Did Project Runway walk so that Next in Fashion could run? Netflix’s reality television fashion competition effort certainly seems, on the face of it, like a course corrective for Project Runway. The cult favorite Bravo show, rebooted in 2019 on Lifetime, struggled to produce any real fashion stars beyond red carpet good Samaritan Christian Siriano, and the one-time host and mentor Tim Gunn, whose “Make It Work!” mantra transcended its cable TV environs to become a sort of Rosie-the-Riveter “We Can Do It!” for pop culture addicts in the late Bush era.

Next In Fashion arrives with a familiar premise—contestants compete in weekly challenges to create the best looks, which are presented in a runway show judged by a panel of fashion cognoscenti. But there the similarities end. The pool of contestants, for one, have a bountiful room of fabrics at their disposal (and are reminded that the hosts can get them anything else they might need). And all are already ensconced firmly in the fashion world, if somehow behind the scenes: contestant Kiki launched Fubu’s womenswear; another is an Italian designer who offers Philipp Pleinian utterances and leads a sort of softcore Dolce & Gabbana brand; and two graduated from Central Saint Martins, which is the fashion-world equivalent of “I went to school outside Boston.” The prize is $250,000, courtesy of Net-a-Porter, which is to retail what Netflix is to Hollywood—the glittering, glamorous disrupter who figured it out before anyone else knew things were changing at all. So within the first five minutes, it’s clear that we’re playing on a whole different level. Plus, nearly every challenge includes producing a men’s look as well as a women’s—it’s got its finger on the pulse of the industry. Everything is in place for the next McQueen, the next Christopher Kane, the next Prabal Gurung or Pyer Moss, to emerge.

Project Runway’s first hosts were decidedly of their time: Michael Kors, then in his post-Celine it-bag prime, offered deep fashion knowledge; Nina Garcia represented tough heart of a keen editor; and Victoria’s Secret angel Heidi Klum brought chirpy glamour (“One day you’re in… the next day, you’re out!”). Next In Fashion updates its judges for the social media era: we have Tan France, the Queer Eye host who wears Off-White belts like Oscar de la Renta sashes, and Alexa Chung, a cool girl, which is what you were before influencers existed. Chung doubles down on the commitment to “real fashion”—the show opens with her strutting through the studio in a Christopher Kane “Rubberist” minidress printed with big fetish gloves, which is probably way weirder than anything the average Netflix subscriber has ever seen on television.

What emerges is a more realistic vision of fashion than even the show itself seems to realize. Contestants—the show begins with 18—are put into pairs; many of them know each other (or went to Central Saint Martins together, old chum!). Those who don’t are paired off by opaque means, including Nasheli, a Puerto Rican single mother who designs her own line, works as a technical designer, and serves as the chair of the fashion department at Moore College in Philadelphia (a detail the show mysteriously neglects), and Isaac, a Pakistani-American designer who runs a New York-based streetwear label called Mercy x Mankind. Each episode revolves around a two-day “challenge,” and the first episode’s is the construction of a red carpet look, demonstrating the show’s savvy perception that the spectacle of celebrity, not the ballyhooed fashion show, is the real runway of the world. Nasheli and Isaac struggle to reconcile his need for “not just a ballroom gown” with her technical skills. (He lingers while she sews, implying that his talents, like those of many contemporary streetwear designers, are found somewhere afield of the needle and thread). Instagram’s Eva Chen and Hollywood super-stylist Elizabeth Stewart, who styles Cate Blanchett and Julia Roberts, join as guest judges—another cue that this is not your mall mom’s reality competition! (The industry star power continues to ratchet up throughout the 10-episode season, with major American designers like Christopher Kane, Prabal Gurung, Philip Lim, and, in perhaps the show’s most essential episode, Pyer Moss’s Kerby-Jean Raymond.)

Nasheli and Isaac’s white satin dress with a collar and sleeves sculpted from snakeskin and chain—just as weird as it sounds—is deemed one of the two worst looks, which leaves them up for elimination. In a recurring segment that reflects the show’s worst impulses, Tan France asks them what they’d do differently and what the competition means to them, sad violin included. Nasheli says she would have used different materials. “If we go home today, it’s just another day,” Isaac counters, speaking in the lingua franca of streetwear in 2020: an unconquerable bragaddocio wielded at always-unspecified haters.