Bravo Daniel Franco

I don't watch survivor shows! Okay... I didn't until Daniel Franco...

While flipping through the channels one night, my husband stopped momentarily on Bravo and Project Runway. I'm not sure why he stopped, but when he did, it was the exact moment when Daniel Franco was explaining to the Runway committee why he deserved a second chance on the show (he had been short-lived on season one). Showing the clothing he'd designed, Daniel spoke of mere cloth and thread as if making love to a beautiful women. I was forever hooked. From that moment on I had become a die-hard Daniel Franco fan I watched each subsequent episode as religiously as those who once wanted to know "who shot JR."

Now if you are also a Project Runway fan, you'll know that in the world of fashion, sometimes your in, but after episode four, Daniel Franco was out, so I swore off the show. I couldn't understand how Daniel, who offered up himself for the sake of his team and who had created, what I thought, were the most beautiful lingerie I'd ever seen, had been ousted. His opponent, Santino Rice, had created the most unusual and unwearable items possible and had turned on his team when it looked like it was going to be a competition between them and him.

Ah! But soon I learned and understood that fashion is not about whose clothing is the most beautiful or wearable. No, not at all. It is about innovation.

I knew nothing about fashion coming into the show except that celebrities and rock stars such as Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and Princess Diana seemed to know the best of the best designers and were part of the trickle-down effect of what would soon be hanging from the local department store racks. Now I understand what those bazaar creations on the fashion runway - along with the ridiculously impractical hair and make-up designs - were all about. They are not at all about practicality or wearability, but about innovation. Still don't get it? Let me explain.

Consider auto show in Detroit. Is the main attraction the next Ford or Chevy that will appear in your garage? No. It is the concept cars, the highly technological, sleekly designed oddities that will never see the production line. Why are these concept cars so important? Like the fashion runway they are about innovation. Their concepts and designs will fuel the designs of the everyday cars for years to come. Need more proof?

Think space - outer space. We the American public will not likely have the opportunity to fly into outer space and enjoy a drive-by of the moon. At least not in my lifetime. But the innovations created by these trips have brought new technologies to one and all.

Innovation. That's why Tim Gunn kept saying "it's too safe." Innovation is what keeps us going back to the store to buy yet another outfit when we already have a closet full at home.

Writers are innovators too. I first heard this idea in a lecture with author/psychologist Lindsay Gibson, who explained that it was up to writers help shape the new ideas that we will all later embrace. Writer's, she said, appear sometimes as if they are really out there. They are not always understood by those who know them. But it's with their innovative ideas and means to communicate them to the masses, that we writers are able to change the way the world thinks. Just look at Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and how its appearance has generated a whole new interest in the realm of religion, history, and medieval myths.

Like Daniel Franco, not all of us will make it to the Olympus Fashion week runway - this season - but we will do our best to make our mark and try our hand at innovations.