Who else is watching that Mormon MomTok show right now? Or the Chimpanzee lady Tiger King spinoff? Or maybe the new Love is Blind with British people? No matter what reality TV show I’m watching these days, I cannot get over what the contestants are wearing. And I don’t think I’m alone in that fascination. I doubt I’m the only person perplexed by the fact that those Utah moms seem to only own luxury sweat sets and PrettyLittleThing party dresses (in addition to their religious underwear). When Love Island hit the US audience a number of years back, this country took a giant leap forward in the field of bikini technology. Even HGTV queen Joanna Gaines has developed a cult following of her Madewell-but-elevated personal style.

The clothing on reality TV, like reality TV itself, melds together fiction and authenticity. These garments bridge the gap between costume and clothes. In the case of The Bachelor contestants and Real Housewives and countless other polished female reality stars, the extent to which they style themselves in costumes for TV directly correlates to the extent to which they winkingly self-brand a persona for the audience and exert influence over the producers’ narrative edit.

Walden Green, contributing editor at Dirt, rehashes the highs and lows of an icon’s fledgling first season:

Who’s afraid of Wendy Pepper?

Revisiting the first season of Project Runway, 20 years later. 

by Walden Green

Project Runway made me gay. Not the most decorous way to kick off this piece, but the truest. As a little proto-twink growing up on the UWS, I was enthralled—indoctrinated, really—by the dresses, obvi, but really by the campness, the drama, the pageantry of the show itself. Early seasons, especially, felt truly of the high fashion world they mirrored, where “one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out,” in all its glory and all its excess. 

The first season of Project Runway aired on Bravo (they used to show operas) in December of 2004, just less than two decades ago. It debuted four years after Survivor and Big Brother, and one after America’s Next Top Model, but two years before Top Chef and half a decade pre-RuPaul’s Drag Race. Top Model and Runway, especially, found themselves paired together at an inflection point between Reality TV Proper and competition tv.

Eventually, Top Model went the way of drama and Project Runway towards more “legitimate” and “fair” judging, but those early PR seasons—season one especially—were a very special alchemy between the two. 

Project Runway season one is remarkable for all the things it already had figured out. Supermodel Heidi Klum took on more of a host role, compared to Tyra Banks’ dictatorial antics, with then-Elle Fashion Director Nina Garcia, the inimitable Michael Kors, and suite of pretty impressive guest judges (Patricia Field, Betsey Johnson, Parker Posey for the finale) rounding out the panel. 

Casting was also nigh-perfect. I wish I could give a big open-mouthed kiss with tongue to whichever gay guy cooked up the perfect blend of types who would inevitably crack under the pressure of the competition—ex-lawyer Starr, culturally appropriative hat-wearer Norah and Kevin Johnn with two N’s—and those who would thrive. Names that are still spoken on the lips of loyal watchers today. Austin Scarlett. Kara Saun. Wendy MOTHERFUCKIN PEPPER.

Wendy Pepper is the greatest reality tv villain of all time, because she reveals herself slowly. We’re introduced to her in the premiere as a midwestern mom, and the oldest of 12 designers. Her initial credo: “I feel like, cause I am a mom, the kitchen is really important…number one, we have to take care of each other.” But listen closely and there’s already a hitch. “You can’t care about 11 other people; but you can care about three.”

In the second episode, another designer’s black dye goes missing only to turn up in the hands of—who else—Wendy Pepper. She wins the third challenge, designing a dress to be sold in Banana Republic stores (isn’t it crazy that, going in, PR already had that much trust from brands like Banana Republic?), which lets her off the leash to go full scorched earth the following week. 

For the series’ first-ever team challenge—a fraught premise to begin with—Wendy is paired with Austin and token Brit Vanessa to create a performance ensemble for one of those failed-bet Avril Lavigne clones of the mid-aughts. Based on Austin’s design, they cook up a horrendous Little Bo Peep-inspired number with a wrinkly, oversized satin bow as the coup de grâce.

Up to this point, Austin and Wendy have sort of a “Motherboy 30” dynamic going, but during judging on the runway, she throws him under the bus. In the end, Vanessa ends up going home, because she’s a) not especially valuable to this developing narrative and b) commits the cardinal sin of (unless your name is Anya Ayoung-Chee) saying she “doesn’t really know how to sew.” For the rest of the season, Wendy goes on such a tear of lying, scheming, and shit-talking that I’m shocked there aren’t more “Wendy Pepper shady diva moments” comps floating around YouTube. In a perfect full-circle moment, she completes her arc by taking what many believe should’ve been Austin’s spot in the final three.

So yes, the first season of Project Runway is truly remarkable for all of the things it already had figured out—and all of the things it totally didn’t. For one, they kept immunity going way too late in the season, and there’s an outsized attention paid to the models’ antics—I am shocked the designers kept miss “Morganza” around for as long as they did. In a particularly skin-crawling sequence, another model—then 16-year-old Melissa—gets coerced into playing escort for Page Six editor Richard Johnson. It’s icky, exploitative, and a gruesome reminder that the show’s original producer was, in fact, Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax.

Now, you may be thinking: “Walden, we’re already 700 words deep and you’ve spilled barely any ink over the fashion itself, the Runway part of Project Runway.” The thing is, by today’s standards, most of the designs are pretty bad—half as a function of the era (how fake Y2K bitches look when real etc. etc.) and half because it’s 12 designers playing the game of Project Runway before Project Runway was, effectively, “solved.”

When there is a triumph, though, it feels all the more exceptional; Austin’s corn husk couture, setting the benchmark for all future unconventional challenges; Kara Saun’s still ineffably chic postal service uniform; and Jay McCarroll’s Chrysler building dress, the first glimmer of genius from SPOILER ALERT the season’s eventual winner.

Which brings us to the season finale, practically an opera in its own right. It has everything: the villain’s redemption, the last minute heel, and the surprise triumph. Kara Saun, who has won like half of the challenges, flies too close to the sun by using her industry connections to get a little ~too good~ of a price (read: $0) on custom shoes for her 12-piece final collection. Blogs from the era called it “ShoeGate.” Wendy calls her on it, and while Kara feigns innocence, her “don’t talk, just listen” on a call to get cheap invoices printed up is about as implicating as the final episode of The Jinx, IYKYK.

All of which leaves the door open for Jay—Jesus impersonator, former adult video company employee, who has at this point not a single win to his name—to come in and secure victory. Of course, it helped that his collection, a bonkers blend of twee styling, knit fabrics, and monochromatic palettes, remains one of the best to have ever come out of the show. I’d recommend watching the full thing just to see how crazy timeless these clothes still look today.

Later seasons of Project Runway would give us plenty more “moments”: Santino Rice’s Tim Gunn impression, “I wasn’t going for elegance, Heidi,” all the way up through “not even to dinner with the Kushners?” But season one will always have the unique distinction of being created in a world before Project Runway; that’s the kind of magic trick that only works once.

So I don’t mourn hypotheticals, for what could’ve been. This show could only have been what it was, when it was, for better and often for worse. No one like Melissa deserves to be subjected to what she was, especially on national television. Which is why I’m happy to keep Project Runway, and the culture and industry it embodies, firmly in the past, safely accessible through DailyMotion uploads and Reddit threads. 

It still packs a punch. Never again was the drama so raw, the talent so hungry, the reality TV so real. Bravo, indeed.

Love the Broey Deschanel video on Love Island and Deleuze:

Someone take that Rick Owens dress away from the Real Housewives:

Project Runway winner Mondo Guerra is now designing for Drag Race contestants… reality TV empire in the making?

Ever wonder how much those girls spend on their The Bachelor dresses:

And, lastly, a stunningly Bushwick Basic, Lana Del Rey, age gap summer fashion moment from Paris Hilton and an old guy teaching her archery on Simple Life: