Manhattan in the morning. Emilio thinks that now that there are only ten designers left, the competition is serious. Mil/ya says that it’s a bummer that so many women have been sent home, but that on the other hand, she is empowered by being a woman still in the competition. Why does Miz Shoes just want to slap Mil/ya every time she opens her yap? Grow some affect, sister.
Seth Aaron has immunity for this challenge which is explained thusly: Tim will take the designers to meet one of America’s favorite designers and together they will give the contestants all the tools they need. Michael Kors is the designer and the tools are a hardware store. Design a look from stuff you buy at the hardware store AND an accessory. Push the envelope. Think outside of the box. Try to come up with an exhortation that is not a cliche.
Emilio isn’t feeling good about this. He makes high fashion, not gimmicks. The designers have $150 and 35 minutes to shop. Jesse is astounded to discover how much hardware costs. May/la feels confident. Emilio stocks up on washers and cord, only to discover that he can only buy half of what he’ll need to make a dress. Jay is going to make garbage bags into leather. Amy is using sandpaper, because of all the colors and textures. Seth Aaron has chains. They all have until midnight; the winner gets immunity.
Jay says that he’s not taking the easy way out and making a dress: he’s making pants. May/la has focused first on her accessory; a necklace made from brass key blanks and bits of screening. It is breathtaking. Seth Aaron is hammering away at something. Is he making armor? Anthony is going to make something soft and airy out of hard. Amy and Jonathan are having the laughs together. That sort of editing never bodes well. Emilio wants to make a Paco Rabbane macrame dress, but he doesn’t have enough cord and washers. Someone says that Emilio is making stripper clothes. Not that there is anything wrong with strippers.
Amy is working her glue gun, Ben is using copper. Mil/ya is making something (hold on, because this is earth-shattering in its originality and astonishing leap away from her usual, NOT) black and white and color blocked. Wake me when she has a fresh idea and not another 1960s retread. I am officially over Mil/ya and I was never that into her to begin with. Jesse’s mesh is sticky and he didn’t know it would be. Oh, the humanity. Jay is crying because he’s had some personal revelation about the dynamics of his family of origin. He always competed with his sister. Anthony has found magenta duct tape.
Tim comes for his walkabout: Oh, look. Mil/ya is working with black and white paint tray liners. Jesse is creating an Elizabethan bodice over a puffy miniskirt. Tim warns him that it’s looking like a costume in an elementary school play. He tells Jesse to be careful with the costume aspect. Emilio says he’s making an intergalactic something or other and Tim says that it might be a bikini. Anthony’s dress looks tortured, and Anthony agrees that it pretty much blows. Jay is making spectacular leather pants. May/la’s necklace is still pretty spectacular and who knows what her dress will turn out to be. Make it work!
Jonathon says that he’s doing Veronica Lake meets C3PO. Isn’t he too young to even know how to reference Veronica Lake? Was she known for wardrobe? I thought she only had that hair thing going on. Jay’s model can’t even get her foot in the leg of the pants. She offers to grease up. Emilio is still whining about having to make a bathing suit. Jay is making a sexy belt to go with the sexy pants. Jesse is painting his copper flashing silver to set it apart from the two other copper flashing dresses.
Morning comes to all of us, and Seth Aaron is excited for the show, but Mil/ya hates the challenge. Mil/ya hates life, as far as this reviewer can tell. Jesse says that this is “cray-cray” and another twee buzzword is born and hopefully dies with the lifespan of a house fly. Emilio dispiritedly says that they are all in the bottom ten this week. Mil/ya disses May/la for finally making her bed. In the work room, all is a flurry of glue guns and duct tape.
Amy’s top is very cool and very sculptured. Jay’s pants are still too tight. Emilio’s bikini bottom won’t stay up because of the weight of the washers, so he macrames everything together on his model to create a one-piece. His model is a trooper. Anthony trash talks Emilio, Seth Aaron and Jesse. Mil/ya calls herself and her work a rock star and says it’s perfect. Really. Can I just slap her? Emilio recognizes that his piece is a disaster and commits to it fully. He says that the make up is awful, the hair is awful and his work is awful. Over in commercial-land the Blow Fly Skank is still naked. You’d think she could at least brush her hair.
On the runway, our judges are Michael Kors, NinaGarcia, Isabel Toledo (who designed Michelle Obama’s inaugural dress) and Stephen Webster who is credited with being a jewelry designer. Mil/ya’s 1960’s retread walks first. Ho fucking hum already. Jesse’s Elizabethan bodice has a silver mushroom balloon for a skirt. Jonathon’s copper dress is a copper dress. Form fitting. Anthony’s dress is purple with some sheer screening over it. Ben thinks that the fact that his copper dress doesn’t actually touch his model’s body makes it cool. Emilio’s bikini bottom is too small. Jay’s plastic bag pants have been paired with a top that has a sort of bubble-hemmed peplum and he’s given it vertical stripes of blue painter’s tape. Seth Aaron’s dress came from Judy Jetson’s closet. Amy’s sandpaper dress is very cool, even if she has used black circular sanding discs to create a skirt that is very similar to last week’s fish scale pants disaster. May/la has made a nothing little dress out of screening, with a skeletal jacket constructed of stiff black rope and the whole thing sets off the necklace. She, Seth Aaron, Jonathon and Ben are safe.
Mil/ya gets love for her “witty” cuff made out of a paint chip or something that has writing on it. She gets love for her black and white mini dress. Emilio claims that he made a bathing suit because he knew everyone else would be making dresses, not because he ran out of materials. It’s a save. Whether it’s a good save remains to be seen. Michael Kors calls it a full-on cheese fest and Heidi says it looks thrown together.
Anthony’s mesh is boring to NinaGarcia, and a bad prom dress to MK. Isabel says there isn’t enough hardware to be interesting. May/la’s screen dress, jacket and necklace is a head-to-toe look and gets the love. Jesse used dry wall mesh on his skirt. NinaGarcia calls it Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. MK likes the hair, but calls the dress a giant Hershey’s Kiss. Stephen Webster says it looks like a vacuum cleaner and Heidi says that no, it just looks like the used bag. There is some asymmetry in the back that gets kind words. Jay’s garbage bag ensemble is amazing!!! The belt looks like braided leather. The word amazing is used a lot and by pretty much every judge.
Mil/ya impressed Isabel, and Webster calls her use of paint trays visionary. Jay made a luxury item out of trash bags. May/la’s work was wearable, fashion-forward and had the strongest accessory. Emilio’s bathing suit was tasteless and a bloody disaster, but NinaGarcia liked it and defends Emilio. Jesse’s work had no artistry according to Isabel. Michael Kors sums up the fashion inspirations: Hershey’s Kiss, Tin Man, dirty vacuum cleaner bag. Not good. Anthony’s work was up tight and boring.
May/la is in. Jay is (deservedly) the winner and Heidi reminds everyone that we have seen A LOT of bad garbage bag couture on this show. Jay weeps and weeps and pulls a Sally Field (you LIKE me) and then confessionalizes that he’s a community college drop-out but he’s still won two challenges. He has? What was the other one? Mil/ya gets an in with her trite shtick and Anthony gets to stick around another week. That leave Jesse and Emilio in the bottom.
Jesse’s work was uninspired and disappointing. It was costume, not fashion. Emilio struggled to produce a Vegas show girl. So Jesse gets sent home, despite having been praised for his production skills all along and Emilio stays. Tim is stunned and tells Jesse that he never saw this result coming, and to go pack up his work space. Jesse delivers a sulky exit interview, opining that he shouldn’t be going home and dropping an f-bomb. Next week: a cat in a baby sling.