Inside How ‘Making the Cut’ Is Redesigning Reality TV

Making the Cut wants to change how you look at reality competition shows. Amazon’s first foray into the TV genre may have a couple of familiar faces at the forefront, but Emmy-winning reality veterans Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn have put their 16 years of experience to work crafting a new show that more accurately depicts the world of fashion as it exists today.

Klum and Gunn obviously have plenty of experience in this arena, having helped perfect the format over 16 seasons of pioneering reality show Project Runway. But—as Klum, Gunn, and the cast and crew of Making the Cut told Decider via phone—this new series allowed the duo to take all the lessons they’ve learned over the years and make them work. The resulting show is bigger than any of its peers, with a cast of established designers vying for a major cash prize and a partnership with Amazon.

Crafting this new show meant questioning everything that viewers have come to expect from the format, and the biggest change is right there in the description. “This is no longer a strict sewing competition,” said Klum. “We wanted to find the next big global brand, someone who understands everything about that.”

The “global” part of the brand is built right into the show, via Amazon. Making the Cut’s connection to a massive, international marketplace immediately sets it apart from its fellow design shows. “The e-commerce component is, I think, a really exciting differentiator,” said fashion designer and Making the Cut judge Joseph Altuzarra. “It’s really amazing that as an audience member when you’re watching this show, to feel like you can go to Amazon and actually support that designer—and all of those profits are going back to that designer.”

This is a major change to the fashion competition show format, one that Klum said was integral to making Making the Cut more true to life. “That was a different process, which we thought was more of a realistic process versus before, where it was more fun and games,” said Klum. “This is more going into the reality of it all.”

But that’s not the only way the show is incorporating real-world practices into its format. Making the Cut’s designers have the help of seamstresses, who work overnight ensuring that every hem is finished and every button sewn in place. “That is also how it is in the real world,” said Klum. “We actually wanted to be more real this time, because a lot of the designers, they don’t sit at home sewing everything. They have help, they have seamstresses, so we wanted to give them that opportunity too.”

“And that also presented huge challenges to many of them,” added Gunn. “And part of the judges’ evaluation process was was how well does each designer manage a production team.”

These designers have some experience in that arena, as Making the Cut cast experienced designers. “These are established designers that already have businesses in their own right,” said judge Nicole Richie, known as much for her brand House of Harlow as she is for her work in film and TV. “And [these designers are] coming from literally all over the world.”

“We were initially going through a very large group looking for diversity of backgrounds and diversity of point of view, and then we called people in and Heidi and I met with that final group,” said Gunn. “How many were there Heidi in the final group, 60? A lot. Maybe 75?”

In another departure from fashion competition shows we’ve seen before, the designers — whittled down from 75 to 12 competitors for the show—must create two looks for every challenge. One is a runway look, and the other is an accessible look that will be recreated for Amazon. “You see the most beautiful, over-the-top creations but not everyone necessarily will buy that and wear that because its not the most practical—but still we wanna see that,” said Klum.

Pulling off two looks per episode with Amazon’s audience as a potential customer base required a lot more flexibility, not only in how the designers worked but how production captured their creativity. For instance, instead of giving designers a strict half hour to shop for materials in one location, they were allowed to freely explore their surroundings and return to the store for more materials as needed. This created hurdles behind-the-scenes, as executive producer Sara Rea explained.

“Production hated me,” said Rea, who previously collaborated with Klum and Gunn on Project Runway. “It is easier to just sit everyone in a van get them to one location get them back and then settle. But to me it was very important that… I’m going to set them up for success. And how you navigate this world will show so much about how you would navigate your own business. So we have to let go and give them the freedom to succeed or fail.”

Tasked with deciding whether they succeed or fail is a lineup of A-list judges, including the aforementioned Richie and Altuzarra, as well as fashion icon Naomi Campbell, legendary fashion editor Carine Roitfeld, and superstar influencer Chiara Ferragni. When picking who to bring aboard for this new show, Klum wanted to start with the top names of the industry.

“Naomi is an absolute icon in the industry. She’s worn every designer on the planet. I also love that she doesn’t mince her words. She says it straight as it is and that’s my kind of girl, I do love that,” said Klum. “Joseph [Altuzarra] is so inspiring to the designers in the sense that they all wanna do what he does. He has a great brand and he’s the kindest person. Nicole [Richie] has also been there as a designer and she brings so much humor to it. She’s kind of like a comedian a little bit, I wanna say. Carine Roitfeld is also a fashion icon and Chiara [Ferragni] is the number one fashion influencer in the world.”

Richie didn’t even hesitate when approached for Making the Cut, as the premise was extremely up her alley. “I fell in love with it right away,” said Richie. “Having mentors and people that I can be open with and talk to has been so essential to my journey in this overall business. So when an opportunity like this comes up for me to pay that forward or for me to be able to give any sort of advice or share my experience or support somebody, I do feel an overall responsibility to go and do that.”

Altuzarra, who makes his reality show judge debut on Making the Cut, agreed with Richie. “I love the idea of giving back to young designers,” said Altuzarra. “I’ve been really lucky to have a lot of people who helped me along the way, and so to be a part of this project was really exciting. And Nicole taught me a lot about TV and my best angles, so it was pretty easy.”

The judges got to spend plenty of time together, as the show’s international stage turned them into travel mates as well. “Joseph is from Paris, so it’s always nice to be with a local,” said Richie of her stay in France with Altuzarra and the rest of the team. “He took me to the flea markets and you know we had lunches, it was a lot of fun.”

This city-hopping format also allowed production to show a different side of Klum and Gunn’s relationship by way of interstitials featuring the duo taking in the sights and doing things like make sushi or engage in a fencing match. “We were in Tokyo, for example, and instead of going to the hotel we were like, why don’t we make use of our time and we learn something?” said Klum.

Rea and the show’s director, Ramy Romany, took this opportunity to develop an entirely new visual language for the show, one that was more grounded in documentary filmmaking than traditional reality TV. “It’s meant to have a documentary feel with some reality format elements, obviously,” said Rea. “Our goal was to give it that natural let-them-do-their-thing [feeling] in a visual, cinematic way as well as from a logistical and production manner.”

Being in cities outside the US allowed for more than just unique visuals. As Gunn explained, “Designers are a barometric gauge of their society and their culture, and that includes the environment, and that had a profound effect on their work.”

And if the designers were inspired by their surroundings, so was production. Every episode features a jaw-dropping runway show set in the heart of Making the Cut’s current home city. “The on location runway shows were a lot of work,” said Rea. “They’re basically a major event every three days.”

“The first one which was in front of the Eiffel Tower, and i’m a native Parisian, it really blew me away,” said Altuzarra. “Like the scale of it and the production, and just how cinematic the whole thing was. When I was sitting there it really was a movie moment. A very incredible experience.”

“It was just more fun to like get out in front of the Eiffel Tower, to be in the Louvre,” said Rea. “All those things were so inspiring.”

All of this—the locations, the freedom, the hard-working designers, the superstar judges—adds up to make Making the Cut more than just another reality fashion show. It’s an experience—and it’s one that actually has the goods to deliver on its promise to launch the next global fashion brand. “And that’s because There is the infrastructure of manufacturing, but there’s also real mentorship—and there is real money. There’s a million dollars, which makes a huge difference,” said Altuzarra. “This is the only show that I know of that really gives the designer who wins the tools to truly make it.”

Making the Cut premieres on Amazon on Friday, March 27.

Stream Making the Cut on Prime Video