Over at the NEW GOTHAM apartments, Kit Pistol and Sweet P are talking. They were sad to see Carmen leave, but well, screw it, more closet space and Sweet P says, you know? better her than me, so wtf. In the boys’ room they are talking about what a Project Runway perfume would smell like: fear and Chinese food. Nice, I can’t wait to see that on the market. We head back to Parson’s and right in to a model selection. Jack can choose to stay with his girl or take someone else’s. So he does. He takes Ricky’s model. This means that Ricky now has Jack’s former model. Ricky manages not to cry. Heidi tells the designers to head to the workroom where they will find Tim and some old friends. True to reality shows everywhere, the designers immediately hit upon the totally wrong solution to the puzzle. OLD LADIES!!! We’re going to design for geriatrics! Whee! Actually, no. They find Tim and NinaGarcia and a bunch of photos from old Elle Magazines that display some of the most egregiously ugly fashion trends of the past. One of them is overalls. Jillian is wearing overalls and there is a moment of sweet embarrassment for all concerned.
Tim tells the designers to choose an ugly trend, and out comes the button bag to determine order. Jack as last week’s winner goes first. He chooses Brittney Spears on cracked out pleather. The rest of it goes like this: Victorya/underwear as outerwear; Christian/a Zoot Suit (playing to his strengths as a Vivienne Westwood drone); Rami/Poodle skirts; Kit/fringe; Elisa/cut outs; Jillian/overalls; Ricky/neon; Kevin/70’s elephant bell bottoms; Chris/Joan Crawford shoulder pads (oh, come on, could you please be a little less of a drag queen cliche Chris?); Squinty/dance wear as day wear; and Sweet P wonders if her button is glued to the bottom of the bag, that she’s always last as she takes the baggy, oversized sweater.
The challenge will be to update the look. The twist is that the designers have one minute to organize themselves into teams of three, and the three bad trends must be combined into a collection. They will show together, and they must use all three trends in all three looks or figure out some other way to make the three pieces into a cohesive collection. They must choose a team leader. They have $250 to spend and two days to work. Your minute starts now. When the dust settles, the teams are: Kit, Christian and Jack (fringe/zoot suit/pleather); Rami, Kevin and Jillian (poodle skirts/bell bottoms/overalls); Ricky, Victorya and Elisa (neon/underwear as outerwear/cut outs}; Squinty, Sweet P and Chris (dance wear/baggy sweaters/shoulder pads). I have bolded the team leaders.
Christian names his team “Team Star” because they are all FABULOUS!? There is the usual scrambling at Mood, with team leaders making bad choices and worrying about time and money. Ricky chooses duchesse satin for his team. Chris picks some horrible beige knit. Jillian’s team is into denim and Liberty of Londen tiny floral prints (also with a beige base). Christian’s team is working the black and white pattern on pattern to death.
In the work room, Sweet P is going for a sack dress to update the baggy sweater. Chris is doing some little bolero/shrug with what looks like black and brown upholstery cloth all the while telling SquintySteven that “Girl, this jacket is going to be fabulous!” I hereby request a moratorium on the word “Fabulous”. Ricky interviews that he isn’t concerned about working with Elisa because he used to be a dancer, and so he has lots of experience in talking to people who sound like they just smoked an ounce of sensimilla. You just have to speak to them in a language that they can understand, he says, and promptly does, talking about centering to Elisa and showing her how to mark her fabric with a pin as opposed to spit. She has a Helen Keller “water” moment, and it is a beautiful thing.
Over in Jillian’s corner, Rami is doing a denim dress, Kevin is making bell-bottom, high-waisted hot pants (Hey! I think I had those in the 70s!) and Jillian is being a nag about fitting the muslin to the mannequin and time management and whispering shit to Rami about Kevin. Don’t you miss high school sometimes? I know I don’t. SquintySteven does a Tim impression that lacks the spot-on tonality of Santino, but has better text: “Designers?” he says “I’m here to tell you that you are all screwed.” I howl. I love SquintySteven. He’s Miss Personality this season, at least for me, and it isn’t some toxic, evil thing like The Pencil-Necked Shmoo or Satan-ino.
Victorya is up and interviewing that her team decided to put all three looks into each piece. And she is micro-managing Ricky, her team leader, in a passive aggressive manner that we all can agree is inappropriate and annoying. Tim comes in to give the designers 30 minutes with their models. When she sees her design on her model, Victorya hates it, decides to completely redesign and redo, and dissed Ricky all at the same time. She neglects to tell him her choice to redo, and since he’s the team leader and will have to take the hit if everything goes wrong, this is rude and bad form. Jillian doesn’t think Kevin is working fast enough. She doesn’t say anything to him though, she whispers away in Rami’s ear. Since this requires her to lean up against those yummy arms of his, who can really blame her, except me, who thinks that if you have a problem with someone on your team the most efficient way to manage it is to speak to the team member in question. Rami inviews that Jillian should have been pushing Kevin harder. Maybe you should have said that to her instead of the camera and instead of nodding your head and continuing to whisper in the corner with her. What do I know?
Over at Team Jillian, the look is coming together nicely. It all looks like something Jillian herself would wear. Is this a good thing? Discuss amongst yourselves.
At Team Ricky, nothing looks finished or refined. Victorya is telling Tim that she’s decided to change the sillouhette. Tim asks her why she’s making these decisions when Ricky is the leader. So then there is a scene where Ricky and Victorya are talking, and Victorya is saying that she ‘s glad that Ricky’s the team leader, she just thinks that he sucks at it. Nice. They continue to bicker over his leadership skills.
And it’s Runway Day. Ricky and Elisa are finished, but Victorya went ahead and changed her design (see above) and is now doing final fittings on the bodice. It’s flat. Ricky steps in and with his expertise in lingerie, adjusts the whole thing. The model says it feels better. Everyone in the room can see it fits and looks better. Victorya says that she likes it flat, despite all opinion and evidence to the contrary. Then she sulks about it for a while and until she finally admits that Ricky helped. Kevin is still working on his bell bottom hot pants and saying that he has to pull a magic rabbit out of his
hat. With two hours for hair and make up, we see SquintySteve worrying about Chris’ bolera jacket, which, it must be said “Girl? Is not so fabulous.”
Cut to Christian being a queen about his collection. I L-U-V it so mush. I L-U-V our collection. In all honesty, he says, Ricky’s is awful and Chris’ not much better. He may have a point, but that doesn’t mean I have to like hearing it from him. And cut to the runway where the guest judge is (without any ado or fanfare) Donna Karan.
Team Jillian goes first and they have put all three bad things into each piece. All three are made with the same denim/Liberty combination. The Liberty print is used as binding/finishing on the denim ho-down dress that is Rami’s interpretation of a poodle skirt. The high-waisted bell bottom hot pants are coupled with a shirt that looks like Daniel V’s blouse from his taken-from-nature challenge. (Remember the weird, poufy collar?) And Jillian’s overalls are adorable. High waisted, bell bottomed and with a sort of v-collared bib. In my youth, I either had them or would have worn them. If they were age appropriate, I’d still wear them.
Team Chris has chosen to unite the collection with their fabric choice. There is a wonderful sack dress from Sweet P, an Asian-inspired tunic over leggings from SquintySteve and a long dress with the awful bolero from Chris. Not so much a collection as three things in the same fabric coming down the runway at the same time. Meh.
Team Star (Christian) is a forgettable melange of black and white and stripes and nothing.
Team Ricky is a mini-ballerina tutu with a very nice boned bodice from Victorya, a hot mess from Ricky and a simple black sheath dress with neon splashes looking like cut outs from Elisa. Worse than meh.
The judges don’t even waste time on toying with the designers. The clear winner is Jillian’s team, since they had a vision, cohesion and well made garments. Done and done. The only thing left to do is to savage the crap from the rest of the designers. Christian escapes with his team. While there was no there there, there was also nothing to make Donna Karan or Michael Kors lose their lunches. Unlike, say, the designs of Team Chris and Team Ricky. With Team Chris, the pieces were seen as sort of OK, but not from the same show. There was a clear discrepancy of visions. The dance wear wasn’t fluid enough, the shoulder pads not modern enough, and hello? A bolero/shrug should be tight? Donna loved Sweet P’s dress, as well she should, because it looked like it came from one of her own collections; drab beige and black and knit and slouchy.
As for poor Team Ricky, NinaGarcia thought the concept was good, but badly sewn. Victorya actually stepped up and gave the credit for her fit and design to Ricky. Elisa jumped in to Ricky’s defense as well, saying that if his garment was poorly made, it was because as the leader, he had spent so much time helping and guiding her. But then it is the “Who goes home” question and Victorya gladly pushes Ricky under the bus. Elisa offers to sacrifice herself (of course) because that’s just the way she is. And Ricky glares at Victorya and opines that the workroom would be a better place without her passive/aggressive behaviors. Over on Team Chris, Steve says that Chris should go because he was the leader, Chris says he should go because he was the leader and Sweet P tries to take a pass. When pressed, she sort of squeaks out that Steve should go, but I forget why. Because he turned on Chris? Because his garment was weak? Because he squints?
The judges don’t like Victorya’s attitude (neither does Miz Shoes). They say that Chris failed as a leader by not making the collection cohesive, while Ricky failed by making bad choices and making decisions that made the challenge more difficult (Hel-lo? Duchesse satin? Are you mad?). Michael tosses out the Mother of the Bride insult for the millionth time and we hear the judges verdict: In are Sweet P, Elisa, Steve, Victorya (boo) and Ricky (who manages not to cry, which brings the total to two shows with and two without, weeping). Which means that Chris is out. Well, we’ll always have the salad dress.