Meanwhile, Alexis seems to be tensing up. I’ve always thought that having famous parents must be hard on a person, but there are ways around it: go into a completely different field, make your own way, change your name … anything to carve out a little space for yourself. But Alexis’s world seems to revolve around Martha. And yet she has appeared genuinely furious at her mother every time I’ve seen her. There’s something Grey Gardens–y about the two of them.
During one of our little breaks on the Macy’s commercial set, Martha gestured to the piles of linens and towels from her new collection and said, “Alexis, any of this you want for your apartment, please take it. I want to give you a housewarming present.” It seemed like a touching and generous gesture.
“I wouldn’t touch a single solitary item of this crap!” Alexis said, glowering.
Well, it rolled right off Martha. I thought, Yikes! She must get this all the time.
Abuse of power really can go both ways. If you’re a boss, a parent, or a child, it’s best to wield whatever power you have over your employees, children, or parents wisely. If you can’t be gracious, don’t spend time together. There’s no gun being held to your head that says you have to associate with people who make you crazy. My family may be a little eccentric, but I would never talk cruelly to them—and certainly not in front of other people.
Get Inspired If It Kills You
WHEN I WAS TEACHING at Parsons, I went to visit our New York exchange students who were studying in Paris, France. With an expectant smile on my face, I asked them how things were going. I was so happy for them. How lucky they are,I thought, to have this glorious academic and cultural experience.I expected to hear stories about their walking through the city at night, strolling through the Louvre and the Picasso Museum with a notebook, eating baguettes beneath the Eiffel Tower …
“Oh, it’s so boring here,” they complained.
It was a good thing I wasn’t eating a baguette, because I can guarantee you I would have choked on it.
“Boring?”I spluttered. “You’re in the middle of Paris! Dullness is of your own making. You are in one of the most spectacular cities on this planet. You should be ashamed of yourselves for even using that word. Ashamed!”
The last Project Runwayhome visit of Season 7, I had a similar, horrible encounter with the designer Emilio Sosa.
He lived in upper Manhattan, and so I said, “What’s it like having the Cloisters in your own backyard?”
If you don’t know, the Cloisters is the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to medieval art and architecture. It contains thousands of works of art, including some of our most incredible ancient textiles, such as the Unicorn Tapestries from the fifteenth century.
“I’ve never been,” Emilio asserted, with what I perceived to be pride. “I don’t believe in anything that has to do with religion.”
I confess, I am not at all religious myself, but I had to grasp onto a support to keep from toppling over with incredulity.
“Every corpuscle of every society in the history of this globe has religion at its core!” I brayed at him. “We’re not talking about converting. We’re talking about walking a few blocks to look at some of the greatest art of all time. Why would you shut yourself off like that?”
I love New York City and am so inspired by it. It’s a magical place to me. Even when it’s muggy and gross and the subway stinks, I am completely captivated by the city and find new things to love every day.
Walking to the subway one day on my usual route, I saw an antique store I’d never noticed before. It had clearly been there for ages and I’d walked by it a million times, but I’d never noticed it. It was like it appeared magically. Then when I walked into my neighborhood Dunkin’ Donuts for my morning coffee, the woman behind the counter smiled and asked, “Where have you been?”
I’d been out of town for Project Runwayhome visits for a few days, and this quasi-stranger had noticed and missed me. I’d missed her, too, as well as everything about this city. It reveals just enough of itself every day that I’m never bored and never overwhelmed.
The other designer who I thought didn’t like me, Jay Nicolas Sario, really stepped it up with his collection, and he and I healed and repaired during the home visit. But things got worse with Emilio.
I did not like the collection. He just looked at me and said that I frequently told him things, and the judges told him the opposite.
“I have no expectation that you will do anything I suggest,” I said, “but I’m only trying to help you. I see a matronly collection with problematic colors. If the judges don’t see that, too, I’m going to wonder what’s wrong with them.”
Regarding the judges’ and their critical opinions, my mantra is: Chacun à son gôut;that is, it’s a matter of taste.
Emilio is a very talented designer, but to me he seemed to lack inspiration, and in my book that is a cardinal sin.
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN I was teaching, I would have a student who would ask me, “How do I get inspiration?”
I wanted to respond: “Drugs? I don’t know! Whatever it takes.”
“I’m just not inspired,” these art studentswould say to me.
I found it so shocking. What were they doing in art school if they didn’t feel the call to create? It’s a hard life, and there’s very little money in it. They should have gone into another line of work if they didn’t feel inspired.
“Well, how can I findinspiration?” they would ask.
“Look around you!” I would say. “Look out the window. Go for a walk. Go to a movie. Go to a museum. Go see a show. Read a book. Go to the library. Take the Circle Line. Have a conversation.”
That’s one of the main things I look at when I interview designers being considered for Project Runway:their inspirations.
With each year of the show, I’ve learned more about what would work. Season 3 was a threshold where we no longer had clothes that weren’t well made. Since then, it’s all about the relevance of the designers’ points of view. A lot of time people who are outstanding seamstresses will say, “How can you turn me down? Look at this craftsmanship.” But that’s not what we’re looking for. We want people with real ideas.
In the auditions we see a lot of gimmicky clothes, with too many bells and whistles and zippers everywhere—things that turn inside out and become a tent.
“You can’t do this on the show,” I tell these designers. “You can’t make a prom dress that doubles as a jet pack in the course of a one-day challenge.” It’s like someone who brings in intricate hand-knitted sweaters. You can’t do that on the show. There just isn’t time.
Coming out of Season 5, I became suspicious of people who didn’t come out of a conservatory-type academic environment. They haven’t been through a critique. They don’t know that it’s about the clothes, not about them. Kenley’s a good example. She took everything so personally and wore her defensiveness on her sleeve.
Designers need to know what’s going on in the fashion world. I’m always so shocked when a major name comes up and the designers don’t know it.