Netflix’s ‘Next in Fashion’ Features the First Suit Challenge to Get It Right
Y’all, tailoring is hard. This is, season after season, always the major gag every time it comes up on a fashion competition show. Designers can knock out wild avant-garde frocks out of gardening tools and couture gowns using nothing but shower curtains and determination, but tasking them with making an off-the-rack-level button-up shirt is straight-up cruelty. To non-designers like myself, it seems like a Met Gala look would be way tougher than a Men’s Wearhouse one, but that’s rarely the case! Tailoring is tough.
That’s why the suit challenge in Netflix’s new design competition series Next In Fashion was a real nail-biter. The bar was raised so high in the first two episodes. After all, these designers have worked with a lot of A-list names and they’re in teams of two and they get two days to create looks. That’s twice as many hands with twice as much time to make half as many looks as you usually see on a fashion reality show! With these epic expectations, you just knew their suiting game was going to have to be next level in order to stand out. The designers knew it too, which is why their reaction to hearing the words “suit challenge” was all shock and horror.
This cavalcade of worry serves as a heads up to everyone that doesn’t watch design competition shows on a loop (like I do) that making a suit is hard work. Not only that, Next In Fashion’s suit challenge is the latest in a long line of tailoring and menswear (and menswear means “make a suit in a day” 99% of the time) challenges that have plagued Project Runway designers for going on 18 seasons. Need I remind you of the infamous, Magic Mike-is-hot-right-now male stripper challenge from Project Runway Season 11?!
Granted, the designers had their work cut out for them given that not only did they have to make clothes for men (which most designers admit they are not used to doing), but they had to make tearaway looks for men that were basically IRL Thor. But still, you look at those suits and shirts and… well, it’s clear why this was the only challenge in Project Runway history where no one won.
That brings us to Next In Fashion’s suit challenge, a mission that left a lot of the teams sweating—except Daniel and Carli. The UK-based duo had an advantage over the rest of the pairs because Daniel is a menswear designer. Let me just point out, it is rare that a menswear designer even competes on any show like this. If I was going to put a number on it, I’d guess that maybe an eighth of the designers that have competed on Project Runway have a focus in menswear, and I think that number holds true on Next In Fashion as well. So Daniel, essentially the challenge’s unicorn, had a lot to live up to.
And—SPOILER ALERT—he and Carli nailed it.
I love tailoring. Believe me, I find every excuse I can to write about suiting and menswear on this very site, be it Martin Freeman, Alan Arkin, Jared Harris, or the legendary Bob Newhart. I also love fashion competition shows, and let me tell you, it is shocking how seldom these two neighboring loves actually hang out. So this moment, seeing a gorgeously tailored, absolutely classic suit strut down the runway? The moment was major and it was great to see it treated as such.
The judges agreed. It gave Tan France life! He tried to run away with the jacket! It made Jason Bolden happy and he called it “absolutely sensational”! Some more adjectives: boss, yummy, chic, smart. Y’all are right. This is the best suit I’ve ever seen constructed on a TV reality show (and I mean, it helped that they didn’t have to outfit the outfit with velcro for easy removal).
Carli and Daniel’s suit is the exact perfect example of following a challenge to the letter, and that’s apparent when you look at the lineup of suits created for the challenge.
I get that a head-to-toe tan look doesn’t stand out when compared to all the others, but the deity is in the details here. The other suits, some of which are outstanding, skirt around the challenge of making tailored clothes by going oversized. It’s easy to fit the waist and then let the fabric flow, essentially the same way you’d construct a gown. When the camera gets close on Daniel and Carli’s model’s bum, you can see that this work is complex.
Sometimes the over-sized style really works (Angel and Minju’s angelic interpretation is divine), but it’s not exactly the challenge. That’s not to say that a suit has to follow specific rules! But the reason Carli and Daniel’s look is the winner is because it’s the only look that stands up to the giant task of making a traditional suit and slays it. The fact that they knocked out a head-to-toe look in two days that could stand side-by-side with one that took two weeks is remarkable.
This is the first challenge in fashion design competition TV history that’s ever made a classic suit look easy, and you have to appreciate just how hard that is to do.
Via: https://decider.com/