MizShoes Reviews: Project Runway, Season 7, Episode Two

How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?

We are back in New York where we belong. There is the clearly filtered bilious green Manhattan sky line, as opposed to the bilious green LA skyline, which needed no filter to achieve that color. There is the Atlas, where Jesus sleeps. He says he hated being in the bottom and he needs to step up his game and get more creative. Oh, lordy, says Miz Shoes, we have ourselves the Cliché Spouter. Check that off your Reality Show Bingo card. Over in the girls’ dorm, there is make up, Neitzche and a general cluelessness as to what this challenge may be.

Heidi glows on the runway as she tells Emilio that he has immunity since he won last week. He also is wearing a hat. It isn’t quite twee, but the season is young. The designers will be taking a trip to somewhere “really out there.” Clueless guesses abound, but in the event, it is a working farm. Tim and the models are in a wet, plowed field. Tim is in a suit and the models are in potato sacks. Tim reminds everyone of the old chestnut about being so beautiful that the person in question would look good in a potato sack. The challenge will be to make party dresses from the burlap sacks. AND the models will have input, being clients. AND they will wear the dresses to an industry party. AND, since they are the clients, the models will get to choose which designer they want to have clothe them. AND it’s a one-day challenge. Whew. That is a LOT of variables.

The nameless models pick their designers, some sticking with the one they worked with in episode one, and others not. Alexis opts to leave Mila (she’s the grim Edith Head clone with the dyed black bob) and try Anthony (he’s your Flamboyant Gay Character on your Reality Show Bingo Card). This leaves Mila not at all happy, and she gets less happy as model after model chooses someone other than her until she is the last kid on the playground and the last model gets stuck with her. They both pretend to be thrilled. But if I were either Alexis or Anthony, I’d sleep with one eye open, if you know what I mean. The designers and models go to the nearby farm stand to grab trim, buttons, dyes, and findings.

Ping (Whack Job with Artistic Pretentions on your Reality Show Bingo Card) wants to play with texture. Mila and Lorena continue their love fest as they decide that they have similar aesthetics. Anthony wishes Alexis had stuck with Mila because she wants flowy and sparkly and he is all: honey, it is a burlap sack. Whatchoo talkin’ bout Willis? Emilio is thrilled to have immunity on this. Ben from Florida is going to make an upside down tulip. The RLA says that the HP sketch pads are cool and tries to talk to me about Apple’s new notepad computer. He stops when I glare at him and point to the tv screen.

Mila just won’t let go, and spends her time in the work room needling Anthony and saying that working with him is Alexis’ loss. Anthony confessionalizes that Mila can kiss his and his whole family’s collective asses. All righty then. Emilio observes that burlap is hard to work with. One of the still-faceless and nameless women is making a print on her potato sack using dye and a sliced potato. OK, points for clever, or maybe we’ve just hit the Twee square.

Tim comes in for his walkabout. Pamela is doing a bustier and skirt, but as a one-piece. Tim questions the time it will take. She says she’s good. Tim loves her ombre dye job. Mila’s model wants tulle around the neck, and Tim says oh, good lord, no, and so Mila turfs the tulle. Jay is dyeing fabric and then adding trim and Tim is concerned about time management. Ping is carving burlap and draping herself again, because the dress form doesn’t let her see movement, or something. The skirt is too short and Tim reminds her that the runway is elevated and we don’t want to be seeing model hoo-ha. Ping says she’ll take care of it.

Amy’s model wants lots of ruffles and Tim is concerned that this is not reflective of Amy’s point of view. Jesus has made a pencil skirt using ribbon applied on the diagonal over the burlap to create a new, not-burlap fabric. Tim dings him for “skirting” the challenge. Ah, that Tim Gunn. He is too droll. Jesus does not listen to Tim. Cross off Stupid Git Who Doesn’t Listen to Tim on your Reality Show Bingo Card.

The models come in and Jesus tells his girl that she needs to sell it on the runway because he totally screwed the pooch. Ping realizes that she may have problems with her skirt. Anthony is still rolling his eyes over his model’s taste and Mila is still gloating that she is glad, glad, glad that Alexis dissed her and went with Anthony. I still wouldn’t let her stand too close behind me. Jay is distressed that his dye has turned his burlap navy blue and not whatever shade he thought it was going to be.

And, crap. That Blowfly skank is still wandering around naked and smug. You’d think they could have gotten another commercial in the can by now, wouldn’t you? Or if Blowfly is all that, couldn’t she have picked something out and gotten it shipped? Oh well. It’s the day of the show. Some dude is dithering over shoes or boots, shoes or boots. Jay is freaking out. Janeane (Reality Show Bingo Card square for Cries All The Time) has lots of work to do and is nervous. Two hours for hair and make up. Use the Blowfly wall,

thoughtfully.

Runway. Judges are NinaGarcia, Michael Kors looking much less orange and Lauren Hutton, who has NOT HAD WORK DONE and thank the lord for that. She is fabulous.

Anthony’s model walks first. The dress he’s made is sweet and looks soft. Ping’s model exposes her ass crack down and back. She appears to be wearing a lamp shade for a skirt. Uh, not pretty. Ben from Florida has made a pink dress that does look a little floaty. Mila has made something nasty with metal all over it and seams and whatever. The metal strips don’t actually line up in any meaningful way. Anna Marie, whoever she is, doesn’t get a legible note. Is she the potato print girl?

Jesse has made pants and a vest, with color trim peeking out here and there. Seth, who dresses funny but seems a lot nicer human being than the person he reminds everyone of (Jeffrey the Pin-Headed Shmoo, aka the angry little peanut) has done some sort of Judy Jetson dress with an attached hoodie and a lampshade skirt. But this is a boned and bell-shaped lampshade, not Ping’s stiff oval shade. Amy’s dress has a handkerchief hem and the burlap still looks like burlap, but in a good way.

Jay’s dress has a tank top and a full, tutu skirt with the fluffy stuff made of applied and shredded burlap circles. It looks an awful lot like Christopher Straub’s stuff from early in last season. Emilio has done a sheath dress with interest added with vertical stripes of color. We don’t see enough to tell if this is applied ribbon, or dyed, pieced strips. Jesus has a dark brown burlap tank over his acid green ribbon skirt. There is a patch of the burlap randomly applied to one ass cheek of the skirt. Jonathon (who may be the boots or shoes boy) has made a slip dress with a vertical stripe of lace down the middle of the front. Maya has some shapeless thing with color. Pamela’s burlap looks like denim, laces in the back and the skirt makes the model’s butt look huge.

Pamela, Mila, Ping, Jay, Jesus and Amy are the top and bottom designers. Michael Kors loves the shredded fluffy stuff on Jay’s dress. Transformative! Pamela’s dress is too short, too tight and not sophisticated, according to NinaGarcia. MK says that the plain potato sack would look better than this, but allows as how the dye job was spectacular. Mila says that she visualized the color. Heidi loves it, of course, because it is short, tight and shiny. MK has issues with the gappy fit on the bodice, but Heidi says it’s sexy. Ping cries. Heidi clocks Jesus over the percentage of burlap vs not burlap. NinaGarcia says it needs to be cooler and younger. Michael notes that the color blocking doesn’t work and that he gave his model an asymetrical ass. NinaGarcia says that Jesus has awful color sense. Amy has done a cowl neck and an open back. Michael Kors says that it’s flirty and sophisticated, but still burlap! Is Ping really unable to understand English or is it a ploy? Lauren Hutton loves her potential, at any rate.

Amy is in. Jay turned a potato sack into a perfect cocktail dress and is our winner. Mila is called edgy and sophisticated (but not by Miz Shoes, who stands by her opinion that Mila’s piece was poorly constructed and lame) and she is in. Ping is in (and again, Miz Shoes thinks that Lauren Hutton pulled hard for her). Pamela made a mess, and her taste level is questionable, as is her ability to be fashion forward. Jesus missed the point and made a mundane and matronly mess. Nevertheless, Jesus is saved and Pamela is Aufsie Daisy.

Next week, a team challenge and NinaGarcia says “both of these dresses are ugly.”