Project Runway: Miz Shoes Reviews

"It's a fine line between innovation and insanity."

Yes, Heidi, and I, personally, have been treading that line since birth. Maybe that's why I have no problem with Vincent. Even though I wasn't in love with what he made, he stated his intention: "I'm going to make art...like a painting." and he did it. It was stark, and very much in the spirit of Miro.



Ignore the color in the Miro, and just look at the lines and shapes, and then look at Vincent's ornamentation on his sheath and tell me that you can't see the influence/inspiration.
This week's challenge was to make something, anything wearable from recycled materials, hence the field trip to New Jersey. I loved Laura's comment about it was an ugly morning and New Jersey looked as ugly as it always does. You know, for a native of N'awlins, she has a totally New York attitude.


And while I am very, very sorry to see Alison go, I think the clip of Heidi saying would you rather look long and lean or lumpy was the kiss of death for Alison and her paper brioche (Oh. My. God. We have soooooooooo missed you, Michael Kors. The man has a way with the bon mot, n'est ce pas?).

The rest of the show can be summed up as follows: Laura is being given the Wendy Pepper snide bitch edit, Kayne is being portrayed (or is portraying himself) as Prissy McPrissyQueen and Jeffrey is just a whining, ugly, Shmoo-like, no-talent hack who, if he ever won a challenge, would prove to live the motto "Obnoxious in victory, bitter in defeat." He surely is bitter in defeat. He goes into every challenge with the attitude that he is clearly going to come out the victor due to his style, his vision, his talent, his genius, his glory that is Jeffrey, and comes out of every challenge dissing the winner and complaining that he should have won, and what the FUCK is wrong with the judges that they can't see to give him first prize.

Robert, bless his heart, made a charming dress out of silver mylar. It was not boring, and thankfully it was not as trashy-ho as he thought. It was enough to get him on to the next challenge, and nobody gave him shit from the judging chairs.



Uli made yet another dress without sleeves or a real neckline, which begs the question, does she even know how to set in a sleeve? It was yet another small bodice, full skirt and yes, of course, it had woven/braided elements. Even so, it was pretty.



Laura made another of her signature pieces, which is to say, witty, clean, elegant and with a plunging neckline. I loved the joke on the back of the skirt "For Nuts Only." I've always felt that I had an invisible tattoo on the center of my forehead that reads "Fucked up? Talk to me." and that anyone who can see it, is, and will. Which means that Vincent and I would probably be chatting to each other within moments of him seeing me across a crowded room. But I digress.

I'm sure that hearing the judges compliment Laura on her mylar strapping flower just made Angela's head spin, and not in a dizzy sort of way, but in an Exorcist sort of way. Angela herself did not indulge in her "signature" fleurchons (somebody please slap the pretentiousness out of her), but went back to her self-proclaimed roots and made some ugly-ass patchwork/overalls/mini-skirt thing. Woof. Can you say "dog" in French, Angela? Derriere de chien laid.*

Kayne (below on the left) made an atrocity that the magnificent Tim Gunn referred to as a high-school craft project, but he was only being kind to Kayne because he likes him so much. Kayne then got rid of the glued-on medicine bottle caps and giant paper cone pretending to be a skirt, and made a tin foil fairy dress. No, I am not making a double entendre. Even he was ashamed to send it down the runway. Which suddenly makes me wonder what Bradley could have done with trash. I think that he might have rocked the garbage.



Jeffrey's dress (above, right) didn't suck. In fact, it was very nice, and, like the judges I loved the trompe l'oeil** belt. Having said that, and finding that my tongue has not shriveled up, I would also like to point out that we have seen this same silhouette from both Jeffrey and his asshat friend Satan-ino in the past. Snore. Making it out of comic strips and tempera paint rather than dip-dyed muslin makes it no hotter.

The winner (and still champion) was Michael, who utterly blew the competition away with this:



He understood the concept of the challenge, which was about transformation. He took recyclables (plastic wrap, gold mylar and plastic burlap) and seemingly without effort made them look like organza, satin and linen. He is brilliant. For Jeffrey to bitch about Michael winning this is just mean-spirited. But then, we are speaking about Jeffrey, non?

*Which, as best as I can speak French, translates to dog-butt ugly.

** For reasons I cannot explain, today seems to be French day here at the house of shoes.