In my review of Project Runway: Season Five, I had an opportunity to enumerate the reasons why I enjoy the program so much more than other reality shows. Project Runwayprovides a legitimate forum for creative thinkers to make original work in a charged but realistically challenging environment - instead of being an excuse for auto-humiliation on a grand scale. With Season Six, the show retains its basic strengths, but a move from New York to Los Angeles proves detrimental to the integrity of the competitive aspect of the program.
I don't want to make a big huge "coast vs. coast" argument here, but New York is without a doubt the center of fashion in the United States, if not the world. For Season Six, the producers moved Project Runway to Los Angeles, for reasons that I've not been able to fully divine. It's possible that production costs were lower in LA than in New York, but I'm just making a guess. Whatever the reasons, Project Runway doesn't feel right in Los Angeles. For one thing, the contestant designers are still vying for the same grand prize: a runway show at Bryant Park during Fashion Week. So the setting is now oddly removed from the locale of the designers' goal. For another thing, although there have been and continue to be successful designers who come from and are based in Los Angeles, New York just feels like a more inspiring place for fashion design. Beyond that, New Yorkers are generally better dressed than Angelenos (painful, I know, but true), which further brings home the sense of disconnection between the show's object and its setting.
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