Fashion Star

The real stars are the designers, and it's an eclectic bunch, some already working in the industry, others who dream to.

Absent from this show are the ridiculous clothes that look like they belong on clowns and strippers. In their place are serious, wearable clothes that are, for the most part, so beautiful, so well-tailored and so, yes, sellable, that you'll want to buy them right up.

The glossy you-won't-see-this-on-cable production values support a relatively straightforward competition structure, whittling down 14 contestants until a single winner emerges.

There's a germ of a good idea in the massively overproduced Fashion Star.

This possibly could work, and isn't entirely unwatchable.

Fashion Star remains a cool idea. But its execution and formatting need work.

The show moves along with the dull, humming smoothness of commerce. [19 Mar 2012, p.42]