"How many times have you followed this narrative arc around a designer?" says Rachel Tashjian of the Netflix reality competition. "A human-interest story hooks our attention, we take in a story of struggle under the guise of an industry shift, and then this 'angle' is strangely milked until it borders on insincere. Then, when the designer is no longer 'new,' we move onto the next. And at the end of the day, the streetwear king brings down the woman who can actually make the stuff, and the people who know “someone”—even if it’s just a friend from school or a former colleague, no more successful than they—move ahead. The show is filled with these unintentional revelations: basically, the investment in narratives over design talent, and the pop culturification of the fashion industry."
TOPICS: Next in Fashion, Netflix, Project Runway, Reality TV