Clothing time

Since when is fashion bitchier than Survivor, more divisive than American Idol and more exciting than Amazing Race? Since Project Runway, which finally returns for its second season Wednesday 7.

"We have more big personalities [this season]," says Timothy Gunn, the show's "den father" and chair of the department of fashion design at Parsons the New School for Design. "It's season one on steroids."

The cast for the new season succeeds a little differently from last season's. "We don't have a Wendy in season two," Gunn says. "Someone who doesn't appear to have any talent and makes it. The level of talent is higher this year." There's Diana, the shy nerd who designs "wearable computers" and prefers science magazines to fashion ones. Andrae weeps at the second runway elimination, earning him a major red flag. Santino stinks of talent and ego, which is probably the most fashionable fragrance ever. Last season's Daniel Franco is back and more annoying and vapid than ever. Throw into the mix pretty-boy Emmett, adorable hipster Daniel, self-righteous Zulema and gifted Nick, and it's a real ball game.

The performance-enhanced season features more contestants (16 to last year's 12), and Heidi Klum is dangerously pregnant, but otherwise the formula is intact. Designers are given a quirky challenge that tests their creative and managerial skills, and after the runway show, Klum, Michael Kors, Nina Garcia and the occasional guest judge decide which designer is "out."

Gunn admits that the season-two contestants are playing a slightly different game. They know the pitfalls of the competition. "But they have no advantages for the design challenges. They're just as thrown off as in season one." The big difference for season two, according to Gunn, is the judging. "There's more controversy between the judges," he says, "and it's a good, healthy thing. It's a subjective process."

Despite the arbitrary and sometimes kooky challenges—last season's redesign of postal uniforms, this season's "make an outfit with only the clothes off your back"—Gunn says Runway is a legitimate means for success in the fashion industry. "The material constraints, the budget limits, the time? Being able to solve problems? Succeeding on Project Runway is the best possible evidence that one could present that they can really make it in this world."

That veracity is part of what's so absorbing about Project Runway. It's legitimate in ways we know America's Next Top Model can never be, and rewards talent more convincingly than The Apprentice. It's also earnest, and while some of the contestants have their moments, the editing isn't cruel. "No one is unfairly or erroneously portrayed," Gunn says. "If anything, sometimes the editing is kinder to the designers than perhaps I would have been."

Runway's magnetism humanizes the chilly, isolated fashion industry with a combination of strong storytelling and charismatic, captivating designers. Gunn characterizes the appeal of Runway as being the appeal of "the unknown. We really and truly don't know how things are going to end....There's an episode where one of the designers gets fabric in the wrong color—it's dark brown, not black. Now what does he do? He makes it work. He has to." Nowhere else in the universe is dark brown versus black a dramatic crisis, but in Runwayland, nothing could be more riveting.

"Fashion designers aren't just sitting at the end of the runway collecting roses," Gunn says. "It's demanding in terms of one's creativity, and it's not for everyone. It's a calling. It's like being in the clergy." Consider us attentive members of the congregation.

Project Runway struts its stuff Wednesdays at 9pm on Bravo.