Lauren Zalaznick arrived during the taping of one of the Season 1 shows. I didn’t know she was the president of Bravo and so, technically, our boss. We were just two people standing there together in the back of the auditorium watching the judging together. She turned to me and asked rhetorically, “Who’s going to want to watch this?”

“You’re corroborating my worst fears,” I responded. It was hard back then to see the shape of the show. I didn’t know what was going on when I wasn’t around. I thought, Is it going to be about sexual escapades at the Atlas?

But now we know how it turned out: a smart, fun look inside the creative process of fashion designers. I was so happy about it. It proved the point I keep insisting on: You don’t need to dumb things down for the television audience. People are smart, and they want to see intelligent shows. People have come up to me and said Project Runwayis the thinking man’s reality show, an idea I love. The audience for the premiere of Season 1 was 354,000. For Season 6, it was almost three million.

It was very satisfying to come back to some of the snarkier people in the industry—the ones who said way back during the airing of Season 1 that I was wasting my time or that the show wouldn’t amount to anything—and to tell them, “Remember that show you were so dismissive of? It was just nominated for an Emmy.”

To date, the show’s been nominated for sixteen Emmys. There’s a bobble-head doll of me for sale. I am well known enough that there is a ton of misinformation floating around about me on the Internet. There was something about my going to the deli across the street from my office with Andy Roddick. They said we were dating and had a lover’s spat at the counter. Well, I’ve never even met Andy Roddick but he’s married to a woman, and I haven’t been on a date in decades, so no chance of that! But I’m flattered that people think of me enough to take the time to make up insane gossip.

Again, no one’s more shocked or pleased than I am at how the show took off and changed so many lives. I guess it really did seem like a dubious undertaking back then. We had scores of potential judges turn us down. I called Diane von Fürstenberg at least twice to ask her to judge, and she turned me down.

“I told you,” she said in that catlike voice of hers, “I’m not interested in doing this show. I’m going to my island.”

When the show premiered, she called and said, “Why didn’t you tell me about this? It’s wonderful!”

(Quick anecdote: Diane von Fürstenberg’s 2009 Christmas card featured a foldout poster of her as the mermaid figurehead of a ship. Well, it turns out that image was not a product of Photoshop. It was the actual bow of the yacht belonging to her husband, Barry Diller. I hadn’t seen anything like that since Michael Jackson’s Historyvideo.)

Heidi Klum is a key creative force behind Project Runway. I love her. She’s just utterly and totally fantastic and has believed in the idea from the start. But that’s not to say all the negative talk about the show couldn’t get to her, too. To add to the anxiety of Season 1, we were doing pickup lines as filler. We don’t do that anymore, but back then we had to do that occasionally when the plot was too confusing. So we’re sitting in a hotel suite, waiting to do our lines, and she looks genuinely devastated. I said to her, “Heidi, you look really upset. Is anything wrong?”

“Have you seen an advance cut of the show?” she asked me.

“No, why?” I said. “Have you?”

“Yes, I think it’s great. But a friend who saw it said it was bad, and now I’m worried.” She was especially upset because this was someone in the TV world.

“You can’t listen to anyone in TV!” I told her. “Everyone in this business has an agenda. We’re not going to know if it works until the public sees it.”

That seemed to calm her down, but I wasn’t surprised she was so upset. Heidi doesn’t respond well to criticism. Someone who’s that beautiful certainly doesn’t face a lot of it in the course of her life!

And yet, secretly, I was wondering, Is the show terrible?

As we all know now, Heidi never should have worried. And I was right to believe in her and the show and to risk getting on board. I also learned that working on something you believe in and that you enjoy is really no risk at all.

There are attendant risks to fame, though, like going to awards shows. The first time I walked the red carpet, I felt like a mongrel at the Westminster Dog Show. When we were nominated for our first Emmy for Season 1 of Runway, I was beside myself. The entrance had bleachers that were packed with photographers flanking the carpet.

People kept yelling at me things like, “You’re blocking my view of Jessica Walter!”

It was humiliating. At the end of the row were curtains, and when I reached them, I thought I was finally going to be inside and away from all the flashbulbs and shouting. But no: It was just beginning.

The NBC publicist wouldn’t let me hide. She kept saying to the press, “I have Tim Gunn here. Do you want to talk to him?”

Looking right at me, they would say, “Who?”

Then we lost on top of it!

I have such respect for people who do the red carpet, because it’s so hard. Everyone wants to criticize what you’re wearing. Every news channel wants to have the most captivating story to tell, so they’re dying to have someone trip or to see the top of a strapless dress fall off.

This is a circumstance where taking a fashion risk is an incredibly brave and hard thing to do, and I celebrate it.

Whenever I do red-carpet reportage, celebrities come up to me because they know I will ask real questions and won’t cheer if they fall down. Once on the red carpet, the goddess Helen Mirren reached over and gave me a big kiss and said, “That’s for saying such nice things about me at the Oscars.”

But I wasn’t just being nice. I can’t lie, so I am incapable of being a kiss-up. I really thought she was the most ravishing, sexy woman there. She is absolutely amazing because she is so comfortable in her skin. She exudes that. And she wasn’t afraid to show it off.

And yet, I’ve received plenty of flak for things I’ve said as a commentator.

Once was when I stood in support of the black lace Alexander McQueen dress Cate Blanchett wore to the 2007 Golden Globes. It was kind of a minidress with a big black lace skirt and train over it. I thought it was great. I asked her about it, and she said, “I only listen to my own voice. I’m surrounded by people who want to make me into their dress-up doll. But this was a collaboration between Alexander McQueen and me, and it’s exactly what I wanted.”

I loved it, and so did People,but we were about the only ones. The press went to town on me for approving of it and basically said I’d lost my mind. Well, I don’t think so. I stand by that dress.

Something similar happened at the 2008 Oscars when Tilda Swinton wore a washed silk satin black Lanvin gown. I thought she was magnificent. I had a debate with Stacy London on Todayabout it. She said it was a big garbage bag. But I insisted the dress said exactly what Tilda wanted it to. That Lanvin creation said, “I am not a classicist. I am a bohemian. I stand apart. My clothes say that about me.”

Would I put that dress on Sally Field? Of course not. You can’t separate the dress from the woman who’s wearing it. That’s the point I try to make when I talk about “the semiotics of fashion”—that is, what our clothes say about us.

There’s only one judgment I regret. After the 2009 Oscars, I was on Good Morning Americaand debating someone with whom I’ve never particularly gotten along. She made me so crazy that I became a contrarian. I am usually very polite and measured, but when someone gets my hackles up, I tend to blurt out ridiculous things just to disagree. And, alas, this occasionally happens on national television.