Rami Kashou almost didn't reach tonight's "Project Runway" season four finale: The judges were so weary of his signature draping that they made him prove he could construct something differently. But forgive Kashou, 31, for wanting to do what he knows best. His draping has already earned him an established Los Angeles career, dressing the likes of Jessica Alba, Penelope Cruz, and Fergie.
Though Bravo's reality series bills itself as "the chance of a lifetime" for budding fashion designers, tonight's finalists need that boost in varying degrees. Jillian Lewis, 26, has already worked at Ralph Lauren, though she has complained about toiling in a cubicle and carrying out someone else's vision. Christian Siriano, 21, is fresh out of design school, but he's already worked for Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen.
Compare that to season one winner Jay McCarroll, who studied at the London College of Fashion, but had retreated to backwoods Pennsylvania and opened a vintage store by the time the show began. Since "Project Runway" became a hit, drawing more than 3.5 million viewers a week, the applicant pool has changed dramatically, says Tim Gunn, whose own career has soared since he first appeared on the show as a kind, straight-talking mentor.
For the season one auditions, Gunn said, some 85 percent of applicants were seniors in design school. Since then, expertise levels have steadily risen. Producers considered casting Kashou in a previous season, Gunn said, but decided "it would have been boring for the audience. . . . Rami wins every challenge."
But this high-caliber "Project Runway" also highlights a dilemma for reality contests. If success brings stiffer, more professional competition, it also eliminates a central myth of the genre: that intrepid TV cameras can pluck talent from obscurity.
As reality TV grows older, and shows that once were novelties become established proving grounds, their contestants start changing, as well. During the drawn-out audition rounds for the seventh season of "American Idol," producers implied that some of the top contenders were regular folks - horseback riders, tattoo parlor owners - who happened to have untapped talent. But news swiftly trickled out that contestant Carly Smithson had already won and lost a record contract, and that other contestants had also lost record deals, or sang in established boy bands, or competed on other reality shows.
"Gone are the days when you or your friends could try out for 'Idol' and make it big," griped a post this winter on the popular "Idol"-theme website votefortheworst.com. "Now you have to already have connections."
Whether viewers will revolt - or even quibble - depends on the sort of show they're watching, says Laurie Ouellette, a University of Minnesota professor who co-edited the book "Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture." Fans of "Project Runway" pride themselves on having some knowledge of the fashion industry, she says. They see that retail outlets and fashion labels take part in the challenges and judging, and sense that the show functions as a sort of internship.
"American Idol," by contrast, "is really rooted in this rags-to-riches idea," Ouellette says. "The more professionalized it becomes, the more it becomes alienating to viewers."
But viewers also want to see a certain amount of skill, says Mark Andrejevic, the author of "Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched." Failure on a business-theme show like "The Apprentice" might be decent entertainment, Andrejevic said - part of the reason the contestant pool has changed from budding CEOs to C- and D-list celebrities.
In a talent competition, though, Andrejevic says, it's nice when the artists have bona fide skills.
"There's something compelling in watching people who are truly talented duke it out," he wrote in an e-mail from Australia, where he is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland. "There might be a certain local charm to watching the pickup game in the park, but there's much more mass appeal to the Super Bowl."
Gunn says this season's more-professional constestants have made "Project Runway" better, allowing the judges to focus on advanced design concepts such as silhouette and proportion.
"It's simply at a higher level," Gunn says. "You can trust with this challenge that they're going to produce something that's competition-worthy, as opposed to 'I hope that poor soul makes it.' "
Indeed, Gunn has grown so accustomed to accomplished auditioners that he balked, at first, when he saw Siriano's paperwork during the fourth-season tryouts. Compared to an applicant like Kashou - who had already scored a contract to outfit the "America's Top Model" contestants for a nationwide ad campaign - Siriano looked hopelessly outmatched.
"I looked at the producers and asked, 'Why are we seeing him?' " Gunn recalls of Siriano. "He has no experience, he's just graduating from design school. How can he compete with these other people?"
But the prescreening staff urged Gunn to meet the small, cocky wunderkind with asymmetrical hair. "He came into the room for 10 seconds and I just knew he was an old soul," Gunn says.
Siriano's success, Gunn says, might well give hope to recent design school graduates; he predicts a new flood of young applicants. But he warns that, as "Project Runway" stands, most fledgling designers won't make the cut.
"There's only one Christian Siriano," he says. "In the world."
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. For more on TV, go to viewerdiscretion.net.
