Custom Design

And then, there were three. Thursday’s penultimate episode of Project Runway whittled our pack of designers down to the three that will have a shot at winning the season. They’re not the only three that will show, of course – 10 people actually showed, so making a collection was not a special privilege for the four designers that made it this far. The bloom is off the rose on that one, so to speak.

Speaking of blooms that are no longer on their respective roses, I’m not pleased with how the elimination went this time, but we’ll get to that later, I suppose. First, we have to talk about all the adorable homes to which Tim Gunn went, and also how he managed to find himself on a trampoline in wingtips. If only the entire episode had been so adorable.

The first stop on Tim Gunn’s American Tour 2010 was Vancouver, Washington, home of Seth Aaron, his wife and his two teenage kids. I hadn’t really considered it until now, but Seth Aaron’s designs have been so good for most of the season that I didn’t even consider the fact that he’s straight! And he has procreated! Well isn’t that adorable.

Seth Aaron’s line was what most of us probably expected – impeccably tailored jackets, lots of hardware, a plethora of black. I loved it, but that’s because his aesthetic appeals to my personal style, and it always has. Tim Gunn was not quite so impressed, however, and he was probably right. This is stuff we’ve seen from Seth Aaron before, and in order to win, his collection needs to be a continuation of his aesthetic, not a rehash of what he’s already decided he likes.

Papa Tim told him to start all over, which I thought was probably a bit drastic – the collection could turn the corner with a few statement pieces, possibly with hints of either a more space-aged or more feminine aesthetic. I could see it going either way, and I think that Seth Aaron is talented enough to transform his collection into something more challenging and surprising with a few key tweaks.

To punish Tim for his harsh suggestions, Seth Aaron’s kids hauled him on to a backyard trampoline in his suit, coat and wingtips. He made an attempt to bounce and promptly fell over, which is really the only way that the introduction of Tim Gunn to a trampoline could end. The entire time, I wanted to scream “DON’T HURT TIM GUNN!” at my screen, like I was seeing my kindly grandfather mishandled by some neighborhood kids or something.

Next we went to see Emilio and his two brothers in New York, in what was possibly the least warm-and-fuzzy home visit in Runway history. They just stood around and talked outside for a while, and then Emilio explained his upbringing in the South Bronx during the birth of hip-hop. That was…sort of it.

Tim Gunn didn’t love Emilio’s collection thus far and neither did I – in fact, some of what we saw seemed kind of dumpy and old-looking, which is not what I expected from him. I know that some people aren’t great fans of Emilio, but I’ve enjoyed almost everything that he has designed this season (literal string bikini notwithstanding) and I hoped for and expected more from him, when left to his own devices to create a collection. 1940s is hard to pull off in a modern way, and I question whether or not he’ll be able to do it.

Oh, by the way: now seems like as good a time as any to mention that I have yet to look at the online image collections of our designers. I never do, I want to be surprised. I love a surprise.

After visiting the two sure-thing designers, Tim was off to see Mila in Los Angeles. If you ever wanted to see someone that’s very serious about her aesthetic, she’s your girl – even her dog is black and white. Instead of finding her two-tone existence kind of irritating, I actually came out of the home visit with a little more respect for what she does. If that’s her vision and she’s that committed to it, then by all means, make black and white clothes. Do your thing, girl.

Which is not to say that I liked the clothes that we saw from her – I didn’t. Some of them were interesting to look at, and the combination of patterns on one of her dresses was particularly thought-provoking, but they’re just not the sort of silhouette that I tend to find appealing. I’m not sure that the shapes that she likes are really relevant to current fashion, and as the judges discussed during her mini-runway, there’s a certain predictability to clothes that reference bygone eras.

And then there was a visit to Jay in (if I remember correctly) San Francisco, whose parents were so adorable and supportive that I kind of wanted to hug my TV. His clothes were more forward-thinking than Mila’s, and I found myself really wanting to see the rest of his collection. Sure, a few things were over-thought and over-designed, but I’d rather see a designer try to do too much than too little. His line was more sophisticated and futuristic than I had expected, and I was really looking forward to seeing him compete in Bryant Park.

Except he won’t be competing. Despite Princess Michael Kors’ best efforts, Mila will round out the final three to compete for the show’s grand prize. Kors was on Team Jay, Heidi was on Team Mila (REALLY, Heidi? Really?), and Nina Garcia was the tie-breaker. As soon as it became clear that she would be the one to decide, I knew it would be Mila – she has seemed to be pulling for her all season based on the strength of Mila’s early work, so there we have it.

If you’re angry right now like I am, just try and go back to the mental image of Papa Gunn on the trampoline. That will make it all better, at least for a moment.

Original post by Amanda Mull

I don’t know about you, but it sort of took me by surprise that Thursday night’s episode was the last regular challenge for this season of Project Runway. I know that they said it at the end of the previous week’s show, but I still wasn’t expecting the season to be almost over when I fired up the DVR to watch on Friday morning.

But I guess it is! We were down to five designers and two were to be eliminated so that we would have three Bryant Park finalists, but that didn’t happen, because that never happens. Well, it happened last season, but I think we all know that last season was an anomaly and we should pretend that the whole thing never existed. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s review how our final challenge shook out.

I’m not sure about you guys, but I loved the challenge and thought that it was one of the best and most creative of the season. The designers were treated to a mini circus performance (with no animals, thankfully – circus animals always make me kind of sad) and then instructed to create a look with it as their inspiration. Since designers use all kinds of wacky things to fuel their collections, it was nice to see our contestants forced to incorporate an idea that isn’t necessarily clothes-oriented at its core.

And, of course, they did it with varying degrees of ability and success. Seth Aaron and Emilio made outfits that were predictably great. Jay and Mila made outfits that were predictably mediocre. Anthony made the dress that you heard referred to in commercials as the “giant blue condom.” I’m not entirely sure that it looked condom-esque to me, but it was made out of a similarly synthetic fabric.

Let’s deal with Emilio and Seth Aaron first, since both of them are going to fashion week. Emilio won the challenge with a multi-patterned dress of stripes, polka dots and tulle that Princess Michael Kors said was his favorite look of the entire season. I’m not sure that I was that enthusiastic about it (it had something of a front-bustle that confused me slightly, but it was only noticeable from certain angles), but there’s no question that the dress was impeccably constructed (he even lined the skirt and train – you always win if you line things!)

Seth Aaron’s look edged out Emilio’s ever-so-slightly to be my favorite of the evening. I could look at the jackets that the man has made this season forever and not get bored. His outfit was a striped (there were lots of stripes in this challenge) ringleader’s jacket that defied gravity and looked absolutely impeccable on his model. It might have verged ever-so-slightly on “costume” territory, but I’d rather that a designer err on the side of the fantastical in a challenge like this.

While they were being critiqued, producers showed a mini montage of several of Emilio’s and Seth Aaron’s looks from the competition thus far, and it was readily apparent that they should both be put forward to Bryant Park – and they were! They’ve probably been the two most consistently good out of everyone, and I think that it’s been clear for several weeks that they should both go.

Which leaves us with the pesky problem of that third spot. Jay, Mila and Anthony were the three vying for it, and let’s go ahead and deal with Anthony right now. His dress was correctly judged as being the weakest of the five circus looks, and he made the poor choice of polyester fabric, which actually compelled Princess Michael Kors and Heidi out of their chairs in order to feel it for themselves. They were horrified and I don’t entirely blame them, no matter my love for Anthony (and it is huge, I tell you. Huge.)

His look just didn’t embody the magic and wonder of the circus in the same way that the others did, and he was sent home. Hopefully, if there is any justice in this world, he’ll get his own show or something. Or maybe I’ll just run in to him in Atlanta one day. That would be great. I guess it’s time for me to start stalking Anthony now.

But yes, right, there are still two designers. Jay and Mila. Their circus looks were both obviously not as good as those made by Emilio and Seth Aaron, but neither of them were bad, either. Well, ok, I thought Mila’s was kind of bad. It was a striped jacket over bright pants, and Seth Aaron’s version was so obviously better that the comparison of the two standing side-by-side on the runway didn’t do Mila any favors.

Jay’s was a Michael Jackson-esque military mini jacket with a pair of pants that Nina Garcia apparently liked quite a bit, although I had a tough time seeing the details on my TV because they were dark pants against a dark runway background. The only thing that bothers me about Jay’s aesthetic is that he often does a really wide-open neckline that won’t work on the majority of women (and will look really skanky on the rest of them), and I wish he’d modify his approach to the v-neck. Other than that, I think that his work this season has been mostly great, and I’ve enjoyed it more than I have Mila’s.

That doesn’t mean that Jay is in, however. He’s sort of in. And so is Mila. Really, they shouldn’t bill the final challenge as the thing that chooses the final three because, as often as not, it chooses the final two plus two more that will make collections and vie for the third spot. Jay and Mila will both head home and create collections, and…well, we all know the drill. This happens all the time.

I’m rooting hard for Jay to make it into the final three, and I think it’ll be fun to see all of our designers at home with Tim Gunn, as always. Who would you choose – Jay or Mila?

Original post by Amanda Mull

Please excuse me while I try to stop myself from making some sort of crass Easter resurrection joke about Thursday’s episode of Project Runway, but I don’t know if my self-control is that good (let’s face it, it’s not), so I’ll skip straight to the point: ANTHONY IS BACK! I mentioned in the comments last week that his return would make my whole life, were it to happen, and when it did, I got up and took a victory lap around my living room, cheering and pumping my fists. Lifetime has officially won me over, through no actions of its own. Their association with Anthony’s return is enough.

Not only did we get a second chance to enjoy Anthony, who has turned out to be one of the greatest (and, judging by the reaction to his auf’ing, most beloved) characters in the history of the show, but we actually got a pretty good performance from several designers despite the inarguable lameness of the challenge, and a couple more surprises.

Like many of you that can’t stop yourselves from reading spoilers on the internet (I try so hard, but remember what I said about my self-control earlier?), I’ve known for about a month that Maya doesn’t make it to Bryant Park. Because of the timing of the season’s run relative to New York Fashion Week, the Lifetime Powers That Be had 10 of the final 11 designers all make collections so that we wouldn’t be privy to any future eliminations. The only person that didn’t show was Maya, and most people first expected to see her eliminated on the show following Fashion Week, but that didn’t happen. As a result, a lot of us have been waiting for the other shoe to drop for quite a while, and Baby Bangs finally cracked at the beginning of Thursday’s episode.

But…did she crack? Is that really what you’d call it? I’ve read a lot of different reactions to the non-explanation of her departure over the past few days, and she seemed altogether too calm to me. When people buckle under the pressure of a competition, they’re generally emotional – I expected some tears, or at least that twitchy face that indicates their predetermined arrival once the person is in a more private setting. Instead, we saw her telling Tim and then the workroom that she was leaving with little emotion; in fact, it almost seemed a bit defiant.

She more or less said that she didn’t think that she was developed enough as a designer to continue in competition, and although Emilio is a smug a-hole, I’m inclined to agree with his estimation of her departure – live by your clothes, die by your clothes. If you’re not developed enough to continue, you’ll be eliminated, and and least it will be based on the work that you produced instead of what honestly seemed like rank cowardice (and maybe a little bit of righteous indignation at not having won a challenge).

So with her gone, my mind immediately went to Jack Mackenroth, the HIV-positive designer that sadly had to excuse himself from season four because of an infection. When he left, they brought back the most recently eliminated designer, Chris March, one of my favorite contestants ever. So, did that mean…could it be…Anthony?!?!

And, of course, yes! That’s exactly what it meant! He strutted into the work room, collar jauntily popped, and took his rightful place at the design table next to the remaining contestants and began working on the challenge. They were to design a red carpet look for Heidi, which makes this the second make-a-dress-for-Heidi challenge of the season, and I would have been irritated by the lack of creativity on the part of the producers if I hadn’t been too busy squealing in delight at Anthony’s second chance.

Because there are only six designers left, everyone was either in the top or bottom, and the split made it apparent who understood what “red carpet” meant and who didn’t. What was weird, however, was that there didn’t really seem to be an obvious top three and bottom 3 – it seemed more like Emilio and Anthony, and then everyone else. And based on the dresses that were made, that’s exactly what it should have been.

Anthony made a neo-vintage black-and-white ensemble that was quietly asymmetrical and utterly elegant. It moved beautifully, it looked easy to wear, and I could see it being flattering on body types ranging from Victoria Beckham to Mo’Nique. Anthony’s dress was a home run from every angle and a perfect way to declare himself back in the competition.

Emilio also hit a home run, however. My mom warned me before I watched the episode on DVR (Real Housewives messes with my PR-watching) that one of the dresses would be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on Project Runway, and she was right. His glittering oiled-bronze column was, like Anthony’s dress, deceptively simple. Like a real, live fashion designer, Emilio didn’t just make a dress, but he made the entire support structure that a truly great strapless moment needs and deserves, and it would have been impossible to not award him the win.

It also would have been impossible not to award Anthony with something, however, so they awarded both of them the win. Heidi will wear Emilio’s dress, guest judge Jessica Alba (who SHOULD NOT be blond but was otherwise lovely) will wear Anthony’s, and all is happy in Project Runwayland. Well, unless you’re on of the other four designers.

Seth Aaron made an uncharacteristic miscue with a bunchy, dowdy black gown that would have mostly masked Heidi’s enviable figure, but because he generally turns out stuff that is well-made and interesting, he was safe. Perhaps his safety was the only sure thing about this episode – looking at the dresses short dresses made by Mila, Jay and Jonathan, I wasn’t sure who exactly they’d pick, particularly after hearing their (sometimes needlessly) harsh critiques.

Mila was also safe, even though I’m beginning to tire of the things that she’s making. I don’t doubt that she’s talented at what she does, but as one of the judges mentioned during their final discussion, I’m just not sure that I want to see more. She does sleek, colorblocked clothes, usually with a black-and-white or otherwise neutral color scheme. We get it. Her dress wasn’t terrible, but it would be nearly impossible for someone with a chest as big as Heidi’s to wear it, even with the aid of the world’s most reliable fashion tape. The physics of that possibility just don’t work out. She was safe, however. Someone has to carry on in Maya’s place and represent Serious Fashion Hair, after all.

Next, Jay. It surprised me that I haven’t seen more people compare Jay’s wavy minidress to the stuff that winner Leanne Marshall made a few seasons ago – not only did the wavy skirt remind me of her clothes immediately, but the blue and ivory color palette was also similar to her final collection. His dress didn’t deserve all of the criticism that came his way, I thought – sure, it emphasized the models booty and the drop waist probably dropped a bit TOO far, hitting her at a wide part of her hips, but I think that’s a relatively minor structural quibble. Not every woman is concerned with making her rear end appear as tiny as possible at all times (of course, it doesn’t surprise me that Princess Michael Kors has such narrow, traditionalist ideas of female beauty), and the judges somehow never gave Leanne the same critique for very similar clothes. As a consolation prize, however, Jay did get to look down Heidi’s shirt. Too bad he’s gay.

And finally (and we do mean finally), Jonathan. I think that most people have seen this day coming for a while, and while Jonathan may be delightful in interviews, his clothes have never quite measured up on the runway. His overworked, under-designed mini dress was drab and kind of sad, and it should have been clear to everyone watching that it was his time to leave. And leave he did, with some cute remark about how he kicked butt, just not all the butt, and I’ll kind of miss him. Just not as much as I would have missed Anthony.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Dear readers, it’s with a heavy heart that I bring you this Project Runway recap. For those of you that haven’t seen the episode and don’t want the ending spoiled, stop reading now, because I’m about to spoil it way earlier than usual. That’s right, Anthony went home, and I don’t even know if life is worth living anymore. The sunshine is a little dimmer. The morning air? Slightly less crisp and full of promise. Thursday was a dark day for those that like their television shows to be entertaining.

There was a challenge of course. And a sponsorship. Some folks, they made some dresses. A couple made pants and jackets. Everyone made a pattern, something in which the judges apparently have zero taste. It was like the show was broadcasting straight from Bizarro World, where up was down, left was right, and Emilio’s pattern was cute instead of vomit-inducing. In fact, it was good. Bizarro World must be an ugly place indeed. Join me in mourning, after the jump.

So, the challenge. I can’t blame the challenge, because that’s not what meted out Anthony’s demise (we’ll blame that on poor judging). As far as product-placement goes, the use of HP computers to design and produce patterned fabric overnight was probably the best challenge we’ve seen in a while – unlike Saturn car parts or the hair and makeup brands that sponsor this show, the ability for the designers to create their own fabric was actually relevant to the point of this show and added to the designs instead of making them more difficult in ways that people that weren’t on a television show would never encounter in the real world.

Our designers were allowed to make whatever they wanted with their patterned fabric, and some of our designers found that more challenging than others. As always, let’s discuss who succeeded first.

Our top three were Emilio, Maya and Seth Aaron, and one of those things is not like the other, for real. Maya made an electrifying McQueen-esque frock that combined texture and print in order to make the print come alive, and I thought that she was entirely successful. Seth Aaron made a pop-art blazer out of a genuinely silly print, and the more I looked at it, the more I could see it on the back of an editor at Fashion Week. It wasn’t meant for the general population, but it was brilliantly off-kilter in a way that several of his jackets have been this season. Plus, making a successful jacket and pants is much harder than tailoring a dress, and he managed to do both perfectly.

Then there was Emilio, who must have roofied both Nina Garcia and Princess Michael Kors before the judging started, because they both just drooled all over his ugly logo print. All he did was scrawl his first initial and last name (with a heart for the O, how…precious) repeatedly on a blue background, and Tim Gunn didn’t like it and neither did I. Also, Tim was correct that it looked something like this:

All he did was make a puffy coat and a simple sheath dress, and the judges fell all over themselves in praise of his apparently masterful work. The pattern wasn’t as horrific from a distance, I’ll give them that, but his outfit was still far less interesting on the whole than Seth Aaron, Maya or Jay (that would have been my top three, in that order). I wouldn’t have put Emilio at any higher than fourth, but he somehow managed to win the entire thing. Like I said, this is Bizarro World. Ugly is cute.

Now, to the sad business of discussing who was on the bottom. It was clear about halfway through the episode that depending on how his dress turned out, Anthony was either going to win or go home. The extended shots of him talking about Beyoncé and his Uncle Leroy’s porn addiction were just to funny and adoring to have him place anywhere else, and sadly when his dress came down the runway, I think we all knew which one it would be.

Which isn’t to say that his dress was bad. It wasn’t bad at all, it was just kind of boring and safe, and maybe a bit too similar to things that he’s made before. I wish that he had branched out a little bit and made something unexpected; maybe we could have kept him around for another week to charm and entertain us all.

He shouldn’t have had to, considering the competition, however. I respect Mila as a designer, but her non-functional maxi dress was pretty atrocious (and also pretty out of character for her). We’ve seen her make so many better things, and I would have never expected her to make a dress that was barely even wearable. Despite the fact that it wasn’t at all body-conscious, her model still had a nearly impossible time staggering down the runway in it, and the colors were simply not working for me. I thought it was the worst look of the night, not least of all because I’ve come to expect better technical execution from Mila.

Jonathan was also in the bottom three, but I didn’t think that his watercolor dress was nearly as bad as the judges did. They seemed to enjoy tearing him limb from limb a little too much, and yes, his dress was sort of dreary, but it wasn’t a bad dress. Jonathan weakly defended himself by asserting that sadness was an emotion too, but Nina and Princess Michael already smelled blood, and nothing was going to stop them from getting their soundbites in, even if the dress didn’t merit such cruelty. The backward jacket was a little weird, but it still seemed more functional than Mila’s dress. His model managed to make it down the runway, after all.

But those two dresses don’t even matter – the judges were intent on sending Anthony back to Atlanta for doing something boring, and back he went, head held high. He reminded all of us that you don’t necessarily need the crown to be the queen, and that there are some situations in life where a Beyoncé song just can’t give you all the emotional support that you need. I think having your favorite designer voted off of Project Runway too soon is one of those times.

Original post by Amanda Mull

How many challenges can we have in a single episode of Project Runway? If they cram more parameters and requirements in, does it make the results better, or does it just make a fantastical meltdown more likely? Will the judges care, as long as the clothes are fierce? Apparently the show’s producers set out to answer those very questions on Thursday’s episode, and the results were as mixed as the challenge was.

Not only did our designers have to work with partners, but they had to create two cohesive looks, base them on different neighborhoods in New York, and also endure a visit from Mister Clean professional shill L’Oreal makeup artist Collier Strong. Some of the designers did ok, others did much worse, and I’m betting that I wasn’t the only viewer that ended the episode feeling underwhelmed.

Let’s start with the positives: as every week goes by, it gets harder and harder to guess who might go home in any given week, and that’s when the show really gets interesting. That your favorite designer might go home for a relatively minor misstep makes the show all the more engaging, and it certainly makes me pay closer attention during judging.

It also means that things like designer pairings matter a lot more than they do in the beginning of the season. The team leaders were picking randomly from Tim Gunn’s Magic Bag o’ Choosing, and then they picked their partners and, afterward, the neighborhood in New York City that would inspire their outfits. Anthony and Maya chose Chinatown, Emilio and Seth Aaron went with Harlem, Amy and Jonathan visited the Upper East Side, and Jay, who was stuck with Mila, designed based on the East Village.

No one got too literal with their inspiration, which has been a nice surprise with this set of designers – if the Anthony and Maya had made a red dress or outfit of any kind, my head was going to explode. In fact, some of the outfits might have been aided by slightly more obvious references, although I’m afraid that even putting that sentiment into words dooms us to a lifetime of Nehru-collared, shiny, bamboo-patterned Chinatown outfits.

Before we talk about those who could have done things differently, let’s address those who were moderately successful. Our top groups were Emilio and Seth Aaron and Anthony and Maya, and really, the competition between their sets of outfits wasn’t even close. Anthony and Maya didn’t get along particularly well but managed to make a totally serviceable cocktail dress with an asymmetrical embellishment inspired by crepe paper streamers, and a somewhat less serviceable jacket and miniskirt that had totally non sequitur red accents that were terrible. I wouldn’t have worn either outfit, but they weren’t bad, per se. Also, they included just the right number of cultural reference points without turning their outfits into costumes.

They really weren’t any match, however, for Emilio and Seth Aaron’s Harlem-inspired outfits. Emilio did the night look, which was a slightly boring evening gown that was saved by its zippered slit and peeking yellow lining, and Seth Aaron was in charge of a denim getup for day. I normally don’t support an all-denim look, but Seth Aaron has done such interesting structural things with jackets this season that I’ll forgive the faux pas. Also, the look appeared to be genuinely Harlem-inspired, despite the fact that it was on the whitest white girl in the history of whiteness.

Apparently our judges (sans Michael Kors, sadly), had trouble deciding who of the two should be the winner, so Emilio and Seth Aaron ultimately got to share the honor, a ProjRun first. Both of their outfits had their flaws in nearly equal amounts, so awarding the win to both of them seemed like the most fair way to take care of things. Personally, I think that Seth Aaron should have won just for wearing hot pink skinny jeans on a trip to Harlem.

Now, to the unpleasantness of the bottom two groups (and it was particularly unpleasant this week). Jay and Mila were charged with creating what should have been two interesting, edgy, downtown looks based on the East Village, but Mila just made another black and white outfit, and Jay was so focused on how much he abhors Mila’s existence that he forgot to make a tank top that wouldn’t make a girl’s boobs totally fall out.

Mila’s jacket coordinated with her skirt in color only (they were completely different styles, which all the judges failed to mention), but a bold choice saved the outfit – she paired her mini with bright red tights. It’s important to realize that that’s a styling choice, not a design element. Mila certainly didn’t construct them herself, but it was apparently enough to distract everyone from the fact that she has no idea how to design with color.

In a state of equal trainwreckery, Amy and Jonathan somehow went to the Upper East Side, home to lots of ornate buildings and beautifully clothed women, and ended up making some kind of orange dreamsicle-colored tunic thingy and a cocktail dress that included every design technique that Jonathan knows how to do, even if they didn’t look right together at all. I actually had high hopes for the cocktail dress – when it was a flesh-colored sheath with a pleated bib, it looked totally appropriate and on-trend, based on what was on the Spring/Summer 2010 runways. After he got done splicing and dicing every inch, however, it just looked like Edward Scissorhands had had his way with it.

Jay of the horrible tank top and Amy of the horrible tunic were the bottom two and sadly, Amy had to go. I think she’s a good designer with good ideas, but I agree with the judges’ decision. She has made some beautiful outfits, but also a few that have been totally of the rails (hello, clown pants and the hair bowl dress), and Jay has been more consistently on-target and has won two challenges. I’m sorry to see Amy go, but eventually they all must.

Next week look like a lot of pattern – anyone know what the challenge is going to be? With any luck, it’ll be another visit with Diane Von Furstenberg.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Last Thursday on the new episode of Project Runway, we got something that all fans of the show are well used to: a challenge where they pretend that the hair or the makeup totally matters so that they can have the Garnier or L’Oreal people on to shill for a minute or two, and then they completely ignore the hair or makeup unless it’s an epic fail.

Luckily for us (and unluckily for one of our designers), we actually got an epic hair fail. Did it matter? Well, we’ll talk about that.

Thankfully, the challenge also had another dimension – it had to be based on one of the four…elemental thingamabobs? What do you call them? I mean, I wasn’t really a science wiz in school, but I’m fairly sure that “fire” isn’t on the Periodic Table, so it’s not an element…whatever, they all had to pick cards from the magic Deck o’ Choices and design an outfit based on Earth, Wind and Fire…err, no, it was earth, air, fire or water. There. Challenge explained.

We’re down to what, like, eight or nine designers? And none of them are terrible, thankfully, so the show is starting to get a little interesting. It’s impossible to guess before the show who is most likely to win or lose, and since there are fewer designers, it’s harder to figure it out while watching based on who gets the most face time and/or who cries during the spliced-in interviews. I have to mourn that element of the first half of the season for a moment, because trying to read the subtextual editing clues is my favorite thing to do in the episodes that are there to get rid of dead weight.

Now that the weight is mostly gone, on to the real point of the show – find out which of these formerly nameless people is the best. I was bracing myself for a workroom full of super-literal red “fire” dresses and “airy” frocks of floaty nothingness. Thankfully, most of our designers didn’t take the bait and go literal. If they had, I would have had to track down every last one of them and beat them about the face and head with a copy of Paris Vogue, so their willingness to widely interpret their looks saved me a lot of airline miles.

My personal favorite was Seth Aaron, who turned his air-inspired assignment into a black leather look with a plausible explanation and an incredibly fierce, sculptural jacket of which, dare I say, Alexander McQueen might approve. I was a bit suspect of Seth Aaron’s taste level at the beginning, but between this look and what he did for the kid-and-models challenge, he’s got something great going on if he can just distill his point of view down into its very best elements. Seth Aaron didn’t win, but if it would make him feel better, I would like to contact him and order one of those fabulous leather coats.

Also among the elite this week was Maya, whose inspiration was also air and who made a structured dress with a few floaty elements that really reminded me a LOT of springtime version of this. To Maya’s credit, however, Lanvin Fall/Winter 2010 just debuted last week, while this portion of the season was shot months ago. That didn’t stop Nina Garcia from wrinkling her nose and tut-tutting to Maya that it reminded her too much of Nina Ricci, however, which was pretty accurate. Maya didn’t win either.

Finally, FINALLY Jonathan won something. His inspiration was also, you guessed it, AIR. He made a dress out of laughter and bubbles and happiness, and he somehow managed to accent it with a material that almost perfectly matched his model’s porcelain skin. During judging, he explained that his own pale existence made him particularly fond of playing up her complexion, and as someone that often finds herself buying the lightest color of foundation in any given makeup line, YAY FOR PALE PEOPLE.

His dress was beautiful and light, and guest judge Roland Mouret thought that it was brilliant in a way that only a French person could. I liked the dress and I love Jonathan whenever they show a portion of his interviews (he’s the one that’s scared of children, remember), but I would have still preferred it if they had given the win to Seth Aaron. I’m happy to accept a win for Team Pale, however.

Now, to the unpleasant task of talking about those that weren’t quite so full of win on Thursday. First, Mila. We saw the Bob Twins staring longingly into each others’ eyes, talking about how similar their souls are early in the show, which piqued my interest. Then Mila said that she’d be happy for Maya if she herself was to be eliminated in her place, and we had to know that Mila was skating on thin ice. She was – the judges finally called her out on being a one-trick colorblocking pony, since her assigned “earth” inspiration stopped her from reverting back to black and white and caused her to instead make a boring outfit with a slightly-less-boring asymmetrical vestjacket. She was safe, however, because at least the outfit’s three pieces were competent as clothing.

Not quite as competent was Amy, who made a stab at conceptualism by creating an enormous hair bowl at the top of her garment. I don’t remember what the rest of it looked like, because all I could think the entire time that it was present on my screen was that I didn’t understand how someone could make such beautiful dresses in almost every challenge and then look at a hair bowl and think, YES, OBVIOUSLY THIS IS GOING TO WIN ME THIS CHALLENGE. It’s just…I can’t even.

Amy was lucky, however, since in the great hierarchy of Project Runway sins, doing something conceptual and doing it badly is not quite so heinous as doing something basic and screwing it up. Ben. Poor, dear, gay-husband-missing Ben. His inspiration was water and he decided to make a suit inspired by sharks, which maybe would have been okay if he had any earthly idea of how to make a suit. He didn’t.

That’s why almost everyone makes a dress for every challenge – pants are hard. Jackets are even harder. Doing both in a day is nearly impossible, particularly if you’ve never done it before, which poor Ben hadn’t. Apparently, he had also never taken a gander at how pants are constructed, because the weird seaming around the crotch made his model look like she was wearing a jock strap over her pants, but probably a jock strap that came with the suit because it was made of the same material.

It was bad in a basic, head-scratching way, and for that indiscretion, he was sent packing. He seemed like a nice guy, but I was never all that excited about anything that he designed, even the look that nearly won him the Marie Claire cover challenge. It was time for him to shuffle on, out of the way of the other designers and back to his adorable husband, who probably misses him dearly.

Original post by Amanda Mull

This week, dear readers, Project Runway had one of those oh-so-sublime “alternative materials” challenges. Our top ten (really, they were celebrating that? Top ten is not even making it halfway…) designers were sent to a hardware store by Princess Michael Kors and told to gather enough random objects to somehow make clothing, but then when judging came around, the judges couldn’t decide if they really wanted the designers to turn something hard into something soft or not. Some designers got chastised for it, others were applauded.

Huge, annoying judging inconsistencies aside (but not too far aside – we’ll get to them later), it was nice to see a non-fabric challenge, since those appear to be a fairly accurate bellwether of who will survive and who will eventually be auf’d. In the world of Project Runway, if you can’t make a dress out of sheet metal, you shan’t be long for this world. Likewise, it’s the Tin Man catastrophes that we all enjoy the most, and it’s not as fun when the designers are merely screwing up regular fabric. This episode was great because it separated the real contenders from the straight guys, and it was about time that that happened.

The challenge was as straightforward as it sounds: make an outfit, any outfit, out of materials from a hardware store. Designers were also supposed to make an accessory, but it didn’t seem like the judges really cared about what they made as long as one was present. With those kinds of parameters, it baffles me that so many of these fools decided it would be a good idea to make a metal dress, despite the fact that none of them have ever worked with metal. Hardware stores have lots of non-metal options: drop cloths, rope, tarp, garbage bags, electrical tape, you get the idea. Even if the designers had been set on metal, there are pliable metal options: screen and mesh, anyone?

Indeed, the top three dresses were all from designers that had forgone sheet metal for materials that weren’t quite so obvious. The judges praised Mila for her use of plastic paint tray liners in white and black, cut into small pieces to make a plastic dress that improbably had a lot of movement. I have a problem with Mila’s design sense, however, and it’s not as a result of the mod colorblocking that she uses in every outfit. On the contrary, the thing that always sticks with me is that her outfits tend to not be particularly flattering. Her model looked completely square through the waist, which I probably would have attributed to the difficult materials if the exact same thing hadn’t happened with the nude/peach jersey dress that Mila made a few weeks back.

I don’t think her model is square, so the issue appears to be with Mila herself. Even her challenge-winning track suit didn’t have a defined shape, and as much of a point of view as Mila might have, no one really wants to look like any geometric shape except an hourglass. If she can’t find a waistline eventually, I think that she might make herself vulnerable to eventual elimination. Her plastic outfit was cool on its own, but her schtick may be wearing thing, despite Nina Garcia’s apparent decision that she shall be the eventual winner.

It was a good week for people with Serious Fashion Hair, however, because Mini Mila…err, Maya…was also in the top three. She made a wire-frame jacket out of (if I remember correctly) the cording for miniblinds, and it was utterly brilliant. Put that jacket in an editorial in V Magazine, and I’m all over it. That jacket? That jacket was The Truth. Her dress, made out of metal screen, wasn’t bad either – you wouldn’t have guessed that it was metal, and the key necklace that she made as her accessory was something that I’d buy in a heartbeat. It was modern, pretty, and still a little hard – it may have been my favorite look of the challenge.

Maya didn’t win, however, because Jay managed to somehow make leather pants out of layer upon layer of bias-cut garbage bags, and really, that’s a freakin’ miracle of sewing machine ingenuity if I’ve ever seen one. Not only did he make leather pants, but he made a corset with ruffles (also made out of garbage bags, but this time with blue masking tape accents) and a woven belt that no one would have ever guessed wasn’t leather. Jay probably did the best job of utterly transforming his materials from something mundane to something spectacular, and for that, he was awarded the richly deserved win.

But that last sentence? That’s where things went a wee bit off the rails in the judging peanut gallery. Jay was rewarded for turning his garbage bags into something that did not at all resemble their original state, but for doing the same thing, Anthony was put in the bottom three. He made a soft, flowered cocktail dress out of metal mesh and some sort of pink lining, and his expertly curved metal belt was easily the best use of the solid material on this week’s runway.

The judges didn’t like it, though. It didn’t look enough like it came from a hardware store. Um, excuse me, but was that the point of the challenge? If it was, I totally missed it. Jay missed it too, but instead of nearly losing, he won. The dress wasn’t particularly innovative, but are leather leggings innovative? No. If they want innovation to be the primary judging metric, they should use it for everyone, not just people that make something pretty out of ugly materials.

In challenges where regular fabric is used, innovation is important. In a situation like this, where the innovation should be inherent in the materials used, I don’t think there’s anything to be celebrated in taking a crazy material and making something crazy out of it (Emilio, I’m looking at you). Anthony made a dress that a lot of women would love to wear, and he did it out of the same stuff that covers my screen door, and he shouldn’t have been in the bottom. I wouldn’t have necessarily put him in the top, but he should have been safe.

I can’t say the same for the two others that joined him in the bottom three. Anthony was ultimately safe (and he skittered off the runway like he was afraid that the judges would change their minds if he stood there too long), and it was only Jesse and Emilio standing there with their sad little outfits. Well, calling Emilio’s string (literally) bikini an “outfit” might be just a tad charitable.

You see, it started out as a dress and went off the rails from there, because he didn’t have enough string or washers (the string was woven with washers, I’m not making that up) to cover his model’s butt. Ironically, after he ditched all the material between her chest and pelvis, he STILL didn’t bother to give her enough of a garment to obscure her rear end from popular view. He lied on the runway and said that he had purposefully made a bikini to stand out from all the dresses, which may have been the line that saved his (partially covered) behind.

That’s right, it was Jesse’s night to leave, and not a moment too soon. He’s never come across as particularly talented or particularly interesting, and we’ve seen enough of him. He made a dress that looked like a Hershey Kiss in both shape and material, and although it may have been less terrible than Emilio’s string bikini, I think that we all know that Emilio is a more talented designer. Since we’ve seen a half dozen looks from each designer, I’m ok with the judges auf’ing people with their body of work considered – it’s only fair.

I would entertain the argument, however, that the bikini was bad enough to mitigate any pretty dress Emilio had ever made in his entire life – luckily for him, he had the presence of mind to lie. He’ll do well in the fashion industry.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Why in the world did it take so long for Project Runway to come up with the challenge that we had this week? Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of forcing the designers to create a cover look before? They’ve always has a partnership with one magazine or another, right?

I can understand why maybe Elle wouldn’t want to promise a cover spot to a reality show contestant, because Elle is a magazine with a fashion reputation and all. Marie Claire, of course, still has quite a reputation, but not so much as a strictly serious fashion publication. There’s less at stake for them in putting an unknown on the cover, and I guess that’s exactly how this dear little episode came to be. The request was practical, it still allowed for individuality, and it promised a big reward – this would be great, right? Well, not so much, but let’s talk about it anyway.

Personally, I loved this challenge, even though I didn’t love all of the results. It was a great ode to us journalism school hacks and anyone who has ever designed a cover, which I’ve done a handful of times, even if they were only for my student portfolio. And, well, it’s a lot harder than it looks. Finding a font color that’s appropriate for writing over a multicolor picture? Surprisingly difficult.

The fashion business relies to heavily on editorial exposure in order to gets its wares in front of consumers’ eyes, and getting your brand on the cover is the holy grail of editorial. So I have to ask again: why haven’t we had this sort of practical, realistic challenge before? Isn’t this essentially the constant challenge of working in the fashion world? Even if the producers couldn’t have previously promised a magazine cover, they could have at least put forth the idea as a challenge, right?

Not that any of this is entirely relevant, but this seemed like such a perfect challenge and several of the designers failed so spectacularly that I’m kind of peeved. Getting clothes into good editorial positions is one of the main business goals of a designer – if our designers can’t do that, then they’re sunk.

The rules for cover clothes are fairly simple: no black, bright colors are preferred, patterns are difficult to print over, detailing should be in the upper part of the dress because mid-thigh and below will probably be cropped out. The producers also added the minimally challenging additional rule that Heidi would be the one wearing the winning dress on the cover of a spring issue. All of these things are guidelines that the average magazine reader could have figured out, given a little time to think, but about half of our designers had some serious problems listening.

As a result, I’m going to dub this the Second Universal Rule of Project Runway: always listen to the challenge rules, even if you don’t like them. Your personal feelings about the rules are not relevant or interesting to Nina Garcia. As long as you speak reasonably good English and you’re awake during the rules portion of this whole shindig, there’s no reason not to follow them.

But for some reason, a lot of them didn’t. Marie Claire EIC Joanna Coles told them to stay away from pattern, so Amy made a patterned dress. She told them to make a spring look, Seth Aaron made a grey pantsuit. She said that she preferred bright colors, and Jay, Maya, Janeane, and Jesse all made things that were either the color of faded bedsheets or so dark that they might as well have been black. Anna made a pair of pinstriped hip-hugger shorts with a shapeless tank and a vest, showing no awareness of modern fashion OR the fact that she was going to be dressing Heidi Freakin’ Klum. Inexplicably, Mila made something that looked like a flesh-toned onesie with vagina arrows, but was somehow just a badly colorblocked dress. Jonathan actually did make a onesie.

Wait, I need to slow my roll a bit. Mila. Speaking of her, she also complained that no one congratulated her on second place the previous week and posited that they were all jealous of her success, but really, it just seemed like she’s a bit of a hag to be around and she didn’t win anyway, so no fake happiness on the part of the other designers was really required. Maybe she made her horrible dress this week in protest, I’m not sure. Moving on.

Anthony and Ben were the only designers that made passable cover outfits, with the addition of Emilio after he hacked off the twee little straps on his red dress (did anyone have visions of the judging during America’s Next Top Model when Tyra is always making the wannabe models change their hair and outfits?). Really, I would have lumped Ben in with the rest of them – his modernist Madame Butterfly routine was too dark for spring, and the vertical color changes would have been difficult to write on in any color except white (and even then, white on yellow is not a good look). Plus, I mean, the belt. Don’t even get me started on that atrocious faux-leather, weathered-gold-hardware’d belt. It might have given me brain damage.

Thankfully, Anthony won with his kicky little modern cocktail dress. It had an asymmetrical strap with lots of draping that was somehow also structured, and all of the interesting stuff happened on the part of the dress that will be featured prominently on the magazine cover. Plus, for a blond, blue-eyed supermodel, is there anything better than a curve-hugging, tailored dress in bright turquoise? I think not. His was such an obvious choice that I was surprised that any of the other designers were even seriously considered.

Initially, I was worried that Anthony may not be long for this show, but his progress has been steady and entertaining. Hopefully a win will keep him around for at least a few more episodes. Whacking Jay with his Bible? Pure comedy gold, and I’m not even religious. He’s just so endearing, and I find myself wishing they’d give him more and more camera time with each episode. I totally love him, down to the jaunty little blazer he wore for the runway show. I think the overjoyed response to his win from the other designers was a really interesting contrast to how everyone felt about Mila’s second-place finish last week. One of these people is well-liked…

Now, on to things I loved less – namely, the half of the designers that didn’t follow instructions. Mila, Anna and Janeane were the final three, but it really came down to Janeane’s mother-of-the-bride under the sea look and Anna’s shorts and a tank top. In the grand scheme of fashion editorial, it’s more of a sin to dress Heidi Klum like a frumpy teenager than a bridesmaid, so Anna was out. After her red abomination against god that she called a dress last week, I can’t say that I disagree with the decision – we’ve seen all we need to see from her. I predict that Janeane will not last much longer, but her dress was the lesser offense this week.

Next week, it looks like we’re going to be dressing children. I’m not great lover of kids, but how much the designers are going to crap themselves over this challenge has me looking forward to it nonetheless.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Through the miracles of modern medicine and heavy-duty antibiotics, I have thrown off the chains of the worst bout of strep throat known to mankind (or at least to Amandakind) to come and recap the latest episode of Project Runway (sorry, Real Housewives fans – I was face-down in a bottle of Nyquil while I was supposed to be recapping that, but it, will be back next week, swears).

This week was another mash-up of classic ProjRun challenge archetypes, this time with “real women as models” on a collision course toward “unacceptable and inappropriate product placement.” We’ve seen challenges in the past where a designer made a “real woman model” cry and where the designers had to incorporate a paid sponsor via car-part dresses, so the bar has been set high for a challenge of either type, let alone one that combined elements of both. Did it live up to the car-crash possibilities? Eh, not quite, but there were a few fantastically ugly dresses.

I feel as though now is the appropriate time to revisit the First Universal Rule of Project Runway: Never listen to your model. I introduced this rule back when the models referenced were professional clothes-wearers, but it’s also true when the designers are tasked with creating a look for a “regular” woman, as they were in this episode. It never helps anyone, and it certainly didn’t in this episode.

To say that that was the only thing that didn’t help these designers would be…an understatement. The challenge was sponsored by Campbell’s, who brought in a bunch of women who had been touched by heart disease so that the designers could make red dresses for them to wear to a Fashion Week gala in their honor. Except, catch #1, only one of these women apparently got to go. And also, catch #2, Campbell’s branding had to be included in the dress.

Not only is it super grinchy to keep hopeful women that have been afflicted by health problems out of their party because they were randomly assigned to a crappy designer, but why in the world is Campbell’s, purveyor of soups filled with enough salt to choke a horse and gross globules of chicken fat, associated with a charity that promotes heart health? Most of their products are like heart-disease kryptonite. On top of all of that, why force the designers, who mostly seemed to like their clients and want to make them feel good, to include Campbell’s branding in a dress that one of these nice ladies was actually going to have to wear to a fancy Fashion Week party, at which she was already likely to feel like a bit of an outsider without a soup can on her dress?

The stupidity of it all made me seriously rage-y, and the Campbell’s cross-promotion made the warm and fuzzy potentially of a charity challenge basically null and void. If anyone out there knows the greedy people that run this show, can one of you tell them to take their hands out of the cookie jar for, you know, at least one or two episodes? It’s become a tad mind-numbing. I don’t want a soup dress. Ladies that have had heart problems don’t want soup dresses. No one wants an effing soup dress.

I wouldn’t have wanted some of these dresses even if they hadn’t been soup-based, however. Even some of those made by the designers in the top three, which were Maya, Mila and Amy. It was a good week for people with Serious Fashion Hair – we also got a clip of Mila and Maya flat ironing their black bobs together, and I wanted to plop down next to them with my GHD and do mine, too. They probably would have made me get up, however, because I hated Maya’s dress. HATED. IT.

It looked like someone had taken a giant glob of poop and just smeared it right across the dress. The ruching and draping were wonky, the heart-shaped sash was the color of excrement and looked completely tacked-on, and it wasn’t flattering on her model, who should have been relatively easy since she wasn’t particularly large. If I could confiscate her hair until she made something better, I would do it. For some reason, though, Princess Michael Kors just let the poop comparison float right by him without saying a word, which makes me think he might have been distracted by a lonely bottle of spray-tan, glinting in the stage lights somewhere off camera.

I also didn’t adore Mila’s, but it had some construction elements that actually worked in its favor. She chose to sew two giant stars into her dress for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (since they aren’t a part of the Campbell’s logo, as she suggested), and the overall affect was as if her model had Scarlett O’Hara’d the flag of…a country whose flag is red and white with large stars. The stars placed at the hip, however, was actually quite slimming, which is why I’ll let the giant one that tried to eat the rest of the dress slide.

The conclusion here is obvious: Amy won, and she won by being the only person out of our dozen designers who made a dress that I would even consider leaving the house in. It wasn’t super special, but it was pretty and flowy and comfortable-looking enough that, in my estimation, I could wear it to a gala and hit both the buffet and the open bar heavily. Not that I’m recommending that sort of behavior for a woman with heart problems, of course. I merely have problematic tonsils, and my pre-op instructions say nothing about any of that.

Now we have to talk about the bottom three, but really, the line between the bottom three and everyone else was so slim that it seemed hardly fair to only single out these poor souls. But singling out is what reality TV (and life, honestly) is all about, so it was Anna, Jesse, and Jesus. Jesse made a mostly unflattering little dress with an entirely unflattering little white coat on top, but his dress did manage to flatter his model’s ample bosom. As we all know, an ample and flattered bosom turns Heidi into a drooling but well-intentioned boob zombie, so he got to stay.

And then there was Anna. Poor, sweet, well-intentioned Anna. She had an awkwardly shaped model, I wouldn’t deny that fact, but she made a dress that made her look just about as awkwardly shaped as humanly possible. It was not pretty, and I mean that in the most literal, non-figure-of-speech-y way possible. Beyond that, I’m mostly at a loss for words as to what to say about this dress. We all know how odd that is for me.

The only thing that saved Anna and her poor model was Jesus’s even poorer taste level. He made a date-night dress that would have been most appropriate on an aging, slightly meth-y stripper, and not in an ironic way. I thought Nina was going to rip one of the rhinestone straps (oh yes, he went there) straight off of it and use it to choke the last drops of life out of him right there, in front of all of the other designers, just to make an example of him. Compared to that, his actual fate seems pretty easy. And well-deserved, at that.

Remember the First Universal Law of Project Runway, which I mentioned at the beginning of this recap? Well, his dress is where it really came in to play in this episode. His model did, indeed, ask for something tacky and ridiculous, and Jesus didn’t have the taste level to realize that not only was that a bad idea, but that putting the rhinestone chain straps on it actually made it worse. If he couldn’t figure that out, then it was better that he left sooner rather than later.

Original post by Amanda Mull

I wrote about the Rebecca Minkoff Knocked-Up Baby Bag last week for PurseBlog Savvy, and ever since then, I’ve been on the lookout for some kind of not-awful baby bag to write about for you guys. What I’ve realized in that time is that what might not pass for a cool handbag will often be totally awesome, compared to the other available bags made for the same purpose. That’s kind of how I’m feeling about The Chaiken Diaper Bag. (Side note - has anyone ever seen Chaiken make a handbag? I’ve never seen them for sale anywhere. I checked their brand website, and this bag is literally the only thing they have in their online store. I’m perplexed). If this were just a regular tote bag, I would think that’s it’s decidedly “meh,” despite the fact that it’s made from lambskin. But call it a diaper bag, and it’s suddenly the least offensive diaper bag on the planet (well, nevermind, I still like the less-expensive Minkoff version better). With the addition of a baby bag being possibly the most significant handbag adjustment of a woman’s life, why aren’t there more good options out there? Buy through Saks for $550.

Original post by Amanda Mull