• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 10, 2014

Last week on “Project Runway,” one of the designers deconstructed a couple of soccer balls and then miraculously sewed their black and white hexagons into a cocktail dress that wowed the show’s judges.

Two weeks earlier, another designer produced a white dress with packets of dye sewn into the collar and waistband so that the dyes would run when drenched with water and color the dress. The purpose of this design –- which carried no guarantee that it would work -- was to make a splash on the evening’s special runway, a “rainway” on which the models would walk beneath a simulated downpour.

Incredibly, the thing worked, and the dress ran with colors. But it wasn’t enough to produce a clear win for the designer, Brooklynite Sean Kelly, 25. So intense is the competition this season on “Runway” that Kelly could only tie for first place in that week’s challenge. Right up there with him was Kini Zamora, 30, a jolly Hawaiian who also won the following week with his soccer-ball dress (but he didn’t have to share the honor with anyone).

Now nearing the conclusion of its 13th season, “Project Runway” remains as fresh and surprising as ever, which is quite an achievement for a show that has been around since December 2004.

One sign of this show’s strength: Every weekly episode is 90 minutes long -- an unusual length attempted by very few reality-competition shows week after week. The show’s producers and network -- Lifetime -- must be confident that the show’s fans have a hearty enough appetite for “Project Runway” that they won’t mind sitting through a 90-minute episode every week.

The fact is that’s not a challenge. Unlike some other competition shows that go long (“Dancing With the Stars” comes to mind), “Project Runway’s” 90 minutes never feel artificially filled or otherwise padded.

This season’s episodes in particular have been sufficiently suspenseful right up until their final moments, when Heidi Klum says auf wiedersehen to each week’s losing designer. 

While many reality shows these days are more than partially scripted (giving the lie to the term “unscripted” that’s been used to describe so many reality shows), “Project Runway” feels more “real” than most. You get the feeling watching this show that the weekly challenges the designers face to design outfits and ensembles from scratch, based on some cockamamie theme contrived by the show’s producers, really are difficult, and the stress the designers exhibit is authentic.

This season seems to be particularly stressful, resulting in plenty of tears and some (but not much) sniping between contestants.  In fact, for all the pressures, one of the nice things about this season has been the relative lack of conflict between the designers -- a refreshing thing for a reality-competition show such as this in which the participants live and work in such close quarters.

Instead of conflicts, backbiting and tribal alliance-making, the focus on “Project Runway” is always on the creative process and the results the process produces.

There’s a businesslike air to “Project Runway,” probably instilled and institutionalized over the years primarily by Klum.  She’s all business -- so much so that she seemed genuinely put off in a recent episode when the designers’ mentor, Tim Gunn, brought the designers down to the runway 10 minutes later than scheduled and Heidi demanded an explanation.

Whether they’re facing deadline pressure or the wrath of Heidi, the designers on “Project Runway” are nevertheless still capable of producing a stunning cocktail dress made of soccer ball hexagons or a white dress that purposely runs in colors when worn in the rain. Maybe that’s what I have always liked best about “Project Runway”: It’s a rare TV show in which hard work and intelligence are rewarded, as opposed to so many other shows in which idiocy and stupidity are basically the whole point.

The two-part season finale of “Project Runway” begins next week -- Thursday night at 9 (eastern) on Lifetime -- and wrapping up with a 90-minute Part 2 the following Thursday, Oct. 23.