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But beyond their scheduling strategies, I am actually interested in Project Runway, because at it's core, it is about the creative process. To a great degree, that process is universal. They are just using a different medium. There are many things about the outer frontiers of fashion that are easy to make fun of, just as there are many things about the outer frontiers of food that are easy fodder for ridicule. Often there are clothes that people would never wear, and food that people would never order in a restaurant, much less make for dinner on a Tuesday night.

Just as some people have a sense of style about clothing without knowing how to sew, people can have a sense of style about food without knowing how to cook. I subscribe to the idea that style and fashion are quite different things.

I think one of the challenges of being a chef in contemporary cuisine is that everything is on the table. Absolutely everything - from ingredients to techniques - is all fair game, unless they are staunch traditionalists (which is perfectly respectable, of course). Fresh fish from the Mediterranean or Australia or South America or Asia is commonplace. Fresh produce from other continents arrives within a few days of being picked. Almost anything imaginable can be gotten for the right price. Even our basic ideas of what is food and how it is presented (like the metacontext) are being challenged and expanded by some chefs.

This state of affairs sometimes makes for incredible food. But sometimes it makes for food that is barely edible. The issue becomes, how do you choose what goes with what, and by what means do you combine them?

And while food is one of the basic human needs, it also has many of the hallmarks of high art. People connect with food beyond it's nutritional value. There are elements of culture, family, psychology, emotion, business, tradition, heritage, politcs, and natural history. Food has it's own language of homages to heroes and rebellion against convention, and staking out one's own territory.

And in a comparable but different way, the same can be said of clothing. Everytime they set a challenge for the designers on Project Runway, I think they are really saying, considering all the clothing that has been made in the past, and all the associations you can possibly make or that can be inferred from it, make a cocktail dress. Then they scurry off to the fabric store and choose their raw ingredients. Each person has their own process, each person has things they want to emphasize or minimize or reject outright. Then with all that in mind, they execute - they try to Make It Work (to borrow a phrase from the show). It's the same creative process that cooks and chefs do when they decide what the specials are that day, or what's on the menu for the bar mitzvah.

In both endeavors, there are the upper level aspects - the theory, the reach, the impressions, the novelty, the freshness, etc, and also the bottom line aspect - does it work, or in cooking terms, does it taste good? Is it flattering for the person wearing the garment? Does it taste delicious to the person who is eating it?

Some people think that food is only subjective, that it's 100% personal opinion - either you like it, or you don't. But I don't think that is true. There are objective aspects to cooking - the technique, the precision, and the execution. And while imperfect, I think those things are quantifiable - that they can be evaluated, whether by numbers or ratings, or via explanation.

If you had all the ingredients in the world available to you, and knowing what you know of all the food that exists in the world, make a dish that tastes delicious and says something about you as the designer of that dish.
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BTW, for the current season, I think Jeff (the tattooed guy) is my favorite, but it seems like he's going to be dinged for a rules violation. Of the other three, I'm rooting for Michael (the young guy from Atlanta), although I think Laura (the mother of 5) is the most likely to win, and Uli is great at her niche (but who wants to look like they're going on safari?).

[Thanks to Penny for pointing out some typos. ~Tad]