Adventures at Midlife

Okay, true confessions: I am a Project Runway addict. A true guilty pleasure. I’ve even got The Spouse watching it. But I am a real latecomer to the phenomenon (typical for me) and I’ve missed a lot of the drama of the previous seasons. So I was delighted when, wandering idly through the Comcast channels on Saturday afternoon, I came across Project Jay, an offshoot documentary chronicling the life of the first-season winner, the outrageous Jay McCarroll, as he attempts to find his way from the depths of rural Pennsylvania to the streets of New York’s Fashion District. (“Look! There he is at Mood Fabrics!”)

In the middle of a desperate search for living and working space, Jay is informed by his agent that, since Project Runway has been nominated for an Emmy, the host, ubermodel Heidi Klum, wants him to design her dress for the evening — which will take place right after she gives birth. McCarroll, who specializes in hip hoodies and cargo pants, gamely accepts the challenge, works up a fetching number based on a phone call with her, and flies to LA — only to be met with total disaster.

The diaphanous red dress doesn’t fit her post-partum figure, and she — and her entire frackin’ entourage, which includes her mother — have numerous other problems with it. So poor Jay holes up in a hotel room for two days with a costume seamster borrowed from a former Project Runway rival, completes the dress — and then gets a phone call from Heidi’s publicist telling him that Heidi has decided to go “another direction” with her dress for the evening, more “earth mother.” No red dress. (She actually showed up in a yellow print that looked like a Lily Pulitzer sundress run amok.) He is understandably crushed.

My point (and, like Ellen, I DO have one) is that I had not fully realized that Heidi Klum (along with all of her ilk) is not a person. She is an entire frackin’ industry. She is a brand. Hordes of people make their living of her well-toned back. And, little people be damned, she has to get it right every time. (Otherwise, she might get fugged!) As I watched the Project Runway season, I sensed a sort of love-hate relationship going on between her and some of the designers, and I finally GOT it. She could make them, and just as easily destroy them. And the hardest thing to watch was Jay taking the inevitable phone call from Heidi, airily apologizing about the dress, and Jay just having to sit there and suck it up.

It may just be the rag trade, but it’s as brutal as anything I’ve ever seen. Those designer clothes must have hair-shirt linings, and are probably covered with the blood and tears of all the “little people” who’ve made them.