this season has even more contestants with established relationships. (Sorry to all joint Project Runway and Top Chef watchers who were annoyed by Top Chef pulling this same thing with its latest Carolinas season.) The mild-mannered Robby Crone and already-shit-talking Plane Jane know each other from season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and they’re both aware of Jeffrey Kelly Abess, who has created outfits for Drag Race contestants. (Plane Jane and Jeffrey’s offerings are both very costume-y, with the former showing a gold unitard with metal spikes on the nipples and crotch, which she’s already worn, and the latter a structured dress with pearls hanging off floating 3D wires.) Bi Pham once worked for Bryan Barrientos, and the two pretty much hate each other. It’s unclear whether anyone recognizes Jennifer Daniels, but she was a model on Project Runway for four seasons and has since become a designer. And again, who could not recognize Joseph McRae, who keeps speaking in the third person?

This episode’s editing emphasizes two things: (1) that Christian’s advice is always useful and in tune with what the judges are looking for, and (2) which contestants’ production will home in on for their personalities and charisma. We spend a lot of time with the former Drag Race contestants: Christian deems Plane Jane’s outfit too loud, and Robby’s shiny black and pink minidress too circus-y. Christian also pays attention to 23-year-old tailor Jude Mikulenak and his perfectly fitted grey skirt suit (he reminds me a lot of season two’s Daniel Vosovic, and also looks like a lab-created clone of Wes Anderson and Tim Burton), and Russian designer Varvara “Bobby” Diakonenkova, whose turquoise quilted dress has a very cute Peter Pan-style collar and black stripes running down the front. Mormon-raised Chloe Magleby, who has dressed Jessi from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, has one of the skimpiest designs with a burgundy lace crop top with an open back, while Anna Molinari’s strapless dress accented with chains made out of soda tabs is very cool. (She’s also an influencer, to add more fuel to the “What is Project Runway going for with its casting these days?” fire.) Disappointingly, the episode spends very little time with older designers Octavius Terry and Aaron Potts, but that’s because Project Runway has always been a little ageist.

For the most part, people seem to be taking Christian’s advice to either tone looks down or zhuzh them up. Even Joseph listens to Christian’s advice to ditch a wig he was putting on his model so she’d have puffy pigtails under one of his signature oversized beanies; he seemingly lets her walk out with her natural hair. But the people whom Christian was worried about end up being the people that judges Heidi, Nina, Law Roach, and Tyra have the most problems with, too. Let’s talk about the six winners first, who the judges deem worthy based on the construction of these looks, their finishing, and whether the designers seem to have potential: Jude, Chloe, Bobby, Elizabeth and her squiggly-textured halter dress, Bryan with an oversize and quilted cream minidress, and Bobby’s Ukrainian BFF Andriy Volkov, with a black sequined skirt and a black corset-style jacket. There’s a lot of praise for everyone’s use of texture, everyone’s giddy to be special, and Plane Jane is shocked that she’s not in the top. 

Not only is Plane Jane not in the top, but she’s in the bottom eight, alongside Dani “Boots” Bennett, Omolara “LRÉ the Artist” Odupitan, Jeffrey, R’Bonney Nola Gabriel (Miss Universe 2022!), Jennifer, Robby, and Andrea Moore. And man, this judging session is brutal: Heidi calls each designer forward by name, they get a little (often cutting) critique, and then Heidi hits them with a “You’re out” right there. It’s murderous and brusque, and the judges eliminate Jennifer and her Poison Ivy-esque sheer dress of overlapping leaves, Andrea and her going-out top and capris, LRÉ and her jacquard crop top and oversized pants, and Dani’s mustard-yellow ruffly gown. That leaves Plane Jane, Robby, Jeffrey, and R’Bonney awaiting judgment — and in typical late-era Project Runway fashion, we don’t know the last two people going home quite yet. That’s our cliffhanger for next week. My money’s on Robby and R’Bonney, the former because his look was a little chintzy and the latter because her denim separates, while well-constructed, were pretty familiar. And yeah, I think production would keep Plane Jane and Jeffrey around for their entertainment value. Plane Jane calls Tyra Banks an icon! You know Tyra will now do whatever to keep her around.

Fabric Scraps

• The 10 designers who are safe this week: Octavius, Yang Yang Xu, Naheim Muhammad, Joseph (sigh), Bi, Bao Tranchi, Anna, and Aaron. Bios for everyone are here. 

• I’m intrigued by Law having been a judge on Legendary, HBO Max’s voguing competition, and so often being a judge on Drag Race, and still being so thoroughly anti-drag on Project Runway. What’s tripping me up is Law insisting that this isn’t “Project Costume Design,” when so much of his dressing of Zendaya lately (as fashion bloggers Tom and Lorenzo have pointed out) is a fairly gimmicky blurring of fashion and costume.

• When Elizabeth said she has a “rebellious attitude,” was she just referencing being a brunette growing up in a community full of blondes? Heathers alert over here.

• At some point in the season, former contestants Antonio, Jesus, and Ethan Mundt are back, so get ready for that. 

• I’m glad that production is sticking with the sarcastic descriptive chyrons, like Elizabeth being “annoyed AF” by Joseph’s return. 

• Why did judging need to include that wacky monitor gimmick? I understand that the judges wanted to judge the outfits without knowing who designed what, but couldn’t the contestants have still sat by the runway and just not reacted as exuberantly as they normally would? 

• Wild to me that when Heidi was introducing the judges, she introduced Law first, then Nina. I am assuming this show is no longer a real priority for Nina, given how often she was absent last season, but damn, isn’t that essentially a demotion? 

• When Tyra said that Bryan’s outfit was a “marshmallow I wanted to devour,” how badly do you think she wanted to name-drop the aforementioned hot ice cream? I need behind-the-scenes details.