27 thoughts on “Medieval – No Wait, Baroque – Fashion on Project Runway

  1. I am so thrilled you decided to tackle this. I will say that designers were tasked with creating modern looks with Baroque influence rather than actual Baroque designs—not that they succeeded on that front either.

    If you don’t mind, I’d like to post the link for this on the privately managed Rate the Runway Disqus site, where we simply can’t get—or give—enough snark.

      1. I have. Thank you! Most of my PR peeps aren’t aware of this site, so I think I’ll be making more than a few converts.

  2. None. They’re disastrous. I would not dress my mastiff or lap dog in them. They are hideous and are not even period in any sense of the word. Not even in the Reign universe.

  3. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! Project Runway is a guilty pleasure for me (it’s trash, but it’s entertaining trash), but this episode just bugged me so much. I spent the whole time going “Nope, do any of you even know what baroque is?”

  4. I am a Project Runway fan. But this episode confused me. I don’t think ANY of the designers understood Baroque (or medieval or Renaissance or any proper historic era). Hell, they even missed the point with the fairy tale episode.

  5. Putting aside the fact that these dresses are supposed to be baroque (medieval?) inspired, they’re still all sooooooo ugly!!

  6. Thank you for this article!!! I got really excited about the baroque theme (tho the medieval stuff was a weird lead-in) but everytime i heard a designer describing baroque i was dying to know what you ladies were thinking haha. Oh project runway.

    As an aside… Im curious… Do you ladies have any examplea of modern-fashion inspired by old timey that you do think works? Just curious!

    1. Personally, I love modern gothic fashion inspired by historical eras (& I’ll have a class at Costume College all about that). And there are modern designers that pull from historical eras in beautiful, fascinating, creative ways, like Vivienne Westwood & Alexander McQueen did. Those two examples are the pinnacle IMO because they used obvious historical elements — corsetry, panniers, ruffs, bustles, etc. — and combined that with radically modern elements, whether in the fabrics (leather, zippers) or style (super short, tight, punk, bondage). You could see the historical fashion but you could see a change / twist on it too. They made it their own.

  7. I stopped watching PR a while back so thanks for recapping this for our delectation/wincing. They should have taken them to the Frick Collection instead of Medieval Times!

    1. But the Frick Collection wasn’t going to buy sponsorship credit, and Medieval Times has been injecting money into a bunch of reality competitions, and those programs “foller the dollar.”

    1. Seriously This… all that angular and geometric stuff. Not. Baroque. Anyone who has cursory knowledge of art history knows that Baroque is all about the S Curve.

      1. This is why they didn’t invite Bert Keeter back. He knew his fashion history.

  8. I keep hoping one season they’ll have costume project runway, or historical clothing project runway… wouldn’t that be fun!?! :) You ladies could be the judges!

    1. I would so watch that!! Whatever happened to Mad Men designer Janie Bryant’s fashion reality show that was going to have some vintage elements to it?

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