Miz Shoes Reviews: Project Runway Allstars

PR All Stars

We open on the same old same old: Jeffrey, the Pin-Headed Shmoo, who allows as how even though he won his season of Project Runway, he’s only remembered as being the guy who made someone’s mother cry. Awww, Jeffy, that’s not true. We all remember you as an insufferable asshole with some ugly ass neck tats, and an enabling mother and girlfriend (who is the mother of your son, and whom you dumped as soon as humanly possible after winning.) He shows us his new girlfriend (skanky Patti Smith wannabe) and his new band and his same old ugly neck tats.

Daniel V comes next and says he was the first runner up. He also says that when he got to the room and saw Jeffrey, the Pin-Headed Shmoo standing there he had mixed emotions, because he liked him…as a designer.

Korto! shows off her line of very cool purses and talks about her jewelry line. (Miz Shoes is wearing one of Korto’s necklaces to show support, and her own exquisite taste level.)

Uli reminds us that she was the quiet one who used loud prints. She’s still in Miami, doing small boutiques and private commissions. Chris March finished fourth in his season. He’s still doing costume design. He did Beyonce’s tour costumes, got to cast her body and also did some work for Prince.

Mychael Knight is looking urbane and good in the P Diddy mold. Jeffrey, the Pin-Headed Shmoo says that when he saw Mychael’s collection he didn’t think it was worthy of being in the finals. Thank you. We’ll file that with all your other profundities, asshat.

Sweet Pea tells us that she’s the nice girl who makes pretty dresses. And then

Satan

Santino blows in and tells the know universe that he was the Break Out star of Season Two, that he lost but you wouldn’t know it from his current fame, fortune and world tours. Not a day goes by that people don’t stop him on the street to laud his genius (or spit in his face, thinks Miz Shoes). He sums himself up thusly: “Project Runway didn’t make me, I made Project Runway.” Then he orders Mychael to go make him a drink.

And we’re off to the roof for champers with Heidi and Tim. Heidi is enormously pregnant during the filming of this, so she’s drinking apple juice or something, and makes a point of telling the viewers that. Daniel V is sweet and cozies up to Korto to ooh and ahh over her jewelry. Jeffrey, the Pin-Headed Shmoo claims that he was everyone’s friend until he won, and then nobody would talk to him. I think your timeline might be a little flawed there, sport. Everyone hated you from day one. And then you won and dumped your long-suffering girlfriend. Asshat.

The All Star Challenge is to create a mini collection of three looks in a week. The designers need to show who they are today, how they’ve grown since their season. Winner takes all: the prize is the same as the regular show $100,000.

Day Two

We open on Satanino sleeping in his stank clothes. Chris is in his bathrobe, as ever. Sweet. I love Chris.

Next, they are off to their new workspace, at Cult Studio. Uli wants to live there. The accessory wall is no longer sponsored by Blow Fly and the naked bitch; we have come up in the world to a HALSTON accessory wall.

Of the three looks, one must be for the red carpet. They have a $1,200 budget. Chris is sleeping (and snoring) sitting at his drafting table. Uli asks if anyone else is making all dresses. Off to Mood, where they will have 45 minutes to grab fabric and cut. Jeffrey, the Pin-Headed Shmoo and Satanino try to bolt off early. Tim calls them back. Uli is grabbing up solids. Tim is perplexed and chagrined.

With five minutes left, Pea and Uli have a mix up at the cutting table. They’ve picked up the same colors and leathers. They each see the other as their biggest threat, because their aesthetics are so similar. I guess. What ever.

In the work room, we are “treated” to a five-minute montage of Santino’s greatest hits. He mocks/mimics Tim Gunn. He is loud and rude to all the other designers. He’s insulting and insufferable, and full of himself for no reason. Korto! says that he’s just a fool. She can’t call him childish, because her child is better behaved. Snort. Daniel blandly points out that Santino can be distracting. Santino confessionalizes that he is faster, smarter, bigger and funnier than anyone else in the room. We are subjected to more Tim Gunn impressions and abusing the other designers. OK. Are his fifteen minutes up yet?

No, they are not. Santino is designing leggings in stretch latex? silvery something. Daniel V calls it and Santino vulgar, and there is no arguing that point. Daniel V says that the biggest competition in the room comes from Uli, Jeffrey, the Pin-Headed Shmoo and Korto! Santino says that Pea’s work looks like a home-ec project.

Tim Gunn comes in to remind the group to make a red carpet dress, then hauls them out to the break room to watch some TV. It’s Nicole Kidman! She’s going to wear the red carpet dress to a premier of her new movie “Nine”. Well, that’s a prize worth fighting for. Bitch is an excellent clothes hanger, and I say that with all sincerity and respect. Daniel V and Chris are both flabbergasted.

Tim does his walkabout and starts with Uli, who is doing something with a beige fabric and complicated construction. Tim is disappointed that it’s beige. Korto! is doing something fall/outerwear. Tim doesn’t say it’s good, which to Korto! means she has to work harder. Santino has a rat’s nest of fabric on the table. Santino proclaims that his taste level is the highest in the room. If by that he means that he’s higher on drugs or self-satisfaction and delusional egotism, then yes, he has a point. Sweet Pea is working on a gown of pastel lime green and pale blue and it looks a little matronly and home-sewn to Tim. To us in the Casita des Zapatos, it looks a little like Kate Greenaway. Tim tells her to lose the bottom ruffle.

Next we see Chris, working with grey oversize plaid. He’s doing something with an enormous portrait collar/capelet. He calls Mr. Gunn “Timmy”. Daniel V doesn’t do “gowns” and he’s got something going on with white side panels. Tim is “surprised”. Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo is doing something with a lizard-like sequin or mylar. Mychael cannot explain his color story to Tim because it was random and he just grabbed anything. I’m thinking that pressure is not Mychael’s friend. Tim is not pleased and tells Mychael to “make it work”, but you can tell that Tim’s heart isn’t in it.

Model Casting

Chris falls asleep at the casting table. Do we think he has narcolepsy? Just like the fabric and leather, Pea and Uli fight over the models.

Santino breaks the serger (needed for sewing knits). Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo offers to lend Santino a pair of tweezers to pull out the broken needle, and Santino replies with his usual level of class and taste by asking if Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo uses the tweezers for his dick.

Now I would have paid good money to see these two assholes face off in a cage death match, or, more likely, a good bitch-slap fight, but Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo is a coward and a bully, so he takes the passive-aggressive way out, and just shuts up. He later reveals to have not only a pair of tweezers, but several packages of needles for the serger tucked away in his supply box. Santino wastes the entire night because he broke the serger and insulted his only means of fixing it. Not quite the drama we’d hoped for, but satisfying none-the-less.

Next Morning

The models come for their fittings, except for Uli’s who just doesn’t show. She’s left to fit her dress on herself and Chris says she should just model her own work because she’s pretty enough to do so. Pea’s models are late, too. Uli’s back up models are not showing up either. Uli is screwed. Then Tim comes in and tells everyone that they are going to go to the Meatpacking District (which is Very Hot now) and have a magnificent dinner at STK. The designers don’t want to go. They want to stay and work. They all bitch and complain. Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo says that when he wins again, he can have as many fancy dinners in the Meatpacking District with Nicole Kidman as he likes.

They have dinner, alone in the restaurant. Tim comes in and tells them that there are two more surprises: the first is that they get an extra day to work because the other surprise is that they have to make a fourth look: one comprised of materials found right here, right now in the restaurant. You have five minutes to destroy the room. GO! There is ripping, and wrecking, and glass breaking and chandeliers coming down and leatherette being ripped off. It is a horror show. At least 25% of the new look must come from these materials, and the look must work with the other three already in their collections.

One Day to the Show

Daniel V and Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo are talking about Chris. It seems like he goes to sleep and wakes up with his designs all figured out. (They are jealous, even if they aren’t admitting it.) Santino is working with his stretch sequin crap and Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo keeps calling it stripper wear. That’s the best you got? Puh-leeze, girl.

Hair and make up consult. Tim comes around to look at their 4th looks and sees that half the designers aren’t even started. He reminds them that there is 100 large on the line. Uli admits she’s a little bit screwed. Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo assures Tim that he knows in his head what will eventually come together. Sweet Pea has fun materials and they go with her other looks. Korto! is doing something with steel wool pads on the shoulders. Could be cool. Could be a freak show. Daniel V is working with some foam insulation tubes. Tim tells him to carry on. Mychael is making a cute mini dress. Or so he says. Tim tells the designers that they are in the Project Runway Olympics and he has complete trust in them, and they have until midnight and then another two hours in the morning.

Korto! is now doing something with black on black. She’s got these lava beads that she pulled out of a vase at the restaurant, and she’s laying down a bed of glue and applying the beads. The other designers are all giving her the stink eye. Santino has pieces all over every work area and none of the other designers can figure out what he’s doing. Pea points out that he only has one look finished.

Back in the Atlas, Uli asks the other women who they think will win, and of course they each think that they will. Uli says that she’s visualizing herself walking into the bank with the Big Check. In the boys’ room Daniel V is saying that he’s just nervous and can’t even remember what he has left to do. He is humble and gracious. The #3 Surrogate Daughter and I agree that he’s just gotten better looking in the last few years, and that he, unlike say, Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo and/or Santino is a Real. Class. Act.

Morning of the Show

Mychael is numb. Daniel is exhausted. Pea only has to steam one dress. Chris is taking a nap. Tim comes in, looks, shrugs. With an hour for hair and make up, Daniel is in a state of shock and can’t believe how much detail work he has left to do. Korto! looks for scraps of black leather. Chris wanders in. Korto! wants to win so bad she can taste it. Mychael just wants it over with and to find out if he’s in or out. Daniel says that although he’s trying to keep his game face on, he’s sweating like a pig. Santino is gloating that he’s got five minutes left and it’s all falling into place.

RUNWAY!

Diane Von Furstenburg is the guest judge. Michael Kors is not orange. Oh my god, how I have missed NinaGarcia. And we’re off and running

Santino has silver leggings and a sequined top. Something silver. The restaurant dress is white curtains made into an oversized anorak with black sequin leggings. The top is actually nice. A liquid silver evening dress. Glamorous and boring.

Mychael: a blue dress, a white dress with bits of plastic and lemon yellow green bits (restaurant dress) on a model who can’t walk. Blue and lime green separates. A magenta evening dress with a lime green belt and cut outs at the arm syce.

Uli: a short peach dress with flowers and ruffles, a sculpted peach and greige dress, a satin halter top and pencil skirt. The restaurant piece is a coat? made with an open weave fabric and maybe some fringes woven through it? It’s interesting and textured.

Korto! a magenta sleeveless short dress with pockets, slim trousers with a halter top with beading and interest at the plunging neck line. The restaurant dress is AMAZING!! Black placemats have been sculpted into a fitted bodice, the skirt is layers and levels and there are these beaded areas that are patterns. It has movement and interest and works with her mini-collection flawlessly. The final dress is an oversize print, full skirt, pleated bodice. Also has pockets.

Chris puts out a collection. A real collection of sportswear that looks like it just stepped out of Bryant Park. Oversized jacket/cowl/hood thingy in that black and grey plaid over bright orange leggings. Another hood/legging shape. The restaurant challenge dress is a bodice of black placemats that looks like an oversize bow on a swing skirt made of silver crocodile leatherette. It moves. The evening dress is an over the top couture piece with sticky outy parts, and swoops of fabric and just drop dead.

Daniel V’s collection is sporty. He leads with a sort of bicycle racer top in cobalt and white over a black leather mini bubble skirt. Or it might be mini bloomers. His restaurant dress has those black tubes running vertically along the midriff, looking like a suicide bomber. The next look is in my notes thusly: FAIL. And then there is his red carpet dress. It is the textured black shiny stuff, and white stretchy insets on the sides under the arms, and they’ve gone from straight to swoopy and details with hobnail studs along the seam line. It’s hot, but it’s not red carpet.

Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo leads off with a vulva-length lizard sequined mini skin-tight tunic, follows with something that has an asymmetrical hem cut up to the cooch, an awful magenta and black fringed something and a jumpsuit that is equally bad.

Pea’s first look is a pretty little dress in butter soft pale shimmery green leather. Next is a diaphanous negligee with fleurchons at the hem and shoulder, the restaurant challenge and her evening gown. Yep. Kate Greenaway come to life. Sweet, but ho-hum.

As we break for the last commercials, we think it will probably be Korto! for which we are chuffed. Could go to Chris. Maybe Uli.

The designers come back. The judges speak: Mychael, you know how to dress women. DVF likes everything but the one-sleeved t-shirt. Uli surprised them with no printed and a more constructed style. Too bad, because the judges think that she lost herself. They WANTED the prints. Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo’s work was messy and not the Jeffrey they remembered. Maybe they had head injuries, because he was exactly the talentless asshat the viewers remembered. (Laura was right: he couldn’t sew.) Santino’s evening gown is dismissed as looking like the model was searching for a disco swimming pool (Michael Kors, we’ve missed you.) DVF thinks that maybe it was a leetle vulgar.

Santino, Uli, Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo and Mychael are out. Santino, speaking of himself in the third person, assures us that “Santino Rice is always in”. Miz Shoes would amend that to “Santino Rice is always insufferable.”

This leaves Pea, Korto!, Chris and Daniel V on the runway. The judges start with Chris, and he gets all weepy. You like me! You really like me! Michael Kors lauds Chris’ work as being pure American sportswear. The collection showed a real thread. The restaurant piece fit into the line seamlessly. The red carpet look was a bit tooo dramatic, maybe, says NinaGarcia. DVF calls his work elegant, dramatic, consistent and the best of American Sportswear.

Daniel V showed clarity and confidence. Michael Kors says that he got a clear idea of the woman Daniel was designing for. Korto! gets heaps of deserved praise for her restaurant dress and her use of color and print. Kors loves her asymmetry in her work and that she designs dresses that look good on real women, and that women would want to wear. The two women on the couch in Miz Shoes living room concur.

DVF loves the sweetness of Pea’s line, her only negative is that it looks a little home made. Heidi says she wouldn’t wear it, but that there would be customers for that combination of hard and soft.

Heidi says that Chris surprised everyone: there were no drag queens or carnival floats. NinaGarcia agrees that his work was sophisticated and not overdone. Michael Kors was blown away by the restaurant dress.

Daniel’s first look is criticized because the model wasn’t wearing a bra and she was all floppy. His restaurant dress was said by Mr. Kors to show a “modernist sense of humor” and that the mini-dress was a modern way to look at evening wear. DVF says that “one dress is all it takes to make you famous” and she would know. coughwrapdresscough. The judges think that he grew the most.

Korto!’s work is more polished than what she showed in her season. Heidi calls it wearable. Crafted well, cut well and not mundane. DVF says that the restaurant dress blew everyone away, and that Korto! designs around the real woman’s body.

Sweet Pea has a message, a story to tell that is romantic and sweet. The judges allow as how there is a customer for that look. Michael says that she’s a biker chick who does girly and romantic. (And the problem with that, buddy?)

So. Here it is. Chris: we saw a real evolution and strong point of view. Thanks. You’re out. Pea, your story is clear, romantic, charming and feminine. See ya. Pea says that having DVF love her collection was high accolades.

Daniel, something has changed in you: you have new confidence. Your collection left us wanting more. Korto! we see great talent in you. How far you have come: everything you make is something a woman would want to wear. So of course, you are out, and Daniel is the winner.

Korto rolls her eyes and says, Number Two again. Daniel delivers some gracious speech or another, which, frankly, nobody in Miz Shoes living room hears, because all of us, the RLA included, are jumping up and down and shrieking “KORTO WUZ ROBBED!!!”

And that’s OK, because it means that for the present, I can still afford her work, and she’ll still answer my e-mails. But she was robbed. Sweetiedarling, in the fans’ eyes, you’ll always be the number one PR All Star. Not as good as the big check, I know., but that and $150 bucks to buy another necklace is all I got.