Oh the Hughmanity! Week 1: “A Brazil Wax for a Smurf”

Possums, we have never been able to resist a cri de cœur, and a cri de cœur is exactly what we heard after the first episode of the final season of Project Runway. (As Shakespeare might have written, we come to bury PR, not to praise it, and we will chime in presently.)

Indeed, it was a veritable chorus of cris de cœur, and our favorite baritone voice crying out in the fashion desert belonged to the inimitable Hughman. When we asked him to give us (and Bravo) a piece of his mind—à la mode, as it were—he was gracious enough to cut us a generous slice. Spoons at the ready, then, possums, as Hughman dishes it out:


Project Runway has been for many years now a constant in our lives. Indeed, it has been with me longer than many of my relationships. I can point to when Heidi Klum first appeared in my life, when Tim Gunn gazed lovingly at me and the first Lover’s Spat I had with Nina Garcia. Like you, I looked forward to the return of our beloved show before it was shot along with Bruce Willis into deep space (aka Lifetime), where no one can hear you scream—unless you’re Valerie Bertinelli or Tori Spelling.

Well, fuck me, is all I have to say thus far. Judging from the premiere, this time around the relationship is going to be a bumpy ride.

First things first.

Let’s all place one gloved hand on the September issue of Vogue and swear to Coco Chanel we will never ever, ever—EVER—mouth the “word” girlicious again. EVER. If I could invent a time machine, possibly the first thing I’d do is go back and slap the concept right out of Blayne’s orange, red-hatted teeny head. It’s not a pun, it’s not funny, it’s not clever and Blayne is certainly no Christian Siriano. Also, if you hear a friend say it, you are authorized to just dump them on the spot. No good can come of this utterance and you are certainly, by your mere presence on this blog, far too glamorous to have people like that surrounding you.

It says in his Bravo bio that Blayne was voted the Most Stylish Man in Seattle. So to all the men in Seattle and the blind nuns who voted for him, I say, “Poor you”. As for the outfit he created, I’m sure it will make a dramatic conclusion to The Vagina Monologues : The Musical.

Then we come to “Suede”...eh... Pleather. He has managed to take the standard fauxhawk of Bravo contestants to the next level. Here it’s like a Brazil wax for a Smurf. Thankfully he talks of himself in the third person, which I can only hope is a stilted attempt to distance himself from whoever BeDazzled his jean vest with his nom de douche. Supposedly he’s monied or somesuch and owns a dairy in Pennsylvania or somewhere. Perhaps all the milkmaids there are wearing dull gingham frocks and giggling about all the cute fabric nicknames they’ve given to the bulls. “Cashmere! Poly-blend! Uh... suede.”

Speaking of trash, we shan’t forget the Bag-a-lencia stylings of Stella, the Patron Saint of Bad Choice of Drug Use in the 70s. If Donatella were barefoot and pregnant and living in a trailer, this dress would have been what J-Lo would have worn to the Oscars. Would it have killed her to make a bra out of some of the other crap she threw away? Also, word to the wise : do not wear your circus costume in the supermarket. No one wants to worry that a circus hippy in pigtails is going to rip a box of Glad Wrap out of their hands in Aisle 3.

Other dribbles that caught in my eye:

Man shorts like the ones Wesley wears are fine. On the Von Trapps. Yes, they’re supposedly fabulous fashionable now and all that but really... c’mon. They make a reasonable adult look like Pinocchio, and do we really need to compare ourselves to wooden toys that live with old mustached men? I thought they looked silly on the runway and now that I see them on an actual person and not a model, I realize I was right. Just assume we believe you when you state you shave your legs.

Finally, all the brouhaha about Jerry’s Morton Salt Girl outfit is grossly exaggerated. American Psycho?? Please. Patrick Bateman wore Armani, fer Christ’s sake! I actually went and looked at Jerry’s fashion line “Form”. And it was NOTHING like what he did on PR! They were, uh, t-shirts. See, if Gristedes sold t-shirts, this would have been a no-brainer. Oh well. Sigh. Better luck in the reunion show!