Jay McCarroll feels the hot air of fashion. Project Runaway
By John Esther
As fashion spews its glamorous, conspicuous consumptive self this Sunday at the Academy Awards ceremonies, taking Eleven Minutes to task appears apropos.
Once labeled “The next great American designer” on season one of reality television’s Project Runaway, fashion designer Jay McCarroll is gearing up for his next show.
Chronicling the whereabouts and wear-abouts of McCarrol these days, directors Michael Seiditch and Rob Tate go behind the seams of New York’s Fashion Week to get a look at what makes the cut-throats in today’s fashion industry.
Egos rise and egos fall and nobody will have to mend and sew the fears, fury, fun, and fabrics more than the funny and foulmouthed McCarroll before he gets his eleven minutes of fashion and fame.
We caught up with McCarroll recently to get his thoughts on Eleven Minutes. Some of which may give second thought to those fancy duds paraded along the red carpet this Sunday.
JEsther Entertainment: Where are you in Philadelphia?
Jay McCarroll: I live in South Philadelphia. It’s not LA. Do you like LA?
JE: I do. However I do prefer New York City.
JM: Yuck, that’s the pits. It’s gross. Gross people, gross smells, gross everything. It’s too big. Getting in and getting out. Terrorism. Okay, onto the movie.
JE: Why did you want to be the subject of this documentary?
JM: Well I’m really self-absorbed and really self-obsessed, and I wasn’t going to stop until I became a national treasure. Ha, ha, I better get some new material. I hit it off with the two directors. They followed me around for about 18 months.
JE: How does becoming the subject of a documentary influence your fashion?
JM: I feel my work is probably less inspired because it has a different end result. Before the show I was just making one-of-a-kind pieces. Now everything I put my name on has to be carefully made for more people.
JE: Do you feel it has compromised your art?
JM: No, I don’t think compromise. Maybe streamline sounds a little bit better than compromise – come on. I never set out to be a grand artist, the next Karl Lagerfeld. I don’t care. I do love mass-market stuff, Benetton, the Gap sale rack growing up.
JE: Does the exposure take away from the mystery behind your art? JM: No, because it’s endless. I could fuckin’ make a collection right now about cactus pineapple drink and diarrhea There’s never just one though in my head. I’m fucking African right now, you know, like Jah. Tomorrow it might be fucking spaceland. Who knows? I don’t worry. I don’t care. Now for the one-note designers, and we all know who they are, they might have a problem with that.
JE: How much involvement did you have in the film? Where you there for the decisions?
JM: Zero. I’m not a filmmaker. I wouldn’t want them saying, “I don’t like the way that hem works.” I’d be, “fuck yourself!”
JE: Was there anything you requested them not to include from the beginning?
JM: Just financial stuff. It’s no one’s business. And there were plenty of conversations about financial stuff. I would have liked to keep that on, without figures, because it is a struggle for young designers just how much money you’re putting out. New York Fashion Week, for this fucking show I wanted to project clouds on the wall. You would think, “Let’s hook a fucking, goddamned fucking” -- my mouth is so bad – “hook a mother fucking, cunt sucking, mother fucking film projector up there and project clouds.” But then you go through the stupid Bryant Park tents, thought their union, and it’s a $150.00 projection that’s now turned into an $8,000 ordeal. “What if it falls down?” You need to take insurance.” For any young designer that extra $7500 could buy fabrics, samples, a model and some many important things for a show. What the fuck was the question? I thought it was interesting.
JE: What did you learn from New York Fashion Week to make it in the fashion world? JM: You need a lot of money and you need to be able to be, how do I put this: a total fucking cunt. You need to be the biggest, snottiest jerkoff that ever walked the planet. If someone puts cancer in one hand and the “new boot” in the other, you really have to be like, “Humm, this boot is more important.” Just vapid, shallow, mother fucking people.
JE: Do you think it is possible to make it otherwise?
JM: You can. I’m still going to make clothes. That’s the difference between fashion and fashion industry. Fashion is whatever, it’s clothes. Fashion industry is a game; it’s a core group of players. They’re about connections. I don’t want to play the game. I’m too obnoxious. I’m not malleable. Did you like this movie?
JE: Yes, for the most part.
JM: What do you mean, “for the most part”? Boring in the middle, right?
JE: No.
JM: What was wrong with it?
JE: It’s nothing critical against it, but in my line of business I see a lot of films. I have seen a lot of films where a struggling artist is making it in an industry. Usually I am happy for him or her, but that does not necessarily produce compelling subject matter.
JM: Yeah, whatever [Laughs.]
JE: After all you have been through via the media are you still inspired to make clothes for others? JM: No. If I were really trying I’d be depressed. I gave up a little. I don’t want that world. After I won the show, I moved to New York. I spent a year going to parties, meeting Molly Ringwald. And then you stand back and say, “Wow, I’m a country person. I grew up every day looking a pine trees. What am I doing in New York with these fucking people who suck? I don’t want your business card and I don’t want you to have my information.” Once I stepped away from that situation of trying to be somebody, everything became more comfortable.
JE: You were more liberated.
JM: Yeah. So I just do the work I want to do when I want to do it. That fashion industry where you have to be new and fresh every six months sucks. Everything is overlapping and the fun gets lost. I just want to make a shirt you would like. Nothing more serious than that.
JE: What similarities do you see between fashion and filmmaking? JM: Fucking I don’t know. Filmmaking seems to have more pride. It’s not so disposable. Fashion is so disposable. No one says, “Schindler’s List, that’s such an old story.” But “oh those boots are so out.” It’s so quick. They’re both hard and they both take work.
JE: Since there are comparisons, did you see Unzipped?
JM: I hope this is Unzipped for our generation. I’m a product of reality television. What could be more fucking 2009 than that. Hopefully the documentary can be a tool for students. But like TV, are you a producer for The Maury Povich Show or are you a producer for PBS? Then in fashion, there’s the Donna Karin side and then there’s us who will sit and knit something. It’s still a craft. God, I talk too much. Don’t you just want easy answers?
