What's Black and White and Red All Over?

It's an age-old question. But what's it got to do with Project Runway? I'll get to that in a few minutes.

Let's take a second to review. Last week the heavens opened and the angels smiled down upon the runway as Vincent FINALLY got auf. It was like the end of The Lord of the Rings when the ring is destroyed and the tower of Sauron crumbles to the ground and Samwise gets to go home and marry his girlfriend and have adorable Hobbit babies. It was that good. (Oh, and Jeffrey won another challenge with his Mme. Ronald McDonald slit-up-to-the-unmentionables couture dress.)

So with the gloom of perpetual crankiness lifted from the runway, the Final 5 await Heidi to get their next challenge. She comes out wearing upholstery fabric tied around her neck. (It must be to honor Vincent's memory - she had some kind of weird liking for him, I think.) Anyway, she pulls that "Want your challenge? Too bad!" trick again, and tells the designers that L'Oreal is throwing them a party later, with special guests, and they'll find out then. Jeffrey very astutely observes that it's not a party, it's a trap. Which is true. Every party PR throws turns out to have an ulterior motive.

The designers either choose not to dress up, or are herded directly to the club from Parsons. They arrive to find an empty room and several bottles of champagne, which of course means they must have a toast.

This is the toasting-est group of people I've ever seen! I'm surprised they get any designing done, seeing as how they must be tipsy 75% of the time. (Have we caught on by now that Moen is a sponsor? How could we have ever known?) They make a mess all over the floor with the champagne (I bet Jeffrey shook the bottle before he handed it to Michael). Heidi comes in, wearing her seat cover, and asks the designers to "gather round", like the room is so full of people that there's a danger they won't hear her. Whom did she bring along? Who are the special "guesteses" (thanks, Kayne, for that new word). Destiny's Child? Actors? A rock group? Al Gore? Anticipation runs high!

Anticipation comes crashing to the floor when it turns out to be Vincent and Angela (who looks really freaked out). Kayne laughs politely but most of the other designers are just stunned. What the hell? Turns out that THIS is the mystery benefit to winning challenges that Heidi's been telling us about in voice-overs for the last several episodes. If you won a challenge but got auffed, you get a second chance! (At this point I'm thinking, yes, but where is Keith? He won the first challenge. Did they even ask him?) Angela and Vincent apparently didn't know this was going to happen, either. Their reactions are a bit more animated than the rest of the designers: Kayne quits sippin' his bubbly and starts chuggin'. Then he makes some rambling mean comment about cockroaches who won't die, and we actually see anger on Uli's otherwise emotionless face for about .5 seconds. Heidi drops the other shoe and tells them that three of them will be eliminated this challenge. She asks Vincent and Angela to join the other designers again, and Jeffrey rapidly moves as far away from Angela as he can get while still staying in the camera shot.

For this challenge, they will be making a cocktail outfit using only black and white material. And it will have something to do with makeup since the screen proclaims this to be the L'Oreal Challenge. (This season is horrible about shoving the sponsors in our faces. It's really annoying.)

Since it would be a totally boring party with just the seven stunned designers (several of which hate each other), Heidi has invited the models along. She herself is probably running off to a fabulous celebrity-filled party somewhere else, because she can't get out of that room fast enough. So now it's the models and the designers at the party. Nobody else. LAME, L'Oreal. Really really sad.

Next morning, Kayne asks Vincent, "Are you excited to be back?" but we don't hear the rest of it, which was "'Cause I'm sure as hell not excited to see you." Angela and Laura argue over whether it's really fair for Angela to be back, since her win was on a team challenge, and Laura and Michael pretty much rescued that outfit from rosette hell. I agree with Laura. (I also think Laura ought to leave her hair down - she is gorgeous!)

Over at Parson's, the designers get a bit of time to sketch. Kayne's is looking good! Hope it ends up looking like this.
On the other side of the room, Laura's trying something different, but she's filled with self-doubt after getting blasted for her couture design.

Tim gathers them to go shopping, but gives them another surprise: they have to use ALL the fabric they buy. No buying extra to fix mistakes with. I'm thinking this is going to make for some scrappy looking garments! My sentiments exactly, Angela.

At Mood, Kayne buys some shiny vinyl-looking material and I literally scream at the TV, "Back away, Kayne! It's evil!!", but he doesn't listen to me and buys it anyway. Jeffrey picks up a ton of tiny geometric prints. Uli says she's going to be making a hippy beach party dress, so basically she's making the same darn thing she always makes.

The designers rush back to Parsons and get started. Vincent discovers that he's bought too much fabric. (Am I a bad person for being happy to hear that?) Michael comes over to look at what Kayne's doing. He tries to help Kayne make his dress look less "working girl" - I guess since he's Captain Save-a-Ho, he's using his super powers to keep Kayne from making a 'ho' dress? Kayne tries out different belts, but Michael keeps telling him that "it cheapens your dress." He's right. The back is kind of interesting though - reminds me of the spider web that's outside my front door right now.

The models come in. Laura talks a bit about trying to make her dress younger, since the judges keep blasting her for making stuff that old matronly ladies with no chest would wear. Her model, Camilla, tries to help her out a bit. Her dress is actually looking cute - a bit like one she herself wears on the runway at times, but with a much different neckline.

Collier Strong, the L'Oreal makeup guy, interrupts everyone to drag each designer and model off to the makeup room to talk about world peace. Not really, but that would have been infinitely more interesting than watching them talk about makeup. Woo hoo.

Back in the workroom, Tim is making the rounds again. A troubling conversation takes place at Kayne's workstation.

Tim: Where's the white?
Kayne: (holding up a studded trim) Does this count
as white?
Tim: Oh JESUS!

When you cause Tim Gunn to take the name of the Lord in vain, it is Not Good. In fact, things are not good all around. Michael's having issues with a possible see-through skirt, Angela's model is going to have a fungus growing out of her neck and shoulders, and Laura's pregnancy hormones are causing her to have an emotional meltdown in front of a very uncomfortable Tim.

Sewing sewing sewing. Then some sleeping.

Next day, Laura's feeling much better. She gets a cheery message from home - a video of her kids and husband. (Good timing, Laura's husband! One million husband points for you!) Vincent's doing this:

I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to what's going on here.

Over at Parsons, Tim is the bearer of bad news - Vincent's model Jia has been in an accident. To Vincent's credit, the first thing he says is, "Will she be okay?" to which Tim replies yes, and that Javi (an eliminated model) will be taking her place. That worries Vincent, who complained about having too much fabric but hasn't left any seam allowances and won't be able to adjust the dress. (Again, is it bad that I'm laughing?)

Michael's wearing a hideous orange paisley jacket that looks like he stole it from a guy who works at Baskin-Robbins.

The models come in to get dressed and made up. Vincent tries to zip his dress up and since Javi is obviously more muscular than Jia, it doesn't close and the zipper breaks. So Vincent sews her into the dress as she's getting her hair done.

Remember how Tim said that they had to use all the scraps? Uli turns hers into a stuffed necklace. Kayne apparently uses the shiny stuff we saw him buying earlier to make a way-cute purse, while Angela goes balls-out and just crams the scraps into a red purse from the accessory wall. (I thought the makeup was supposed to be the only color in the outfit??)

Out on the runway, Heidi again reminds the designers that three of them will be going home, and introduces guest judge Zac Posen. On with the show!

• Angela's dress, aside from the fungus shrug, makes her model appear pregnant (with an outie!) and is poorly fit. The judges proclaim it "costumey" and chew her out for just stuffing the scraps in the purse. Later Michael Kors calls her look "vampirey" (which is partly the fault of Collier's dumb Queen Amidala-inspired makeup).
• Kayne's dress looks good on the runway. Very edited - not his usual "glam bam thank you ma'am" type of outfit. But Zac Posen refers to it as a Jeckyl and Hyde dress, and the judges blast Kayne for not using enough white. In their "little chat" Nina admits that Kayne did listen, and tried, but did he do enough?
• Laura's look is very Josephine Baker, and she's used the extra material to MAKE a purse instead of just stuffing one. The judges throw out adjectives like chic, youthful, rich, and adorable. They're happy to see that she's designed a dress for someone other than herself this time.
• Michael has used mostly white for his dress, with a wide black belt that has floral cut-outs in it. The judges love his total look and presentation, and say that his garment is flattering and modern. As usual.
• I don't know what kind of cocktail parties Jeffrey goes to, because this is NOT a cocktail dress. This is a club outfit. The judges think it looks cheap, loud, too Gwen Stefani, and would like to see him do something else for a change. (And I'd like to smack those stupid sunglasses right off his face! Grr!)
• Uli's dress made Nina raise her eyebrows in a "she made that same dress again" kind of way. Her sleeves are too long, the garment looks heavy, and her necklace makes Michael think of pool floats.
• Vincent's garment is too short (he attributes this to Javi being "overpumped", whatever that's supposed to mean). It's basically a tube surrounded by a big shawl-type thing with a square flower on it. He gets slammed by the judges: the proportion is wrong, it looks cheap, you should have used the extra fabric to make the skirt longer.

This week's winner is Laura (finally)!! Since they didn't win, Angela and Vincent are automatically out. Bringing them back at all was probably the lamest twist in the history of PR twists. If they wanted to bring someone auffed back, they should have brought back Alison or Malan or Katherine or Robert, in my opinion. Anybody but those two.

Uli and Michael make it into the final four and are off to Fashion Week with Laura! That leaves Kayne and Jeffrey on the runway. I'm POSITIVE that Jeffrey's going to be out on this one. Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman wouldn’t have been caught dead in his “dress”. It looks like a bad Halloween hooker costume. So Kayne skimped a little on the white! At least his dress is elegant (and edited!) and could actually be worn at a cocktail party.

So, now you know what's black and white, but what's red all over? Hopefully, the faces of the producers for pulling this latest, extremely lame stunt, and also the faces of the judges, for auffing the wrong designer. Because sadly, and wrongly, Kayne is out. A bit of song lyric floats through my head:

Ain't no sunshine when he's gone
It's not warm when he's away
Ain't no sunshine when he's gone
And he's always gone too long
Anytime he goes away

They needed to give him a farewell montage of all his cute big-eyed faces with cheesy music playing in the background (remincient of the Andrae montage from last season's reunion show). But alas, he just has to go clean up his workspace like everyone else.

Au revoir, Kayne. But only for now. I see great success in your future, because in today's world, we all need some sparkle now and then.