It's Always the Quiet One

Forget Manhattan... I'll Take Queens!

2008-08-29T11:47:00.009-04:00

It's morning at Parsons, and Heidi is up to something. She has The Velvet Bag™ with her, but instead of bringing out the winning and losing models as usual, she announces a special guest! Everyone looks towards the scrim and a strange silhouette appears. Suede’s look sums up the general thoughts of the designers. But then a jolly laugh rings out, which can only mean one thing - it’s my favorite from last season, Chris March - in full Wagnerian regalia, with disco-ball boobs and a four-foot tall horned helmet that must weigh fifty pounds! His outfit makes me think of one of my most favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons ever (What's Opera, Doc?). Actually, Bugs was quite the drag queen at times. You just know that if they’d had disco balls in 1957 that he’d totally be wearing them as boobs too, bouncing rays of cartoon sunlight off off of them into Elmer Fudd’s eyes and getting away yet again.

Frau Chris gives out this week’s highly amusing challenge of designing a look for a drag queen, and has brought along some of his fabulous friends to be the models. YES! This is awesome. This is the designers’ chance to go as over-the-top and flamboyant as they want (and some of them are trying to go that way every week, so I hope we’ll see a lot of flash on the runway).

Now I don’t know a lot about the whole drag scene. I’ve seen a few movies, and I could be wrong, but it seems to me that there are basically two types: the costumey queens, like Hugo Weaving in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and the elegant queens, like Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.
We’ve got both types here, so this should be an interesting bunch of garments. The designers pick their queens, Heidi and Chris go out for biere, speitzel und braunschweiger, and it’s time to get this drag show on the road!

Back in the workroom, Tim tells the designers that they have to keep their ladies’ particular persona in mind while designing, and encourages them – nay, demands them – to have fun with it! (Because some of y’all are uptight - I’m looking at you, Daniel!) This is the one time they can break Tim’s rule of “make sure she can get into a taxi wearing the design” and not get the extremely concerened frown. He also reveals that all of the garments will be auctioned off to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, a very worthy cause. He then sends in the queens!

My God, these are some tall ladies! The top of Kenley’s head barely comes up to the shoulder blade of her client, a Hollywood glamourpus called Farrah Moans. Daniel looks like a munchkin next to Annida Greenkard, his flamenco-themed client. (Oh, and the puns are flying thick in the room – we’ve also got Hedda Lettuce, Miss Understood, and Sharon Needles, to name a few.) It’s a good thing they have a bigger budget this week, because people this tall need a lot of fabric!

Joe - who is, of course, straight - is having a hard time getting his head around the drag queen concept, and decides to approach the whole thing like he’s making a Halloween costume for one of his little girls – and he’s probably grasped the idea better than he thinks! He suggests a tight-fitting catsuit for his Southern-belle-on-steroids client, Varla Jean Merman. Leanne, who has the aforementioned Ms. Needles, is going for a futuristic Jetsons look.

As the queens leave, one of them asks Tim to call her. Tim laughs politely, because THAT’S not happening, and then takes the designers off to MOOD. Once the store has been drained of sequins, satin and feathers, it’s back to Parsons.

Because these are men dressed up as women, the designers have to use male dressforms and put chests and butts on them.

Joe gets in touch with his feminine side at long last, dancing around in the bra and fake boobs left for him by Varla. Not all the designers have the same advantage – Daniel even tries to get Kenley’s bra but she’s not having any of that.

A few of the designers are lost – Korto sits and stares at blank sheets of paper for a while, hoping a design will just magically appear on it – while others, like Terri, have designed drag outfits before and know exactly what to do. There’s a lot of interesting fabric – Daniel has some kind of tye-dye stuff that looks like mangos in a blender, Jerell has some olive green and aqua sparkly material, and Joe’s table looks like a cotton candy maker threw up all over it.

Blayne parades around the tables with pink netting tied over his head, giving out drag queen names such as "Lethalicious," while Stella and Leanne show us how they feel about his overuse of that particular suffix. I'm betting most of the designers wish they could tie that netting a little bit tighter. Or maybe a lot.

The next day, Suede recounts a bizarre "visit" from his dead grandfather who stops by and mistakes Suede's green fabric for a garden plot and starts growing salad fixins on it. So Suede decides to make tiny little fabric lettuces and sew them all over the dress. He's sure Hedda is going to love it, but I am not so sure. (I would like some salad, though.) Keith has decided to make a black and white dress that looks like it got caught in a wood chipper. The other designers titter about this behind his back. His client specifically said "sex kitten" not "shredded by a kitten". I think Keith needs to have his ears cleaned out.

There are nine hours remaining in the day, and the queens return for a fitting. They come in sans makeup and are pretty ordinary-looking guys. At this point, I have to stop the DVR and have the following conversation.

My Daughter (who is nine): Um, Mom? I thought the models were coming in. Who are those guys?
Me: Those are the drag queens.
My Daughter: But...they're guys.
Me: Yes, but they're entertainers. They put on costumes and sing and dance and do shows and people come to see them.
My Daughter: (ponders this) Oh. You mean like at Chuck E. Cheese.

I'm so glad my kids have outgrown that place. I could just see my daughter yelling "Hey look Mom! It's a drag queen!" when Chuck E. comes out to stroll around the restaurant. (And... come to think of it, wasn't one of Chuck's animatronic friends a drag queen?)

Speaking of restaurants, let's check out Suede's salad bar dress. Hedda, as I suspected, is not loving the outfit. She looks like a stuffed dinosaur. She also isn't digging the elbow-length gloves with the tiny lettuces, and accuses Suede of making gloves because he was too lazy to make sleeves. But fear not, Suede is not going to let himself or his design be roughed up by roughage!

Later in the evening, Tim returns, and he has Chris with him. Good thinking. Chris is going to do most of the advice-giving, since he obviously has experience with this kind of design and Tim, well, doesn't.

Chris admires Korto's sculptured flame neckline and gives her some advice on her skirt. Next up, Blayne. It's neon and sparkly and has these big fringy triangles coming out of the back. Tim cracks up everyone in the room when he describes it as "a pterydactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park" which is one of the best things I've ever heard Tim say. (Blayne thinks so too!) And I love hearing Chris's laugh in the workroom again. It's much nicer than Kenley's little giggle-burp thing.

Joe, despite his obvious discomfort with this entire challenge, has apparently nailed it - Chris knows exactly which drag queen the garment is for, without being told. He assures Joe that it's perfect for Varla. He also validates Suede's garment and says the gloves are "funny" - which is good because Hedda is a comedienne, after all. Chris isn't too hip on Keith's shredded mess, and while he says he likes the skirt on Daniel's flouncy fruit-colored frock, you can tell he's kinda worried about the rest of it. All too soon, it's time to bid Chris a fond farewell, and get back to sewing.

The next morning, Jerell quips "I can't wait to see Keith's Wookiee onesie come down the runway!" and Blayne responds with a dead-on Chewbacca imitation. But there's no time to lay in bed and quote Star Wars - there's a lot of work to be done!

There's a flurry of activity in the workroom as Tim sends in the drag queens. Usually the models are sent into hair and makeup, but most of the queens already did their own, since it involves giant wigs and very theatrical makeup in most cases.
But since L'Oreal and TreSemme are sponsors of the show, they HAVE to have their screen time, and they put some finishing touches on the drag queens.

The drama of the morning - Suede's confrontation with Hedda over his design - turns out to be very anti-dramatic after all, as Suede very professionally explains his case and Hedda seems quite surprised at the fact that he took offense at her 'lazy' remark (or she could be acting, I don't know). In the end they cheek-kiss and make up, Suede gets his way, and Hedda wears the lettuce gloves.

Out on the runway, Heidi introduces this week's guest judge, RuPaul - an extremely tall drag queen who used to have a TV talk show and I think recorded an album, even. I'm kind of surprised by how... bland she looks. You'd think for a show like this one, she'd be more made up and glamourous-looking, instead of looking like she just rolled out of bed after a long night of partying. Maybe she didn't want to take the focus away from the queens, or something, but dang girl! You look kinda scary. And I'm wondering, is Wishbone a silent sponsor of this episode? First we have lettuce and now, RuPaul is wearing a necklace made out of grape tomatoes. Anyway, enough about RuPaul, send in the queens!

The safe designers
Kenley (Farrah Moans) - This is very Marilyn Monroe, which is exactly the look her queen was going for. It's pretty, and well-made.
Blayne (Miss Understood) - Boy, did he pick the right client! If you compare it to his other garments, it really screams Blayne. I think he's got a bright future as a drag queen costumer.
Stella (Luisa Verde) - One thing Stella has been good at is managing to get her style into every garment she's made so far, while still basically keeping with the theme. Stella managed to do glamour AND grommets in the same outfit. It's nice to see her using a color other than black, but I'm not sure if she thought Luisa was Scottish, or what. All in all, this would be an excellent choice when one is deciding what to wear to the annual Edinburgh Biker Ball.
Suede (Hedda Lettuce) - It's really... green! I thought it turned out pretty good, and the lettuces don't really stand out all that much - a very subtle touch. What does stand out is her chocolate-colored hosiery and clear shoes, which makes it look as if she's barefoot. Out on the runway she minced and twirled and sashayed like she was trying out for the Ziegfield Follies.
Leanne (Sharon Needles) - I am so distracted by the way the gal is standing in this picture! Whose idea was THAT? As far as the design, Leanne was going for futuristic and she got it - but I'm concerned that her chest appears to be halfway between her shoulders and her waist. A drag queen, unlike an actual woman, can put her 'girls' anywhere she wants them, so why make them saggy-looking? (And if that's the way they're going to tweeze eyebrows in the future then I'm really scared.)

Who's left on the runway

Joe (Varla Jean Merman) - "Ann-Margaret on the Love Boat" indeed! For being way out of his comfort zone, Joe really knocked this one out. Yes, originally the collar had been up and it looked like Elvis, but Joe was smart enough to take Varla's advice to leave it down and go for a sailor look. It's over-the-top enough for a drag outfit, but not so much that the performer is lost. The judges are really impressed that he managed to show off the good parts and hide "the candy," as RuPaul so eloquently puts it.
Daniel (Annida Greenkard) - Yeah, it's kinda ho-hum as far as a drag queen dress, but in fairness to Daniel, it's what the client wanted. She said, during the consultaion, that she was not into sparkles and sequins, so he didn't go that route. The judges were all over him for it, though. Daniel is all about the elegance, and he didn't want to make her look like she's on the Vegas Strip, because he hates that. But I do think that he could have found some other way to give it some oomph! besides glitter, and while the basic design is nice, there's no pizazz to it. I think poor Daniel is about thirty seconds away from having an anxiety attack right there on the runway.
Terri (Acid Betty) - Whoa. This is waaaaay out there, but it fits Betty's persona perfectly. At first I wasn't quite getting where she pulled the blue from, but the more I look at it, the more I like how it balances out all the warm colors. I could have done without the yellow ribbons at the bottom, though. The judges love it, saying it's a cross between kabuki, KISS, and Diana Ross in Mahogany. Oh, and MK wants the boots.
Jerell (LeMay) - Hey, it's Liza Minelli, all suited up and getting ready to play football! I don't hate this design but I don't particularly like the colors he used. I guess I am just not a big fan of olive green (unless it is on an actual olive) and I'm confused as to why he decided to pair it with aqua and midnight blue. The big collar that pops up is a nice dramatic touch, even though it reminds me of this. The judges are concerned that the dress is too long, makes her look very long-waisted, and is too normal. MK quips that one of his aunts would have worn it to a bat mitzvah (and actually, that explains a LOT).
Korto - First thing I thought when I saw this was "Ronald McDonald's got a really stylish mom!" I like the flame detailing but I'm not too crazy about the long sleeve/no sleeve combination on, well, anything. Either put sleeves on it or don't. On the runway Sweetie took the skirt off and it turned into a mini-dress, which RuPaul really liked. Nina felt that Korto really had fun with the challenge. MK says the dress makes her look like Heidi Klum, and I'm wondering how much MK has had to drink before the show, 'cause Sweetie's got a nice shape in this dress but it's NOT Heidi Klum's.
Keith - I really hate this. Instead of 'sex kitten' it looks more like a working girl who has a rough corner. The judges pretty much hate it too. MK refers to it as a "sad chicken" and Nina simply calls it "messy." The entire time the judges are talking, Keith has this look on his face like, "How are they not getting this??" You know who would like this, though? Dee Snider.

Surprisingly, the winner is the one person whom nobody would have expected, because he was as uncomfortable as hell during most of the process - Joe! But he really had the right approach to the challenge in treating it like a costume, which is exactly what it is. And boy, is Terri pissed that she didn't win.

As for the loser, I think they took pity on poor close-to-a-breakdown Daniel and sent him off to calm down before they had to commit him to a psych ward. I think Daniel is a talented designer, but this show was just not for him. So adieu, classy Daniel; you can now ride off into the sunset with Wesley and live happily ever after.

Leopards and Zebras and Monkeys, Oh My!

2008-08-21T19:35:00.064-04:00

Dear PR production staff: I appreciate the fact that Elle is a sponsor of this show, but if you continue to shove this scowling Mary-Kate Olson cover down our throats every episode... ...I will hunt you down and set fire to your collective underclothing. Thank you.

On with the show! Roommates Keith and Daniel start out their morning in the fitness center, pumping iron. They both get very sweaty and I hope they left time to take showers before heading over to Parsons, or I pity the designers that have to sit next to them.

When they get there, Korto (as last week’s winner) gets the opportunity to switch models but she doesn’t. So there’s nothing left to do but give the designers their challenge: they will be designing for a high-powered, glamorous professional woman. This immediately makes Blayne think of Hillary Clinton in a neon pantsuit (a mental picture that's going haunt me for some time). Apparently Blayne has not had much contact with professional women (but possibly with some “professional women”). In the workroom everyone speculates on who it could be - Heidi? Nancy Grace? (gah.) Joan Rivers? (double-gah.) The late Divine? (Oh. That’s the other kind of professional woman. Sorry.) Of course Stella wants it to be Sharon Osbourne, because then she’d definitely get to make something out of leather.

Tim arrives with the mystery client: Brooke Shields!

The designs will be for her character on Lipstick Jungle, the Sex and the City knockoff she’s currently starring in and I’ve never seen. (In fact, I don’t know anyone who’s watched it, and I asked around.) Anyway, since this season has a recycling-of-past-challenges theme to it, the look must go from day to night, which was a challenge from S2. Then Tim stuns the designers by throwing in the big twist: their garments will be sewn and modeled by monkeys.

Well, you’d think that’s what he said, judging by the reaction he gets. What he really says is that they’ll be working in teams of two. Each designer will have to pitch their idea to Brooke, who will pick team leaders. Everyone gets busy sketching, and then they each go in and try to sell their look to her. She’s very diplomatic about it, even finding something fairly nice to say about the ones she obviously doesn’t like. Stella, who has drawn something with a corset and drawstrings and probably leather that would be great in an upscale bar for professional women Harley riders, gets a completely comical blank look on her face when Brooke reminds her that the character has to go to work in it. Before announcing the team leaders, Tim tells the designers that the winning look will end up on Brooke's show, thus guaranteeing a larger audience this season as PR viewers tune in to see if it really makes it on the air. (Hey! Andrew McCarthy is in the cast, so I may watch it once. I loved him in Mannequin). Terri proclaims that this is now a serious competition. (What was it before? Summer camp?)

Brooke's choices for team leaders are Keith, Terri, Korto, Blayne, Jerell and Kelli. Blayne chooses Leanne, Keith picks Kenley (much to Daniel's disappointment, 'cause, "hey, we pumped iron together!"), Terri selects Suede, and Korto chooses Joe. Kelli has to decide between Daniel and Stella. She likes Stella but Stella might screw up and have to go home and then Kelli will feel all guilty. So she goes with Daniel, and apparently feels really good about that. This leaves Jerell with Stella, but he's happy because he was planning to do something leather anyway. Or else he's just saying that to make Stella feel better because she was the last one left. The teams get $150 and head off to MOOD. Keith immediately regrets picking Kenley because she tries to take charge of choosing the fabric, and picks a technicolor daisy print that could have come out of a 1973 Sears catalog. Thankfully Tim also agrees that it’s hideous, and they get something else, while Keith sticks his tongue out at Kenley while her back is turned.

Back in the sewing room, buddies Kenley and Daniel grouse about having to sew someone else’s sucky designs. Kelli tells the story of her childhood and we all know what that means. (Cue ominous music.) Meanwhile, in the workroom, Keith and Jerell make plans to carpool to Bryant Park for Fashion Week, because they’re both really concerned about the ozone layer and they can each chip in on gas, which will be up to $6 a gallon by that time.

Tim sends the models in for an early fitting. Things are not looking good for Team Kelli. She can’t understand why, in the time it’s taken her to make a fully-lined jacket, Daniel has made a crappy skirt that’s only ruched on one side and has a crooked zipper, and makes the model look like one of her legs is considerably shorter than the other. She makes him rip it up and start over.

On the other side of the room, Terri lays into Suede for making a crappy shirt. She comments that she doesn’t care what he’s got in the anatomy department, but he’d better man up and sew some ruffles, dammit! (Take cover, designers, there’s a lot of crap flying around this workroom today!)

Later, Tim returns to check in. He visits Blayne, whose design contains a pair of Bermuda shorts. Brooke herself said she was ‘a bit scared’ of the design, and with good reason. What high-powered fictional studio executive wears shorts to work? In a vain effort to give some constructive advice, Tim tells Blayne he needs to "dress up" the shorts.

Tim must not have eaten much for lunch, because Korto's puffy orange jacket makes him think of a giant sweet potato. Joe and Korto get into it a little bit because Joe was all “I love it!” until Tim came in, and then he’s all “I have some reservations…” Korto is ticked. She goes into some big soliloquy about how if Joe was out playing near traffic she wouldn’t let him get hit by a taxi (but you know, deep down, she'd really want to push him in front of it).

Finally it’s time to get ready for the runway show. While everyone’s doing their last-minute tweaking, they all talk smack about each other’s outfits, Kelli is glad Daniel managed to finish the skirt so they don’t have to send the model down the runway half-naked, and Tim begs them all to use the accessory wall “appropriately” – whereas in other weeks he has told them to “borrow generously”. Hmm… Actually I think he needs to have a little chat with Jerell about his personal wardrobe, because he’s wearing… um…

...a couple of Depression-era flour sack curtains tied at the shoulders? With pants? And that ratty jacket with the safety pins all over it. Oooookay...

Heidi introduces Brooke as a “fashion icon”, and I think Heidi’s throwing the title around a bit too loosely this season (just because someone wears clothing does not make them an ‘icon’. Case in point: Jerell above). Let’s take a look at what the design teams dreamed up for Brooke’s character.

The safe designers

Korto and Joe - This is business attire? I'm not sure I could get away with this at a PTA meeting, let alone a board meeting. The day-to-evening aspect involves taking off the top, and underneath is a pretty plain tan tube dress. And boy, does it have fit issues!! The bust is all baggy and crooked. I do think the orange top would look great with jeans, so I'm not knocking the design, but it's not right for this challenge.
Terri and Suede - This outfit has the same basic issue for me. I really like this design, and it fits the evening wear criteria perfectly, but it's not appropriate for the office at all.

The top two Jerell and Stella – Compared to almost everything else Jerell has sent down the runway this season, this is pretty tame and tasteful. I wasn't digging the zebra-print belt but I do agree that it gave the design a bit of a kick. It didn't turn out looking much like his sketch, which included a more form-fitting skirt with colored side panels, but overall it's a pretty nice outfit. I guess you could wear a more businesslike belt during the day and put the zebra one on before you went out. (Oh, and don't forget the sunglasses. Because nothing says "night out" like some sunglasses.) Brooke likes the mix of textures. The judges think it's well-made, flirty and sexy.
Keith and Kenley – This was my favorite. The colors are great, I really like the ruffled skirt (it moved really nicely when the model walked) and I thought Keith's day-to-evening switch was really ingenious - the sleeves tie up near the neck for daytime and when it's time to go out they can be untied, which made them longer and open up the middle. (It's kind of hard to describe.) It's classy enough for work and relaxed enough for after work. You know the judges like it because they say it looks expensive. They like how Keith's and Kenley's completely different design aesthetics worked together (although they didn't hear Kenley complaining about the design for the entire show).

The bottom two Kelli and Daniel – Leopard print and aqua just don't to go together in my opinion. The daytime look (shown here) is actually not bad - not a very innovative silhouette but I could see someone wearing this to work. However, when the jacket comes off, it's - in the words of MK - "slutty, slutty, slutty", a corset top with straps and peeks of belly. Nina gets off a zinger - "you can't get taste if you don't have it" which is pretty much the kiss of death. When asked which of them should go home, Kelli picks Daniel because she won the first challenge and hasn't been in the bottom at all. Daniel is more upset by the implication that he has no taste - he defends himself by saying that his taste is impeccable. This sends Kenley, who is standing next to him, into a fit of giggles that isn't really explained and seriously pisses Daniel off. (I guess they won't be too buddy-buddy in the next episode.)
Blayne and Leanne – This would look great on Punky Brewster, not a high-powered executive. I don't know what Blayne was thinking. I don't know what Brooke was thinking for picking it! (I suspect the producers had a bit of a hand in his selection as a team leader.) The blue tank top underneath (the evening look) was nice, and I even like the blue shirt, but I'd wear them with jeans. (I'm also taking issue with Blayne for using the same pair of shoes AGAIN this week after I told him not to.) Nina accuses Blayne of not listening to Brooke. Heidi says it looks like the model got dressed in the dark. The judges also criticize Leanne for not trying to talk Blayne out of it. Blayne inisits he took a risk and stands behind his design. He also states that he would be the one to be auffed because it was his design. (See, Kelli, he's watched PR before - you never throw your teammate to the wolves! The judges don't like that!)

Keith is chosen as the winner, and I wholeheartedly agree with that decision. It's a beautiful design and met the challenge perfectly. He doesn't get immunity, but he does get his design on a network TV show to be seen by a handful of people, so that's pretty good.

It comes down to a choice between Kelli's questionable taste, and Blayne's inability to design something that fits the challenge as opposed to something he just feels like making. In the end it is Kelli that goes home. I am sad, because I like Kelli and I think she has designed some interesting things. (Plus she's one of my hometown girls! Go Columbus!) But she's doing okay - her shop's getting a lot of business, and I hope I'll be able to get down there sometime. Let's bid her a fond farewell as we take one last look at her very elaborate tattoo.

Next episode: It's Chris March!! And drag queens!! And pink pterodactyls from a gay Jurassic Park!! Whoopee!!!

Leavin' On A Jet Plane

2008-08-11T19:26:00.007-04:00

I'm off on a little trip! Without my kids (whom I love dearly but all the constant "Mommmmm!! Where's my DS!?!" is starting to wear on me).

So if you are one of the handful of people who read my Project Runway recaps (thank you, by the way, for your nice comments!), please check back on Sunday evening or Monday morning. I may not even see the episode until Saturday night, as I'm not sure if my hotel has Bravo! Hotels should put that stuff on their websites, you know?

Anyway, have a nice week and go over to Blogging Project Runway to see a couple of preview videos for Episode 5.

Going for the Gold Lamé

2008-08-08T01:26:00.038-04:00

With the reproachful eyes of Mary-Kate Olson staring down at them from an Elle cover at a newsstand, the designers get themselves over to Parsons to find out what exciting challenge awaits them today. Heidi, wearing a very sheer gray puffy shirt, greets them and they go through the model routine. Kenley keeps her model, Shannone (which is good because she’s fabulous and if Kenley ever gets auffed someone would be insane not to snap her up). Then Heidi sends them to Tim for another little field trip.

Tim and the designers pile into waiting vans and head off. During the van ride, Tim and Blayne have a discussion about Blayne’s tanning habits, and you can just see that Tim wants to yell “Didn’t your parents ever warn you about skin cancer?!” and Blayne is silently hoping the next challenge has something to do with tanning.

They end up at The Armory, a “ginormous” indoor track-and-field arena. Someone is zipping around the track on roller blades… a male someone with longish black hair and a little soul patch… could it be? Oh YES! It’s Apolo Anton Ohno! The Dancing With The Stars season 4 champion! I LOVE him! (Oh, and I guess he won some gold medals in speed skating.) He zips up to Tim and the gang, where he explains this week’s challenge: design an outfit for female US athletes to wear at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

In the past, designers of the outfits the Olympians wear in the Parade of Nations tend towards using traditional costumes, which is educational, or making them look like real estate agents, desk clerks on Fantasy Island, overgrown school children, Target employees, or...um, little old ladies on the run from gardening jail during rainy season. (WTF??) The US is getting away from that this year, opting instead to go with designer Ralph Lauren and perpetuate the stereotype that Americans are rich and spoiled by making them dress like they’re off for a weekend in The Hamptons. So I’m sure whatever the designers come up with HAS to be an improvement… doesn’t it? It can’t be any worse than what the Canadians have to wear this year. I hope.

Anyway, this is quite the timely challenge – what a coincidence that they’re doing this episode the exact same week that the Beijing Olympics is starting? Things like that just don’t happen. Amazing. To give them a little history, inspiration, and to give them the chance to overcome history and design something non-embarassing, Apolo (hotness!) sends them over to the Track and Field museum (not to be confused with The Field Museum). There the designers find all sorts of black-and-white photos and old track suits behind plexiglass.

You can already tell who’s excited by this challenge, and who’s kinda confused but applauding politely anyway. After their half hour of sketching, the designers are whisked away to MOOD, where there are some scary-looking fabrics being purchased (and not just by Stella, who buys something black because she just can’t help herself). Terri gets all “oh no he didn’t!” when Keith gets some yardage of a fabric she’d set back for herself. (I’d say, let him have it, because from here it looks pink and there's no pink on the flag of the good ol' U S of A.)
Once back at Parsons, there’s sewing sewing sewing, draping draping draping. Stella reminds us that these outfits are “how America will be portrayed to the world”. Hate to break it to you, Stella, but people around the world watch PR and this: is also how America is portrayed to the world. I’m just saying.

The designers share which sports they were involved in during school. Stella was a modern dancer. Leanne was a cheerleader (but ONLY because she was a gymnast and a dancer and everyone knows that if you are both of those things, you are required by law to either be a cheerleader or on the pep rally dance squad). Joe played football his freshman year, until he quit growing and the larger guys started using him for a ball, which prompted him to hide indoors and take up sewing instead. Daniel played Putt-Putt. Blayne proclaims himself "an Olympian in tanning", and quips that his event only goes up to bronze medal. (Ha! Ha! He finally says something genuinely funny!) The lack of tanning is really getting to him. By the end of the season he’ll be so pale that he’ll be invisible (which is not really a bad thing, overall).

Jennifer tells us she’s amazed at the speed with which Terri is cranking out her garment. Or rather, garments, as she’s planning to do a jacket, a shirt, pants, and a vest. If she has time she might cobble a pair of shoes to go along with it and cast some jewelry. Jennifer suspects that Terri has smuggled a sweatshop of tiny elves under her sewing machine.

Stella’s outfit is mostly black, very space-age and modern, with red, silver and blue leather-ish trims. Why not, she asks. After all, lots of bikers watch the Olympics! Someday, Harley riding may be IN the Olympics! And they will need outfits! (Right, and someday Stella will sew a dress using chiffon.) Leanne thinks Stella’s garment looks like it belongs in a Goth nightclub. Now I ask you, does Leanne LOOK like the type of girl who frequents Goth nightclubs and would know that?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the workroom, Daniel is using Kenley as a dress form instead of the perfectly inanimate one he’s been given. He and Kenley are having a grand old time horsing around and laughing, much to the annoyance of most everyone else. Apparently Kenley laughs too loud, and sounds like a strange jungle bird or a dolphin, depending on who’s doing the imitation.

Korto has decided to use mostly white in her outfit, because she thought the white outfit would really stand out in the opening ceremony. She then tells us the story of her family’s flight from Liberia during their civil war. It is really touching and you can tell she’s really genuinely appreciative of the opportunities she’s had here in the US, and she really wants to do a good job on this challenge.

It’s time for Tim to make his rounds. He starts with Joe and responds really well to the design, which includes a skort and a bi-colored zipper made from two solid-colored zippers. He then moves on to Blayne, who appears to be making a drum majorette’s jacket. Tim comments that “it’s looking a little Sgt. Pepper” to which Blayne replies, “I don’t know what that is”. (Tim and I both give exasperated sighs. How can you NOT know Sgt. Pepper?? What kind of people were this kid’s parents? I mean, both of my kids know what Sgt. Pepper is!) Tim has to explain to Blayne that it’s the Beatles. Blayne grabs that and runs with it, saying that he’s drawing from that era, with cardigans and stuff. I groan at the TV. The Beatles may have worn matching outfits but I don’t think they ever wore sweaters. The Lettermen or Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers in the 50’s yes. But not the Beatles. Tim gives up and moves on to Daniel. He’s got a skirt mostly finished, but no bodice, and he’s using that really iffy blue that almost looks purple. (I had a dress in college that was the same color, and I got really tired of having to defend it. I have a feeling Daniel will be having that same problem.) Tim warns Daniel against unraveling emotionally as the night goes on, as Daniel has done every challenge so far.

Before he leaves for the evening, Tim visits with Jerell, who is committing the sin of making a horizontally-striped pencil skirt that will look horrible on muscular women; and Jennifer, who is making a dress that would look great on a 1940’s school teacher.

Joe and Daniel have a little run-in over a sewing machine they both want to use. Come on, guys. There are 10 empty machines! And what happened to the little namecards people put on the machines in past seasons to show who was using what? Joe blames the drama on the fact that there are “too many queens” and Korto feels like she’s back in high school. I’d say, more like preschool.

The next day, we get a LOT of shots of half-naked men. Jerell lotions up his legs and gets dressed and - What the hell is he wearing????????? Is he: a) Peter Pan; b) one of Robin Hood’s “merry” men; c) showing off his redesign of the Boy Scout uniform; or d) the lost Andrews Sister?

It’s time to get those models squished (literally, in some cases – I’m looking at you, Terri!!) into those garments and go, go, GO, people! Tim Gunn and Runway wait for no model! Heidi re-introduces the stylish (and cute) gold medalist Apolo Anton Ohno. To quote Joe from earlier in the show, “Let the fashion games begin!”

The safe designers Suede – He used tulle again. Just because the judges responded well to it once, does not mean that they want to see it in every garment you make.
Kelli – This model would be right at home serving you drinks and a bag of peanuts on a Pan Am flight, circa 1948.
Leanne – I actually kind of like this. It’s definitely modern, it’s got simple clean lines, and it would stand out from the sea of bankers from Australia in the Parade of Nations. (And yes, that's really the Australian team's outfits for this year.)
Stella – I don’t mind the length of the pants – the Canadian team wore a similar length a couple of Olympics ago – or the black, or even the stripy epaulets. This would not actually be too bad…if it weren’t for that obscene bellybutton cutout! Just that one thing sent this over the edge for me.

Keith – A view of his sketch earlier in the episode showed shorts. When did he make the decision to move from shorts, which would have been cute, to a micro-mini bubble skirt? I think pants might have worked even better than shorts, because the scarf is so long.

Blayne – This looks like something Buck Rogers’ girlfriend might have worn in space. Also, one-sleeved shirts might not look right on, say, a gymnast, who has really pumped-up torso and arms. And just because pink has red in it, and aqua has blue in it, does not mean you can substitute those colors for red and blue when making a patriotic statement. (Blayne: Please pick a different pair of shoes next time, you've used those twice now, and they're not particularly attractive.)
Kenley – Perfect for an afternoon of tea and crumpets with the Boston elite, but not for the US Olympic team. And where is the red? I also have an issue with the back of the skirt, because her plaids did not match up at all. Not even close. I hope she did it on purpose, although I don’t know why she would. (You know which country would be perfect for this outfit? Greece.)

Who’s left on the runway?

Korto – This is very basic and very modern. It implies sportiness instead of hitting you over the head with it. I wish she had used a different shade of blue, because on the runway it looks black. The judges like it, saying it looks really comfortable and chic.
Joe – His skort design is definitely athletic, but the shorts are too short, and it ends up looking like she’s wearing an apron. I’m not a fan of the USA down the side, which makes me think of a child’s model rocket. Heidi is impressed with his two-toned zipper. The judges also say it would show off an athlete's physique very well.
Daniel – Oh, Daniel. When you put blue with red it’s going to go purple! I hope the judges packed their 3-D glasses, because this dress gives new meaning to the phrase “it pops”. Heidi keep saying it’s purple and you can just see that Daniel wants to say, “It’s blue, bitch!” His model looks nervous, and with just cause. The judges see absolutely no Olympic connection, unless it’s a design for the team from the Republic of Cocktail Land. During their sewing time, Daniel let Kenley talk him out of making a red bolero jacket for the dress, which I think was a mistake. It needs something – maybe a little red or white capelet.
Jerell – This is five different decades in one outfit – Victorian shirtwaist, big hat from the 30’s, limp neck bow from the 80’s, pencil skirt from the 50’s, and leggings from the 60’s. Apolo says it’s definitely unique, which Jerell correctly identifies as the only compliment he’s going to get. It’s not athletic at all, and that big hat would drive photographers crazy. Michael Kors cracks up during the entire conversation, which is never good. I also question Jerell’s taste in makeup – did he tell them to apply it with an icing spatula?
Terri – It’s nice, but wow, that tube top is too tight!! She’s got a muffin top on her chest! Good thing she used that big blousy scarf to cover it up. But other than that, the judges say it looks really American, with a 70’s vibe. They also like the versatility of the separate pieces, and say it looks smart and sharp.
Jennifer – She was insipired by a 1920’s track suit (for the stripes on the skirt), but was not able to make this look modern at all. In fact, this would look great on an American Girl doll. Apolo says this doesn’t look like an outfit that a confident female athlete would wear. Nina hits the nail on the head when she comments that Jennifer can’t separate challenges from her personal taste, and that it actually just looks silly.

Now that the grilling is over, it’s time to determine a winner. In my opinion, it’s between Joe and Korto, with Korto slightly ahead. If Joe hadn’t put that big USA on there I probably would have liked his best because it looks sportier. The judges go with Korto for the win.

The bottom two are Daniel and Jennifer. While Daniel may have missed the mark completely, at least it could be mistaken for modern, where Jennifer’s can’t - so she’s out. In her little exit sequence she mentions her surrealism design aesthetic again, but I’m left wondering, where was it? I really don’t think she knows what surrealism means. I really didn’t think her outfits were bad, they were actually kind of cute for doll clothes. Maybe she should go into that.

Next week: Well, Bravo goes ahead and shows the guest judge for next week at the end of this show but I won’t say who it is; somebody designs something “slutty slutty slutty”; and Kenley has a giggle fit on the runway that pisses Daniel off for some reason.

The Rain, The Park, and Other Things*

2008-08-02T01:15:00.030-04:00

It’s a new day at the Atlas, and Daniel wakes up hoping the auffing of Wesley was just a bad, bad dream, because they were getting along so well. Unfortunately for Daniel, Wesley is still gone. After everyone wakes up, Kelli dons a kicky leopard-print beret, Blayne does a pregnant waddle out the door, and it’s off to Parsons.

The designers get a scare from Heidi, who says it’s time to mix things up a little with the models, but she just means that Suede has to decide if Suede’s going to stay with his model or if Suede wants a walk-off. Suede loves Tia, Suede stays with Tia, and I can’t believe I just typed that. I apologize! Anyway, to make up for causing them to nearly freak out, she sends them home to wait for Tim, who’s going to take them “out”.

Now, “out” could mean dinner, a movie, the bathroom (if you’re a dog) or just the sidewalk in front of their apartment building. They're thinking "out" as in "par-tay". I think the last time the designers were let “out” unsupervised was back in the first season, where they all got completely plastered and one of them ended up bashing his head on a sidewalk and bleeding all over the place. So if they're going somewhere with Tim, the chances of them actually doing something with no challenge strings attached are pretty slim.

When Tim comes to collect them, he passes out ponchos because it’s raining (and they look like the cheap ones you get at amusement parks but have to pay $7.50 for) and walks them to a double-decker sightseeing bus. The challenge this week is to take pictures of New York at night, in the rain, wearing geeky touristy ponchos, and use one of the pictures to create a garment. Yes, it’s another repeat challenge, but one that spawned some incredible dresses last time. Hopefully we will see some equally inspired dresses from this bunch.

The bus drops little clots of designers at four locations: Columbus Circle, Times Square, the NY library, and Greenwich Village. Everyone wanders around their areas taking pictures of things and getting wet. Blayne immediately starts looking for a tanning salon. Stella doesn’t know how to use the camera. (I’m sure if it had been leather she would have had no problems.) Emily takes a picture of a sex shop. Keith tells us that it’s not easy being a gay Mormon. Kenley and Stella get annoyed because he’s taking so many pictures and they just want to go home. Keith then pulls the first “I’m not here to be their friend” cliché of the season.

They make their way back to Atlas and get ready for bed. Jerell comes out of the bathroom in full facial mask and I fall off the couch. When I finish laughing, it occurs to me that he looks really familiar… Oh! He’s the little Nowhere Man from the Beatles' Yellow Submarine cartoon! See?The next day the designers go through the pictures they took and choose one to be their inspiration. Then they go to MOOD for the first time and get to pick whatever they want! Finally! Stella makes a beeline for the leather-like products, which surprises nobody; Kenley buys a print that I swear I last saw on a housedress that belonged to my grandmother; and Emily clears out the ‘bright pop-py color’ section.

When they return to Parsons, Tim tells them that they’ll have a whole extra hour than they usually get to finish! Oooo. What does it matter? They won’t really finish anyway. I’m so over the ‘you have 12 hours’ drama.

The designers are all sewing away, when the hairs on Kenley’s neck start standing up. She looks up to find that apparently, Blayne has turned into a flesh-eating zombie. (He's obviously in the throes of tanning withdrawl – let that be a warning to us all.) Tim comes in to see what people are working on. He’s mortified by Jennifer’s hems. He’s torn on Kenley’s design – it’s teetering on that fine line between costume and fabulousness. Terri explains to him that she’s really hip-hop and street and her fabric shows that. (Sure, if the street she’s on has recently been painted by Monet.) Leanne’s skirt is gorgeous, but Tim warns her about overworking it like she did with her dress last time. Emily’s dress is simply disappointing. Emily considers that a “mixed review” (I consider it Tim's way of saying her dress looks like shit and she better change it now) and states that she’s happy with it, which of course means that she’s in serious trouble because she’s ignoring Tim.

An amusing segment follows in which Blayne and Terri attempt to teach Tim some street slang. Listening to Tim Gunn try to master saying “Holla at ya boy” is cinematic gold. He also endears himself to us further by throwing out a lot of catchphrases as he leaves (make it work, carry on, holla at ya boy) and poking fun at himself.

The next morning Blayne flat-irons his dirty hair and Stella is wearing those god awful Raggedy Ann tights with the leather thong on the outside. They ought to auf her just for those. In the rush to get the garments runway-ready, Tim arrives with some bad news: Keith’s model has dropped out. Luckily the eliminated model is coming back, but Keith’s going to have to do some fast alterations. I don't think it will really matter, since his dress is basically a sack with some quilt patches attached to it. The models come in and get dressed. Jerell, for the third week in a row, tells his model “we got this!” – which means that for the third week in a row Jerell will be in the middle of the pack.

Out on the runway Heidi apparently took to heart Nina’s comment from last week that “short, tight and shiny is the quickest way to look cheap”, and wears something short, tight and shiny. This week’s guest judge is comedian and actress Sandra Bernhard – whom I have never liked - and I wonder about her fashion cred.

Before I start with the dresses, I have to say that I was quite underwhelmed by the majority of these. Which is sad, really – they got to pick their own stuff and this is what they came up with? I’m surprised the judges were able to stay awake through the runway show.

The safe designers Blayne – Oh look! Rainbow Bright grew up and is headed out to dinner.
Joe – This is okay. You can see how his inspiration picture translated into the dress he sent down the runway, although I think the little chain running down from the neck is a bit too literal.
Jerell – When this gown came down the runway I literally gasped with surprise. We saw almost nothing of it during the show, and it’s quite stunning. It's even more impressive that he managed to make something so complex compared to everyone else's. I was surprised it wasn't in the top three based on that criteria alone. However, I’m puzzled by his color choice – is this what the water looks like in New York fountains? If so, then they have a big algae problem. Or maybe he chose this color so it would hide the fact that the train would be filthy by the end of the night. Or maybe she’s going to a hunting awards show.
Kelli – This girl is probably going to a rave at some underground club in an abandoned sewage treatment plant. The fabric she used for the top is different, I’ll give it that much. Not quite sure what's going on around the waist though.
Daniel – Another Audrey Hepburn-esque cocktail dress. The colors are right on and I like the way he used the black. I’d like to see him do something different, though.
Suede – Besides the color scheme, how did this dress come from this picture? You can't tell from these pictures but it's got little blue and gold triangles all over it. During the show, he had a little fort set up around him at his work table. No wonder… he didn’t want anyone to see this!
Stella – Oh geez. Yes, I understand that she’s rock and roll, and will be until she dies and is buried in her leather coffin, but please! Make something less, um, skanky. Just once.
Korto – It’s... a black jumpsuit. Yawn. And I have no idea how she got the idea for this garment from that picture, unless her goal was to make her model appear to have the same basic shape as a concrete column, in which case she certainly succeeded.

Who’s left on the runway?

Keith - Okay, is he not even trying? If I hadn’t seen him at the sewing machine I would have assumed the squares are attached with safety pins. Maybe if he’d cut all the squares and then basted them down flatter, kind of making his own fabric, and THEN made the dress, it would have worked better. As it is now, the poor model has no shape. MK calls it “toilet paper caught in windstorm” and the judges slam it for being unpolished, sloppy, and too white.
Kenley – Whoa! Baby got back! (Well, at least on one side.) And can someone please tell me how her inspiration photo turned into this fabric? They're not even remotely the same colors. For all their talk about it resembling a goiter, which is very unpleasant, the judges respond well to this dress. Nina likes the play on volume. They also say it’s kind of “eighties retro”, but those sleeves and the high neck make me think more “Victorian shirtwaist”.
Emily – Apparently on the way to Parsons, the model was hit by a car and her intestines started coming out, but she threw them over her shoulder and valiantly walked the runway. The black dress is very simple and the ruffles are placed in strange spots, highlighting and pointing out various anatomy. And when the judges use the words “cha-cha” and “Carmen Miranda” you know it’s not a good thing. Some nice bananas and mangos in her hair would really do wonders for this dress. Maybe some maracas. And a stuffed parrot.
Terri – She keeps calling it a dress but it’s more like a tunic over some pants. The judges say this girl is fierce, sexy, and in-control (but… that’s the model... not the outfit!) and that when they see her, she’s someone they want to know. I see her and want to know what possessed her to wear pants with a dress. And she certainly doesn’t look very street or hip-hop to me at all.
Jennifer – Wow, this is a great maternity dress! I had no idea this model was expecting! Congrats! Oh, she’s not? The dress just makes her look that way? Oops. Jennifer keeps claiming she’s influenced by surrealism but I don’t see it. And the hems look horrible. The judges proclaim it matronly, it apparently bores Nina so much that she can’t be bothered to even comment on it, and Heidi is no longer interested in seeing any more of Jennifer’s designs. (Hmm, I think it’s safe to say she’s probably not in the top three this week.)
Leanne – I like how she used her inspiration picture to get the basic geometry but didn’t go too far towards the literal. The simple blouse does a good job of keeping the focus on the structured skirt. The judges like that she made separate pieces, and throw out words like impeccable, wearable and modern. I think this could be our winner!

Okay, so I was wrong – the judges pick Kenley’s lumpy-bumpy Victorian housedress as the winner. The bottom two are Jennifer and Emily, and I am torn, because they’re both not all that great. But in the end, Emily’s distracting cliché is worse than Jennifer’s matronly bore, so Emily is out. She completely disagrees with them and says hell NO it was not the losing dress by a long shot, but she’s going to go home and work on her collection and be fabulous. (Her collection is here, and I soooo want that first red dress, where can I buy it?!)

Next week: Tim has to explain to Blayne what Sgt. Pepper is. That’s so, so very sad.

* In case you're curious, here's where I got my post title.

How Green Was My Runway

2008-07-25T18:53:00.032-04:00

Welcome to another glorious yellow morning in New York! Sadly, Jerry has left us, but we still have a big mess ‘o designers ready to dazzle us with their stuff. But first, Stella whips up a bit of breakfast – and what’s better than a big glass of… um… well, it looks like the stuff my dad used to rinse off the bottom of the lawn mower. Yummy.Over at Parson’s, it’s time for the designers to pick their models. Heidi, wearing what looks like trash bags left over from the last challenge, brings out The Velvet Bag™. Most of the designers stay with their original models until we get to Joe, who decides to dump his model after making her wear oven mitts and dried pasta on national TV. So that causes a few shake-ups. Jerell gets upset because Jennifer takes his model and then he declares that he’s “salty”. Salty? Is he suddenly a pirate? (Or maybe he says “saucy”, which actually doesn’t make sense either, so never mind him, he’ll get over it.) Nobody wants the poor model who looks like her hair got caught in a hedge trimmer so she is out.

Heidi calls all the models back out onto the runway and delivers the challenge: the designers have to make cocktail dresses for their models. Then she shoos everyone off to see Tim in the workroom. It turns out there is another twist to the challenge – they must use green fabric. Just green? Did they film this over St. Patrick’s Day? Is the guest judge Kermit the Frog? Ohhhhh… not green as in ‘color’ but green as in ‘environmentally friendly’. (That means if you can’t grow it, you can’t show it.) People are generally cool about that, no problem – until Tim tells them that the models will do the shopping! And they get no time to talk to them before they leave! This is met with varying degrees of excitement, horror and disgust.So the designers have no idea how much fabric they’re going to get, or if they’re going to have any thread or zippers. Tim whisks the models away to MOOD immediately. The models are completely lost in the store – they usually don’t have any choice in what they’re wearing on the runway, so they don’t know what colors to buy or, more importantly, how much to buy, and several of them end up picking out the exact same stuff.

Upon returning to Parsons, the designers get to see what they have to work with. Some designers are happy with what they get and some are freaking out because their model has only purchased enough fabric to make a cocktail dress for a Barbie doll. But they have to make it work! Suede is excited about getting to do some ‘green’ fashion – he wants to make it sexy but still put Suede into it. I’m pretty sure suede is not a ‘green’ material.

The models are herded off by Tim and everyone starts working on their dresses. Blayne thinks of Heidi as Darth Vader – all shiny and put-together on the outside, but ca-RA-zy on the inside. Korto is designing a dress that will make her curvy model look even curvier. Suede appears to be making a crazy quilt, and is also continuing to amuse the other designers (and annoy me) by talking about himself in the third person.

There’s also no shortage of whining in the workroom. Stella seems to have no other tone of voice and uses it to complain about - well, everything - and Korto thinks Wesley is copying her design – after all, she’s using darts in her dress, he’s using darts in his dress, so that’s totally copying! She consults with several of the other designers who tell her in no uncertain terms that she is nuts and she should leave them the hell alone and keep her eyes on her own work.

Tim comes in for his mid-design tour. He goes over to talk to Korto and he, like pretty much everyone watching the show, thinks she has her dress on the form inside out so she can work on the darts, and he’s quite taken aback when she tells him that it’s not, and the darts are going to be sticking out like the tail fins on a ’59 Cadillac.

Suede’s crazy quilt turns out to be the bodice of his dress, and it’s getting a puffy tulle skirt. Tim loves it. (I’m sitting here wondering if tulle is a ‘green’ fabric – isn’t it made out of of nylon? But Tim says nothing about it so I guess I’ll let this one slide.)

He’s not so in love with the designs of Wesley or Leanne, who both have the same chocolate brown satin. He’s concerned that any flaws Wesley makes will scream “Look at me!” on the runway. Leanne is adding lots of weird loops of fabric. She has so many ideas and appears to be sticking every single one of them on her dress.

Before he goes, Tim announces that there will be no immunity for the winner of this challenge – but the winning dress will be sold on Bluefly.com. He gives them a hint as to who the guest judge will be, telling them it’s a glamorous young Hollywood star.

After he leaves, Stella expounds on the joys of sewing with leather. Leather this, leather that. Then she goes through a list of things you can do with leather - it sounds like Forrest Gump's friend Bubba talking about shrimp. Blayne goes into the sewing room joking around with comments like “my husband’s leather” and “my kids are all named Leather”. Of course he doesn’t realize that everyone in the workroom can hear him. They all have a good laugh about it and Blayne affectionately calls Stella ‘leatherface’. (At least he didn’t call her “leatherlicous”.) But it’s good to see some lighthearted fun in the workroom for a change.

Next morning is a blur. After we get our requisite guys-in-underwear shot, the designers hustle back to Parsons.This part always confuses me. They were told by Tim that they had until midnight the previous night to finish the outfit. But the next morning there's always a couple more hours! If they’re supposed to be done by midnight then they shouldn’t get any more major sewing time. Alterations while it’s on the model, I can understand. But something like Daniel’s bodice not being attached to his skirt? That’s a heck of a lot more than an alteration. Tim must have been reading my mind because he comes in and basically chews them out for that exact same thing! You go, Tim!

While the models go through hair and makeup and we get lots of product placement shots, Daniel is still sitting at the sewing machine. He’s got five minutes, Tim says… will he make it? And… he does! Just barely. And with the models finally into their cocktail dresses, it’s runway time.

Heidi introduces the mystery guest judge – it’s the fashionable Queen Amidala herself, Natalie Portman! Apparently she has a new line of vegan shoes. I had no idea there was such a thing. I do think her line is pretty cute, so go check them out. But not until we see what happens on the runway!

The safe designers:Keith – This makes me think of Roman shades, or those big curtains they have in fancy theaters. Just give the cord a yank and whoops! Hello ladyparts! It doesn’t fit too well around the waist when she walks the runway.
Terri – I really like this! I don’t know why this wasn’t one of the top pieces. The color looks great on the model, the shape is nice, the ruffle details are pretty. I’d totally wear this.

Jerell – I would not, however, wear this. The colors are nice but that bodice makes her breasts look like they're growing out of the sides of her chest. And the trim around the bottom is peacock feathers but it just makes her appear to have an unfortunate hair problem.Jennifer – Why on earth did her model pick these colors? It looks like she’s going to a Halloween cocktail party. The design is okay, nothing groundbreaking, and it seems to be nicely sewn.

Daniel – This is really cute. I like the high front - long back skirt design. It definitely captured the Audrey Hepburn look he was going for, and I could see Natalie in this dress. I’d wear this too! I just wish they'd posed the model differently for this picture.

Joe – Here’s a piece from what Jerell referred to as “Team Ugly Brown”. The design is quite basic, and the little round cutout in the front is interesting - but too small. It’s nice that Joe managed to sew the dress without causing a lot of the wrinkles and puckering you get with this fabric. It fits his model really well.Kelli – It almost looks like the model didn’t put it on right, maybe she stuck her arm out of the neck hole? I also think the skirt is way too tight. If it had been fuller I would have liked this dress more.

Blayne – This looks kind of ‘eighties’ to me. Must be the combination of hot pink and black. It’s nice, but nothing special. One good point – she wouldn’t have to carry a purse because she could just stick all her stuff in the shoulder.

Emily – I like the braid detail she used on the bust and waist, but it seems to be sitting unnaturally low on the upper half of her body. If she’d had the fabric to make it longer I think it would have worked better. I do like her choice of accessories.

Who’s left on the runway:Kenley - This is definitely in the top three. Her model loves it, the judges praise the elegance of the design and how well it fits. The first thing I think when I see it is that it reminds me of Daniel Vosovic’s orchid dress from S2 – another challenge-winning dress.

Wesley – The poor boy just didn’t have much fabric to work with, so he had a strike against him before he even got started. He probably could have made it a bit longer if he’d left off the strips on the side. But it doesn’t fit well and it’s really wrinkly and bunchy. MK says he tortured the fabric, and you can almost hear it wailing.

Suede – Wow. While I admire the work it took to sew all those bias strips, this is not a favorite of mine. It looks like something the Mummy would wear on a date. The judges drooled all over it, and both Natalie and Heidi said they would wear it. And they’d be front and center on Go Fug Yourself the next day.Leanne – The woman who wears this dress would be popular on a crowded subway – it's got little handles all over it! And what’s with the weensy little feathery hat? The model doesn’t like the dress, and the judges don’t like it either.

Stella – This dress would be perfect for the woman who really needs something to wear while writhing seductively on the hood of a car in a music video. The judges do like that she put her own attitude into the design and Heidi gives her a gold star for being ‘most improved’ over last week. (Although if you can’t improve over barely-sewn garbage bags then you might as well just go home.)

Korto – Is there some kind of subliminal advertising going on for feminine hygiene products? Last week Blayne had that big maxi pad on his garment and this week Korto does Always With Wings. Her intent was to accentuate the curves of the model but she didn’t sew the seams very well so parts of the model looked crooked, especially in the back. Also, she used a necklace that seems to be made out of fossilized dinosaur teeth, which looks painful to wear.

Surprisingly, Suede is the winner of the challenge. (I would have gone with Kenley’s.) So he’ll have his dress manufactured and sold by Bluefly.com – boy, I feel sorry for the people who have to sew all those bias strips.

Korto gets thisclose to being in the bottom two but squeaks by. She goes backstage and cries on everyone. That leaves Wesley and Leanne, and while the judges say Leanne’s dress looks like a school project, it is Wesley that they choose as the bottom designer. Goodbye, Wesley, keep up the positive attitude… but please buy some longer shorts.

The Good, the Bad, and... oh heck, a whole bunch of other people!

2008-07-19T01:53:00.023-04:00

Oh Project Runway, how I’ve missed thee! Let me count the ways…

On second thought, let’s skip that part and just jump right in to this week’s episode. Since this is the first one, we have to watch everyone move in to the Atlas (I guess the Gotham of last season was too Batman-ish or… something. Whatever. It looked just like the Atlas anyway.) Here’s how this season’s roommates break down.

Guys’ apartments: In one we have Jerell, who likes to wear fedoras and reminds me a lot of Ben Vereen; Joe, this season’s dark-haired bearded straight guy, who strongly resembles last season’s dark-haired bearded straight guy; Blayne, a tanorexic street-wear designer, and Wesley, who is wearing what is possibly the most unflattering pair of shorts in existence. In the other apartment we have Jerry, who already has his own relatively successful design company and always looks apprehensive about everything; Suede, who sports a blue-tipped fauxhawk and enjoys talking about himself in the third person; Keith, a tattooed buff guy; and Daniel, who… um… looks like a Daniel.

Gals’ apartments: Sharing one tiny bathroom are Stella, who can’t decide if she wants to be Cher or the guy from A Clockwork Orange; Jennifer, who seems much too shy to be on this show; Kelli, owner of a cool store about 20 minutes from my house (yay!); and Terri, a self-proclaimed speed-sewer. Sharing the other tiny bathroom are Korto, who hails from Africa but somehow ended up in Arkansas; Kenley, a WWII pinup girl wannabe who likes loud prints; Leanne, the “silent fashion assassin” with 1950’s science lab safety glasses; and Emily, who has a clothing company in LA.

After getting all settled, it’s time for rooftop champagne with Heidi and Tim! Everyone’s anxious to get this show on the road - except Jerry, who looks like he might pass out. After Tim probably kills an unsuspecting pedestrian by launching a champagne cork off the roof, everyone chit-chats until the bubbly runs out, and they all stumble downstairs.

Before you know it, it’s four am. Most people are asleep, but a few of the designers have come ready for anything, knowing that it’s entirely possible that Tim Gunn might come over at an obscene hour, and he does. Jennifer actually answers the door while wearing only a towel and is embarrassed (he’s gay, dear, don’t be). Tim wants everyone to meet him in the lobby ASAP, hangovers be damned, and they’ll be on their way!

They take a little stroll through downtown New York and end up at: a grocery store! But not just ANY grocery store; this is Gristedes, the site of the very first Project Runway challenge evah!

And what better person to appear and explain the challenge than Austin Scarlett, the designer who won that challenge. Doesn't he look dapper?

Now, some people might have a problem with them re-using old challenges. I say, “bring it on”! I know there were several times in the last two seasons where I thought, “Gee, I wonder what Kayne would have done in the wedding dress challenge” or “I bet Chris would have been blown everyone away in the live plant challenge” or even “I’m so glad Vincent didn’t do the lingerie challenge.” So hopefully, they will be doing more old challenges and we can get some fresh takes.

Everyone gets their money from Austin and sprints across the intersection to the store. (At this point I have to explain to my eight-year-old that police probably stopped the traffic because she is yelling “THEY DIDN’T LOOK BOTH WAYS!!” at the television.) People are buying interesting items – Daniel has filled his entire cart with blue plastic frat party beer cups, Wes has a giant yellow rubber ball, and Korto checks out the produce. Unfortunately a large number of the designers grab fabric-like items, such as plastic tablecloths and trash bags. (That’s not the POINT, people!! Sheesh.)

Back at Parson’s, people unload their stuff and get started. Jerry sniffs in disgust at other people’s items, commenting that it’s all “stuff that I would throw away”. And what did he pick up? A shower curtain. And a tablecloth. To make April Showers Bring blahblahblah. Yawn!

Let’s see what other people are doing. Joe has lined up boxes of multi-colored noodles, that looks interesting… Kelli is doing a neat bleach and dye job on some vacuum bags… Daniel is ironing his cut-up cups so they’ll mold onto his dress form (Now THAT’S seriously cool, I hope it works!)… Terri is braiding pieces of mop head. Leanne is disappointed that so many people got tablecloths, because she wanted to be different with HER tablecloth. *insert eye roll here* And Clockwork Stella’s freaking out. Instead of the nice Glad trash bags we saw her picking up in the store, she now has cheapo ones that disintegrate if you breathe on them. (Don’t you know you can’t use Glad? They sponsor Top Chef, not Project Runway.)

It’s time for the inaugural Visit From Tim! He starts with Blayne, who introduces him to his garment, which is called “Girlicious” and is basically a grownup onesie made of black shelf liner with a giant maxi pad made of jumprope attached to the front. Blayne states that he wants to be obnoxious and I think he’s doing quite a good job. It’s also obvious to me that Blayne aspires to be another Michael Kors – not in fashion design, but in skin tone. He’s quite orange. Let’s see where he lands on the scale.

Not bad, you’re getting there, Blayne!

After making the rounds, Tim is exasperated by the number of tablecloths being used and chews everyone out! He rightly predicts that the judges will say, “You guys are a bunch of slackers!” This freaks the tablecloth (and shower curtain) people out, and they start trying to do things to their garments to make them look less like tablecloths, with varying degrees of success.

The next morning, Kelli does what I believe might be the first Nina Garcia impression ever on PR. (It's much better than Jerell's weak attempt at a Tim impression earlier in the show.) It’s runway day, and most people are nervous as they hurry to finish their garments. Tim sends in the models. Blayne’s onesie doesn’t fit (somebody didn’t make sure their dress form was set to the model’s measurements, hmm?) so he has to sew her into it. Jerry, who has made – gasp – a raincoat out of a shower curtain (oh! The innovation!), decides to put his model in rain boots. Poor girl. She has this look on her face that says “I am soooo going to be air-kissing Heidi goodbye.” Just then, Tim returns to usher them out to the runway, and Korto realizes she’s forgotten to eat lunch so she rushes to the refrigerator to get her salad. No, wait, that’s part of her dress!

In the spirit of the challenge, Heidi strolls out onto the runway wearing a minidress made out of a damask tablecloth. (Nice hair, though!) Joining Heidi, Michael and Nina in the judges’ chairs this week is dear Austin, looking very businesslike in horn-rimmed glasses and a suit. Let’s start the show!

The safe designers:

Emily – It looks like someone smashed a piñata over her head and left it there.
Jerell – Interesting use of umbrellas, both cocktail and patio. And the sleeve-thing is a koosh ball. I think his tablecloth skirt got caught in a shredder though.
Leanne – It’s a giant bag covered in candy and coffee filters! Nina is NOT impressed.
Jennifer – Ingenious use of paper towels for the entire garment. And she put little lipstick kisses all over it, which is a nice idea, but they don’t show up very well.
Terri – The braided top is amazing, but she just phoned that skirt in.
Suede – Those tiny squares don’t do it for me. And it still looks like a tablecloth.
Joe – Wow, that pasta skirt is very cool. From far away it doesn’t even look like pasta, just a neat patterned material.
Kenley – Nice use of a dodge ball as a bodice, but that skirt fits weird.
Wes – This makes me think of Big Bird. He cut up plastic cups and flyswatters for the shoulder piece but they’re all the same shade of yellow so they don’t stand out enough.
Keith – I like how he used the dark netting to make it look shaded, but it still looks like a tablecloth.

(Geez, these pics from Bravo.com are horrible! Eww. Sorry!)

Who’s left on the runway?

Korto – Yes, she used a tablecloth, and it looks like one, but the vegetables saved her by adding a visual kick. The judges throw out words like “impeccable” and “chic”. They conclude that she has good taste (almost literally - nice salad, made me hungry).
Daniel – This is amazing and the model looks great in it. It kind of reminds me of the costumes in the movie Metropolis. The judges all like it, although MK can’t leave well enough alone and says he should have taken the silhouette further. Blah.
Stella – This is quite sad. Yeah, she sewed it all by hand, but I could do the same thing with NO sewing, AND I’d be sure and use Glad or Hefty. Heidi actually refers to this garment as “butt-ugly” and I wholeheartedly agree.
Jerry – Look! On the runway! It’s a bride! It’s a nun! It’s a… what the heck is it? The judges are just as confused, and can hardly find the words to describe its freakishness. They finally get around to deciding that this is what all the well-dressed psychopathic killer nurses will be wearing this season.
Blayne – Whatever this is, it’s certainly not boring anyone! Or impressing anyone! His wish to be obnoxious has come true. Heidi calls it a grunge Playboy bunny outfit.
Kelli – This is my favorite outfit. The treatment she did on the skirt looks great, and her use of spiral notebook to MAKE hook-and-eye closures on the back is bordering on genius. The waist is made of thumbtacks (which I hope she hammered flat because man, would that hurt). The only part I’m not too crazy about are the coffee filter boobs. Maybe she ran out of time, I don’t know. The judges are unanimous in their praise of her creativity.

It’s obvious who the two front-runners are: Kelli and Daniel. It could go either way, but the winner is Kelli! Way to go, fellow central Ohioan! (See, the Midwest isn’t a swirling void of ill-fitting sweatsuits and Angela’s fleurchons!) Kelli gets immunity next week.

Not surprisingly, the two left standing on the runway are Stella and Jerry. This could also go either way (and I’m secretly hoping that they do a double elimination, these were so bad). But in the end it’s Jerry who is sent to pack up his things. But he’ll be okay, he’s got his own company already anyway.

Next week: well, apparently Bravo has already listed every challenge and guest judge for the entire season (what is the deal with that??), so you can go look there. But I’m not going to look. I like to be surprised.

It's That Time Again!

2008-07-16T20:51:00.004-04:00

Yep, time for a new season of Project Runway! Which means I'm back to writing recaps.

Number of seasons I've recapped: two
Number of finale episodes I've recapped: none

Hmm... not doing too well. But I'm going to try it again! And now, I'm off to watch the show!

PR Decoy Collection #1: Sweet P

2008-02-27T09:33:00.030-05:00

Due to wonky scheduling by Bravo, the final Bryant Park show took place before Sweet P was actually out of the competition; therefore, she had to present a collection or everyone would know she was getting kicked off before the show aired. But being in the Bryant Park show is a prize in itself, even if you're not up for the big money, because it's a chance to show the world what you can do.

Let's see what Sweet P did with her chance.

#1: Right off the bat, I don't get it. Why did she use THAT purple with THAT gold? On second thought, it's not the purple that bothers me, it's the gold. I hate that mustard color. (On third thought I just hate mustard. Especially on burgers and in potato salad. But I digress.) Socks and heels? Oh please. This outfit looks like it belongs on one of the Peanuts kids.

#2: Much better. My only concern is the hip-widening pockets. She did that on a few of her garments this season.

#3: Somebody's been in Austin Powers' closet again! And I've seen that hat before, on Sgt. Shultz from Hogan's Heroes. Okay... being serious. I hate the way she put the stripes on the pants, especially in the crotch area. Again with the socks and heels. And if you're going to put a hat on your model, make sure it fits! In fact, this entire outfit appears to be three sizes too small for the model... and this model ain't that big to begin with. Perhaps Sweet P should do a line of children's wear.

#4: This is not bad at all. It's got a bit of a "funky librarian" vibe to it. The feather-duster cuffs must come in handy if you want to dust and reshelve returned books at the same time.

#5: This is perfect for the 19th-century English lady who wants to be stylish whilst deer hunting. And in case she gets peckish, a cereal bowl that doubles as a cap will come in quite handy out in the woods.

#6:Eek! This is straight out of the Seventeen back-to-school issue for 1987. (I know... I have that magazine in my closet right now.) I thought the hip-pockets on the second dress were bad - these hips are insane!! It was so unfortunate that the model got into poison ivy right before the show and had to go on the runway with her legs slathered in calamine lotion. (And please tell me that necklace isn't made out of condoms.)
#7: Double eek! Don't actually mind the pants as much as I mind the shirt, which looks like she picked it randomly from a dark closet to go with the pants. I do applaud her use of green swimming goggles as a necklace, though. That's thinking outside the box!

#8: The only other place I've seen a zipper that long is on a sleeping bag. In fact, I think this might have been a sleeping bag. Way to recycle, Sweet P!

#9: This screams "little girl playing dress-up at Grandma's house." It doesn't fit right (especially in the bust - where exactly are her breasts?), it's got a bad case of static cling, and that hat! Someone needs to introduce Sweet P to a nice milliner. On the plus side, I love that color, and those shoes are super-cute.

Now THIS looks like a collection.

#10: Again, there is that mustard color that I hate. And did she get that jeweled yoke idea from Victorya's prom dress? I do like the actual shape and fit of the dress, though. If only it was a different color.

#11: This, to me, is the most wearable thing in the entire collection. I don't even mind the gold so much. The pattern - and the positioning of the pattern - is interesting. The whole dress has a very Asian vibe to it that I'm liking a lot.

#12: I've heard the phrase "junk in the trunk" but this is ridiculous! I can't tell if it's a peplum on the back, or if that's the actual pant. Whatever it is, it's not very flattering. She did get the hat right on this one, though!

Well, I can't say that I was 'wowed' by the collection, but it is very Sweet P. Maybe it was better in person, but I only have the pictures to go by - many times the pieces look better if you can see how they move. It also didn't really feel like a cohesive collection to me - it was more like she just made a bunch of different outfits and showed them to us. I've looked at this group I don't know how many times, and I can't figure out how they're supposed to tie together. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she actually did get the chance to go to Bryant Park, even if she was a decoy, and I hope wonderful things come her way as a result. But this would not have won.

If you'd like to see more of Sweet P's work, check out her website, where she has several collections.

Keeping Us In Stitches, part 2

2008-02-26T20:35:00.022-05:00

To continue from yesterday, here are the remaining designers, who showed collections that I mostly liked.

Before we get to that though, I just have to ask: why does every dang model have her hair pulled back (except Marie, because she has short hair)? Were ALL ofthe TRESemme hairstylists busy with Fashion Week? Could they not spare a couple of them for a few hours? Some of the designs in both posts may have resonated better with me had the hair not been so severe.

Today's installment:
Old Sew-and-Sews

Marion: Lotta black going on here. But he did some interesting things with it. #1's bodice looks ragged, like her puppy chewed it up (but that's kind of Marion's asthetic). The top is a little boxy, the skirt is skating right on the edge of bubble-ness, and without the fluff at the neck the dress might have looked more flattering overall. Speaking of necks, I'm not too sure about that netting on #2. It does need some kind of interest there, because otherwise it's just a halter top, but the stiffness of the netting is starting to venture into clownish territory. It does go along with the palm-leaf motif on the bodice, though, so I'm not sure what else he could have done. I still kind of like it anyway. I really like the "flapper at the speakeasy" vibe of #3, and the way he paired the feathery print with actual feathers.

Elisa: She describes this collection as being characters for her puppet designs. #1 must be her "Uma Thurman at the Oscars" character. It's a bit too costumey. And she picked the wrong shoes to go with it. (Didn't they have any Dutch wooden clogs?) #2 is supposed to be a "healer" character. While I'm glad she used a color, I wish it could have been something other than orange. I hate orange. But the dress itself has a lovely silhouette and it's done in her "one seam" technique, which impresses the heck out of me. The hood is an interesting addition. #3 is a "star maiden" in an elegant crystal-studded dress, very tasteful and red-carpet ready.

Kit: More black! While I'm not crazy about the brown shoes or the plastic-tarp skirt of #1, I do like the off-white shirt with the button details. (I just hope those are separate gloves and not built into the bottom of the sleeves, because that would be stupid.) #2 is a nice little black dress, which every woman needs, and the ruffly details are very Kit. The coat in #3 seems to have a bit of an Oliver Twist influence, and I can't tell if that's a skirt or culottes (do they still call them that? Probably should say skort instead, but when I was little they were culottes). But this look is one of my favorites of any collection.

Rami: Color! Thank goodness. Having been a big fan of purple for a good chunk of my adolescence, I'm happy that he chose it. The grape popsicle color of #1's skirt is great (can't say the same for where he chose to start the gathering, at the widest part of the hip) and the corset part really accentuates the waist. Not a fan of the giant fleurchon on the shirt. Without that, it would have been a perfectly elegant shirt that could be worn to work and then right out for cocktails afterwards. #2 is my favorite. The curves in the jacket are really interesting, the color is divine, and pairing the jacket with plain black pants really works. #3 is where he falls a little bit, in my opinion - the dusty lilac color is pretty, but the rest of it looks like a toddler's dress and the neckline is too high. If he'd cut it a bit lower, it would have been a much less childlike dress. The waistband is also just a teeny bit too wide - it's probably supposed to be empire but instead it just looks like he sewed the waist too high - it throws the proportions off.

Kevin: I think he used the black and white plaid-ish print very well, and without making the models wearing it look huge. #1 is super-cute (even with the wee gloves) and very chic. I like how he changed the direction of the pattern on the sides. I'm not sure where one would wear #2. It's a bit "dominatrix-schoolgirl-gangster" - and there aren't too many women that could pull THAT off. And fingerless gloves are only to be used by open-hole flute players in marching bands. Period. The pants on #3 have a nice button detail below the knee that you can't really see here, and you have to be skinny to wear them, but putting the pattern at an angle like that keeps the thighs from looking too fat. Not fond of the vest, but it worked for him in the Sarah Jessica Parker challenge, so maybe he thought he'd try it again. The shirt is a basic, plain white dress shirt, which Tim Gunn would approve for his list of ten essential items a woman should have.

Steven: This is obviously a very fifties' inspired collection. I love fifties' dresses! One of my favorite movies of all time is Peggy Sue Got Married, and she's wearing these big skirts all over that movie. So naturally I'm drawn to the first two dresses, especially. Not that they're fashion-forward or even very innovative, but they're classic. #3 is another nice, elegant little black dress, and I'm glad he put the lace overlay on the one shoulder because otherwise it would have been exceedingly plain. But elegant.

There you have it. I still can't decide whose collection I like best, since even in the good ones there were parts I didn't quite get. So instead, I will just pick my three favorite looks, in no particular order.
Yes, I know, this is only two, but my third is Ricky's red number and I couldn't figure out how to get the hat off the model. And chopping her head off would have just been rude! It's not her fault she has a dumb hat on.

Keeping Us In Stitches, part 1

2008-02-23T19:56:00.039-05:00

Last week's episode of Project Runway was the reunion show. I chose not to do a recap, because:

1) it was boring and

2) I didn't actually finish watching it until last night.

If you want to read many highly entertaining recaps go here. The only part I was really interested in was the Fan Favorite award. We all knew who it was going to be, the announcement was just a formality.

The title of Season 4 Fan Favorite and a giant cardboard check for $10,000 goes to Chris...

YAY!!!!

...tian.

Are you kidding me?? Christian???? Talk about positive reinforcement for negative behavior. *sigh* I worry for the future. (Also, I wonder what kind of sauce goes good with this keyboard I now have to eat? Chocolate? Hmm...)

Anyway, let's get on with the point of today's post. All of the designers were invited to create three-piece mini collections for a side competition cleverly entitled "It's Sew Not Over" with a prize of $10,000 to the winner, which will be chosen by the viewers (go here to vote). Twelve of the fifteen participated (the "final four" included - where they found time to make three extra pieces on top of their twelve for Bryant Park, I'll never know.) After looking them all over and watching the runway show, there wasn't any one collection that I liked completely, but I found that I was split evenly between the ones I mostly liked and the ones I mostly didn't. First I'm going to look at the stinkers, and then tomorrow I'll post the ones that didn't stink so bad.

Today's installment:

Sew Knot Impressed

Carmen: I'm afraid to say anything bad about this collection because that first model's gonna kick my butt! But... sometimes you have to take one for the team, so here goes. Not only did she steal those pants in #1 from James T. Kirk, but she pinched Luke's lightsaber too. Stockings and flip-flops? Big no-no! It gives the model goat feet. Speaking of Star Wars, #2 is what all the Jedi ladies will be wearing this season. And hey!! My mother had those EXACT same pants in #3... but in that brown plaid! Back in 1974! (I also think someone must have gotten Carmen this Duct Tape calendar for Christmas. THOSE belts ain't goin' nowhere!) This is definitely my least favorite of all the mini-collections.

The only redeeming things I can say about it is that the top of the second outfit would look good with jeans, and that the three pieces at least actually LOOK like a collection.

Which is more than I can say for...Christian: Good Lord. He cleared out the remnants bin at Mood. I'm so sorry for ever suggesting in previous posts that Christian use some color - I should have included the word "correctly" in there also. And did he skip the "Working With Prints" class? (He needs to go work with Uli from last season - now there is a designer who knows how to mix prints.) As for the individual designs, #1 stepped right out of an Austin Powers "swinging 60's" dance number, #2 is that very stern elementary school teacher that everyone hated, and #3... well, let's just say that amoebas emerging from one's personal regions is not a good look. I'm curious though... let's see what they'd look like if he had used more of his signature black!

Hmm okay, he's using the wacky prints to cover up the fact that you can buy all these outfits at TJMaxx.
Jack: If you're going to pick a print to base your entire collection on, please pick a nice print. The placement of the blue flowers on #1 is, um, pointing at things, and what's with that collar? Also, either make it sleeveless or give it a sleeve; that in-between thing isn't working. I'd be pulling on them all day. The two pieces of #2 are okay, but not together. Put that jacket with a tshirt and a pair of jeans, or just wear the dress with a belt. Shapeless bags are not flattering! #3 is okay, but I'd rather it not have the trim at the bottom. At least Jack has a color story.

Jillian: We know that Jillian has time-management issues. Was she so behind on her Bryant Park collection that she ended up having to pick three random outfits from her closet and send them down the runway? Why, yes, apparently that was the basis for her collection: what does she want to wear tomorrow? These are actually not all that bad - if I had to pick one I liked best I'd say #1, but I wish it was longer. I don't care for the orange boob piping on #2, and I've never seen the appeal of vests and bare arms. I do have to give her kudos for resisting the urge to use that same pair of shoes she always uses.

Ricky: This collection would have made more sense had the runway music been The Theme to Popeye. Taking three dresses and adding a hat and gloves do not a collection make. #1 and #3 at least look similar due to the fabric, but #2 just does not fit at all. Especially that skirt - it's bunching and pulling and appears to be made out of a Hefty sack. The bottom of #1 moves very strangely on the runway, as if it was a lampshade attached to the bottom of the dress. I quite like #3 though - good color, nice shape, very flirty. I'd wear it (sans accessories of course).

You know, on second thought, I don't even think Popeye would stoop to wearing that hat.

Chris: This one pains me the most, because Chris is my favorite. But he just came unravelled in this mini-challenge. Where's the drama? Where's the show? Where's the construction? I know he kept getting told to tone it down, but now he's toned it down so much, you can't even hear it! #1 has been done before, and better, in the eighties; #2 would be really great if the top fit better and was less bulky (that fabric is beautiful though - I wish he'd taken it all the way up), and #3 adds about a foot of width to the top part of the body. Can she even put her right arm down? Or is she stuck like Randy in the snowsuit in A Christmas Story?

Tomorrow I'll post the remaining six collections, and my goal for Wednesday is to post Sweet P's Bryant Park show. Since she's not going to be on either of the remining PR shows, I feel okay in doing that.

"You are cute if you listen to Locksley"

2008-02-23T15:11:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new CD, Don't Make Me Wait, by NY-based band Locksley. But if that slogan (from a Locksley t-shirt) is to be believed, then I must look like Heidi Klum by now, because I have had this album playing on my iPod and in my car almost continuously since it arrived. Never heard of Locksley? Neither had I. They're currently unsigned, but I don't think they will be that way for long.I saw Locksley this fall when I took my son to see Hanson (yes, that Hanson, but if you haven't seen them live, then you need to. Amazing show). Locksley was the opening act. Now, usually at a concert, the opening act is just kind of a time-killer until the main attraction comes on. But this group of guys put on a really fun set of bouncy pop-garage band rock reminiscent of The Beatles and the British Invasion. When their show was over, I found myself actually wishing they'd play more songs.

Many of the songs on Don't Make Me Wait, as I said, are Beatles-esque. But that's not to say that Locksley is a tribute band by any means. You can tell what their musical influences are, but they're not copying anything. They've taken all the best characteristics of early Beatles' songs and added their own modern twist to it. (It also doesn't hurt that the lead singer sounds like Lennon and looks like McCartney.) You can tell that these guys love music, and the sheer fun they have playing it comes through the speakers loud and clear.

Curious? Check out their MySpace page where you can hear four songs off the album. They also have a YouTube page where they've put up a few music videos and also some very amusing random "home movie" type clips. Or you can just skip all that and head over to their website at http://www.bandoflocksley.com/ to buy the album so you can hear the rest of it, because it is that good.

You Gotta Have 'Art

2008-02-16T12:13:00.030-05:00

The show starts off with a reminder of last week’s WWE challenge (as if we could ever forget, as it is seared on our brains for all eternity) where Chris was the triumphant winner of the “tackiest challenge” and crying Ricky (who didn’t cry) was out.

Over at Parsons, Heidi brings out the winning and losing models, who weren’t even in the last challenge, and then lies to them about it being a competition for them too. (Can you just drop this part next season, Bravo? Because nobody’s buying it anymore.) Chris, who won last week, chooses to stay with his model Marcia, meaning Amanda of the Amy Winehouse beehive is out. Heidi asks the designers if they want their next challenge (for the last time *sniff*) and Christian’s all, “Duh! Why else are we sitting way down here in these uncomfortable chairs? Get on with it, woman!”
Again, she sends them to Tim: “He’s waiting for you all the way across town and you have ten minutes to get there and the van’s out of gas because we wasted it taking you to the Port Authority a couple challenges ago… so MOVE your butts!”

Huffing and puffing, they arrive at their destination – the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s huge!” Rami offers helpfully. As they move through the museum, we are treated to many views of statuary derrières and other unmentionable parts. Tim defines the challenge: to find a piece of art in one of three museum wings (Greek/Roman statues, European paintings, and an entire Egyptian temple) to use as inspiration for a garment. They can pick anything! Tim gives them each a camera and off they go.

I love museums, and watching them go around is interesting, but it would have been a lot more entertaining had the producers speeded it up and set it to music, much like the Griswold family visiting the Louvre in “European Vacation.” Not surprisingly, Rami heads straight for the headless, armless Greek statues. (I’m quite glad that this is one of the last times I’ll have to listen to him talk about draping.) Christian finds a fabulously fierce painting of a Spanish guy in black puffy sleeves and skinny pants. Chris prefers the paintings of people with all their limbs and clothing with color. Jillian looks at some people on horses. Sweet P tells us she could have touched a painting, because nobody else was in the museum, and she didn’t (but we know she did... wouldn’t you??).

Back at Parsons, they look through their pictures and pick one they like best. Rami and Christian have already picked out shoes! Accessory wall hogs. (Hey, I just noticed something. When they were walking to the Met, the screen said it was 7am. Now, back in the workroom, the clock says 2:35pm. I’m sure they ate lunch in there somewhere, but they spent five or six hours at the museum? And Jillian was wearing four-inch heels? Wow.)

The designers head over to Mood (for the last time *sniff*) to spend their $300. Christian is going to use every penny, because he’s buying entire rolls of organza. (Didn’t he make that dress a few challenges ago? Did the editors put the wrong Mood footage in?)

Time to start sewing. Rami’s got this gorgeous lilac material that he is, of course, draping. Jillian tells us about her inspiration piece, a painting of soldiers from the 1460’s wearing jackets and bubble skirts and tights while riding around on fat ponies. Chris has picked a painting of a noblewoman wearing a powdered wig and a big poofy wrap around her shoulders, so he’s going to make a dress with a big poofy wrap around one shoulder. Because he doesn’t want to be too literal, you know.

The next morning we see that Sweet P hasn’t sewn anything but her muslin mock-up, and then she tells us how she needs to win because it will save her business. (Aww, poor girl, you must be out, because that’s classic loser’s edit right there.)

Time for a visit from Tim! Hooray! Oh, no it’s not, what a letdown - he’s just sending in the models for a fitting - all except Sweet P’s model, Lea, who has a family emergency. What’s Sweet P going to do now? Is she going to have to run out into the street like Jay did in Season 1 and try to convince some stranger to come in and be her model?

Christian thinks that Chris’s dress is too “costume” and looks a lot like the avant-garde one they did together. He stops just short of saying Chris copied it, but you know he’s thinking it. I’m thinking Christian’s black-and-white poofy-froofy design looks like almost every other black poofy thing he’s done, so he needs to shut the heck up.

Surprise! Jillian has made a coat. Granted, it’s a short coat this time, but it’s still a coat. At some point there will be a short gold-lamé disco roller skating dress underneath it, if she doesn’t run out of time like she usually does.

Tim comes back in to introduce them to a “special guest.” He sure likes the word special, doesn’t he? I never noticed until this season how much he says it. (And on his other show, he was saying it every two minutes.) Anyway, the designers are all wondering what kind of fabulousness will walk through those black double doors – which unknown person could possibly top Sarah Jessica Parker for specialness??

Letdown number two! It’s just the bald makeup guy that they already know. Then we have to sit through “makeup consultations” (well, I don’t, I fast-forward through that part because it’s boring). Tim acts like the guy’s never been to Parsons before – don’t they see him every challenge?

After bald makeup guy is done talking to them, there’s about four hours left in the day. Chris shocks the workroom by announcing that he’s done, and he’s going to go take a nap. Christian can’t believe it! He’s done too – what else would you expect from someone so perfect and fierce – but is he off snoring on an uncomfortable couch! No! He’s putting ribbons on his hat! He’s snipping threads! He’s at least pretending to be working. He then drones on and on about Europe and how young he is, and does a little famous designer name-dropping. (Personally, I’d much rather listen to Chris snore in the other room.) Then he tries on his clothes and you just KNOW he’s making them for himself.

Tim returns to check on everyone’s progress. The other designers inform him that Chris has gone off to dreamland… but Tim is having none of that! He glides out into the lounge, puts his hands on his hips and demands that Chris get up off his butt and show him how “wowable” the dress is. Tim is not wowed. He tries to get Chris to add something to it but he is not budging.

Worried, Tim moves on to Christian, who is also done but doesn’t get chewed out. Tim teaches us a new word, obfuscation, when asking Christian about his shrunken poncho-like piece. (It’s basically just a fancy word for confusing, but I plan to use it in conversation first chance I get, ‘cause it just sounds cool.)

He moves on to Sweet P, whose model still hasn’t shown up, and he gets worried again. She tells him about the peacock picture she’s using as her inspiration piece, but aside from the colors, he’s not seeing much peacock in her dress. He thinks Rami’s purple dress is stunning, but is concerned that Nina will call Rami out for draping again. (He also makes a mental note to have the designer’s apartments checked for mice, because apparently some small animal has been chewing on Rami’s sweatshirt.)

At 10:00pm, Sweet P’s model finally shows up. They try the dress on her and thank goodness, everything fits, but there’s still a lot to do. So what does she do? Wander around the workroom whining to Jillian and sit with her head in her hands. Sew, woman!! The day’s over and you’re not done!

Then the sulfuric Manhattan streets roll by, and it’s the start of a new day. As I sit here watching the apartment sequence, I’m struck by the fact that this is the last time we’ll see this group of designers getting ready for their day at Parsons. How I’ll miss this peek into the ordinariness of these extraordinary people - no more hair-curling (or hair-ironing), no more tooth-brushing, no more pretend-facial-hair snipping, no more sitting around in fugly blue robe-jammies… (Okay maybe I won’t miss that last part so much, ‘cause those are just awful.)

At Parsons, the girls still have a lot of work to do. I know Sweet P wasn’t done last night but I’m not entirely sure if Jillian even has her skirt cut out, let alone sewn. Tim comes in and gets all sentimental on them about it being the last day. He does his little spiel to get all the sponsors’ names in one last time, then tells them to make sure their designs will “send Nina’s shoes flying across that runway” (which will then cause her toes will curl up and disappear under her chair, like the Wicked Witch of the East after Dorothy’s house falls on her).

Sewing… fitting… makeup… hairspray… false eyelashes… unibrows… feathers. Jillian puts the rollerskating dress on her model and it has NO hem… not even a crappy one like Kevin did during the prom challenge. There’s time for one last session of model-torturing before they have to go, so Jillian steams the dress while it’s on the model. Ouch! Better get some ointment for that burn.

Time’s up! Off to the runway! Heidi informs the designers that since only three of them will be going to Fashion Week, two people will be out today. She introduces the judges and gives Michael and Nina their perfect-attendance gold stars for this season (is this the first one that they’ve made it to every show?) and introduces guest judge Roberto Cavalli. Let’s start the show! Chris – (Marie Françoise de La Cropte de St. Abre, Marquise d'Argence by Jean Marc Nauttier) People are complaining that he just copied the avant-garde challenge, but I don’t think he did. Yes, he took the basic idea of the big shoulder and used the same basic construction – but big construction is what Chris DOES. How is that different from Christian’s puffy sleeves or Rami’s Grecian columns? I see his inflated version as being in-between the noblewoman’s dress and the avant-garde. The colors are kinda blah but that’s what’s in the originial painting.

Roberto pays Chris a huge compliment in saying that he is the most artistic of all the designers and could easily be doing haute couture in Paris. Chris gets verklempt. The other three judges jump his case for doing big construction again. But they agree that Chris is all about the show, even if they don’t like what he’s showing.

Christian – (Don Andrew De Andrade Y La Cal by Bartolome Esteban Murillo) Can I just say that I hate this? This is stuffy and shlumpy and a complete obfuscation. Lisa looks horrible in it too, and she’s not as much walking as stomping down the runway – perhaps given a direction to walk in a more masculine way? Christian had the makeup people give her really big eyebrows too - all she needed was a drawn-on mustache and goatee. And would it KILL him to use some other colors? He used blue in the second challenge (but that was a team challenge and possibly his partner’s input), and was forced to use denim once, but every other challenge he has used either black, cream/white, or brown.

Roberto feels the love Christian puts into his garments. Nina is impressed that he thinks about “the whole show,” and MK overuses the word super. Yet… they give him NO crap about doing the same types of things over and over. I just don’t get that.
Rami – (Marble Statue of Aphrodite by Kallimachos) I actually quite like this dress – the color is gorgeous, and I applaud that he went shorter instead of making a floor-length gown. I see where he’s going with the single loop, as a nod to the armlessness of the statue, although I don’t like the way Sam had to keep her arm straight while she was walking.

Rami gets all defensive with the judges when they say his dress is too normal and same-old same-old. (Yet another rag on a designer for doing the same thing over and over!) They all agree that it is beautiful and lots of women would wear it (I would!), but apparently that’s bad. I do see where both sides are coming from, though.

Sweet P – (Peacocks by Melchior D'Hondecouter) To borrow a word from Tim, this really isn’t too “wowable” to me. I don’t really see the peacock inspiration in this dress (I’m not counting the wispy feathers growing out of Lea’s head), other than her color palette.

While MK thinks her dress is cute and wearable, he also thinks there’s not enough “show” to it. She’s commercial, but not fashion. Roberto wishes she’d done more with the peacock theme.

Jillian – (Scenes from the Story of the Argonauts by Master of the Argonauts) This is cute, although I wish the skirt part was just a bit longer. I like the visually interesting little hole-punches in the back of the jacket that let the gold shine through when the light hits it. The dress looks like an afterthought, but the jacket is really nicely done. My only complaint is the fact that Jillian has this thing against letting Lauren’s hair down – if you look back through the few challenges where the models were actually used, Lauren’s hair is either pulled up or pulled back so tightly that it looks like it’s up. The girl’s got gorgeous hair! Let it down sometimes! (And if I never see that pair of shoes again I will be very happy.)

The judges like the fact that Jillian has sent a lot of different things down the runway. Roberto pretty much offers her a job right there, and you can tell that she’s really having to restrain herself from jumping up and down. Later, Heidi uses the word “ballsy” to describe Jillian’s designs, because while Jillian herself is quiet, she thinks up some really ambitious things. (It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for, don’t they know that?)

After much deliberation, Heidi brings the designers back out for the verdict. The winner, not too surprisingly, is Christian, based purely on the fact he had the largest number of pieces. So he’s definitely in for Bryant Park. He’s very quiet and humble on the runway, but as soon as he gets backstage, the diva comes back out and he’s all, “No surprises there, bitches, how could I not win? I made fifty pieces! Meowch!”

Also going to the tents is Jillian. She bounces backstage and flounces her skirt around, revealing the fact that she’s got a garter pistol strapped to her leg (just in case they tried to auf her, maybe).

Sweet P is out, and you can tell by the look on her face that she’s not too surprised by this. That leaves Rami and Chris on the runway – one will go to Bryant Park, and the other one will go to wherever the other auffed designers are holed up until filming is over. Heidi tells Rami he’s been consistent but safe, and tells Chris that they know he can bring the drama but can he do something new?

Chris is… IN! So that means Rami is… also IN!?! You can hear the collective “WHAT?” from living rooms and bars all over America! The judges couldn’t decide who they liked better, so they both get to make collections for Fashion Week. But here’s the catch: while they both have to make an entire twelve-piece collection, only one of them will count. They have to do a mini-show for the judges, using their three best pieces, and from that the judges will decide who’s show will be part of the Final Three.

Backstage it’s group hugs all around until Tim comes pouting down the stairs to send SweetP to clean up her stuff. She’s understandably sad that she didn’t make it to Fashion Week.

Which, of course, is a big lie, because as we know by now, all five of them showed collections at Fashion Week. They had to, because the tent show was last Friday, and this episode didn’t air until Wednesday, so if they didn’t all show we would know immediately who was out before the episode aired. This was kind of an interesting twist the first two seasons, but everybody knows the trick now, Bravo, so I think next season you should just schedule your episodes better and only let the actual Final Three show. You’re not fooling anybody anymore. But for the two designers that aren’t official, getting to show at Bryant Park - even if they don’t have a chance to win all the “fabulous” prizes - is more than enough, in exposure alone.

Next week: the always awkward and entertaining reunion show! And Heidi will name the winner of the $10,000 Fan Favorite vote (if this isn’t Chris, I’ll eat my keyboard).

*Art photos taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

Decked Out in Denim

2008-01-27T13:52:00.000-05:00

In this week’s episode: New York City is attacked by a giant monster with no style whatsoever, and who also hates the Statue of Liberty (too much draping)! As it wreaks havoc on Manhattan, Tim Gunn and his band of intrepid fashion designers (followed by a brave Bravo film crew) sew for their lives! They create a giant walking Statue of Liberty out of Levi’s 501 jeans. In the end, they finally defeat the monster by spraying it with a mixture of hot glue, Michael Kors’ self-tanner and Ricky’s tears while blasting Jackie Wilson songs.

Well, it was ALMOST that dramatic.

Now that I’ve stolen the plots to two entirely different movies, let’s see what really happened. After a disturbing clip where Victorya continually refers to Sweet P as Kit, which I think she’s doing on purpose, we move back to Parson’s for model selection.

In a surprising twist, Heidi (who is wearing obscenely tight jeans and a t-shirt with giant nostrils on it, which makes the designers giggle) only brings out the winning and losing designer’s models (Marie and Lisa). Christian gets to pick – will he stick with Fabulous Lisa, or request a walkoff? He should pick Marie, but stays with Lisa. (Marie should consider herself lucky. She is way cute, and Christian tends to style his models in a way that ages them 25 years.)

Heidi sends them off to Tim, who is going to be taking them somewhere. Again.

Hey! How did Yoko Ono get in here? Security! Oh, wait, that’s just Victorya.

Tim gets everyone into the van and away they go! They end up at a Port Authority warehouse on the docks where the dads of the prom dress girls are waiting for them with big sticks.

No, no, it’s a lady from Levi’s, who has a pink bird on her head. The warehouse door opens dramatically and we see: lines of laundry. At least it looks like laundry -it’s hard to tell because it’s about a half-mile inside the warehouse. It turns out to be jeans and jackets from Levi’s, and a bunch of white cotton. The challenge is to take the clothes and make whatever they want to make, but the garment must be “iconic” and “capture the spirit of originality and creativity that has lived in the heart of the Levi’s brand.” Yes, she really said that. I wonder how many takes it took her to get that right.

The designers all run in to get their jeans. (Come on. Did they really HAVE to set it up like that? More running? They should have just put all the jeans out on tables over at Parsons and saved the gas.) This warehouse is dirty too – there’s a good half-inch of dirt on the floor. The dirt is puffing up around them as they run, like Pigpen. Ick.

Back at Parsons, they get to work. Levi’s has sent over a bunch of rivets and buttons and labels and stuff for them to use, which is nice, but I hope they sent a rivet machine too, because you can’t sew those puppies on. Ricky espouses the joys of denim (sometimes he makes his hats out of it! That explains a lot) and brags that nobody can fit denim like he can. Nobody? Oookay…

Rami talks about growing up in Jerusalem, and we get to see that he started out as a super-cute blonde kid with a 70's bowl haircut (I had one too! Didn't all 70's kids?) and ended up looking like one of the guys that sang “I’m Too Sexy”. Then he tells us that basically, American designers are crap. After that, Chris and Christian get in a stupid time-filler argument about how to clean the dirt off denim. This leads to the revelation that the other designers think Christian’s a whiny baby and talks like a twelve-year-old girl. Rami sums it up best: “Christian is like a cartoon character.” (He really is, actually - go look here and here.)

Jillian gets pissed because Victorya’s making a coat, and SHE’S making a coat, and that’s totally copying (even though most of the other designers are making dresses and they’re not bitching about copying). I’m actually surprised that Jillian didn’t decide to make overalls. Christian decides to make a “biker” outfit with puffy sleeves and ruffles all over it. Sure, that makes sense – if the biker is eight years old. And it’s not any crazier than Sweet P, who is making a denim wedding dress.

We see Ricky come into the workroom, and hear a voiceover by Christian saying, “His work has been the same boring thing since Day One.” Hmm, is he talking about Ricky, or himself (see aforementioned jacket with puffy sleeves and ruffles)? I’m not sure.

Everybody’s busy in the sewing room but Chris, who is in the workroom happily chatting to his garment, and Christian makes fun of him for it. That actually gives me one more reason to love Chris, because I do the same thing! I’ll talk to the laundry or the dishes or my computer sometimes when I’m working. Everybody does it (ok... usually only in your head but you’re still talking to yourself). It doesn’t mean he’s crazy; he’s problem-solving, so shut up, Christian! (Besides, who’s sitting at the sewing machine saying stuff like “Oh, I’m gonna die from barfness” to nobody?)

It’s time for a visit from Tim! He thinks Ricky’s dress is “stunning” and I’m wondering what he was drinking before he came in. It’s okay, but I don’t think I’d say stunning. (Turns out they edited his comment – go read Tim’s Take for the whole story.) Next up is Chris, and Tim isn’t liking some of his details, but Chris chooses to ignore him. Bad! Tim’s not too keen on Jillian’s coat, either. He is, however, impressed with Rami’s use of zippers as trim (which Jeffrey did last year, as lots of people have pointed out, but it’s still an interesting idea). Next, we get a look at Victorya’s – hey, she just used a pre-made jacket! Is that allowed? Hmm… And her skirt is sewn on inside-out. (There’s a reason the back of the denim is on the inside of the pants – it’s UGLY!) Last is SweetP and her wedding dress, which Tim proclaims “hippy-dippy.” Another bad! Will she listen to him, or continue on? Yay! She does. One of the Project Runway commandments is: thou shalt always listen to Tim. She whacks the bottom off of it.

The day is rapidly coming to a close, and everybody’s bitching at each other in the sewing room. Lots of running, lots of sewing, lots of… blood? Yes, somehow Jillian keeps cutting her fingers on the sewing machine. She whines and flops like she’s sustained a major injury and I’m sure it hurts, but I’m expecting to see blood spurting all over the place like in a Monty Python skit. But... nothing.

Next morning - What is Rami doing? And why is Christian dressed like a hobbit? And why does the fabric of Jillian’s skirt looks like it’s moving? No time for questions! Get back to work! It’s runway day!

Ricky loves his dress and knows the judges will hate it. SweetP loves her dress and knows she’ll be safe. Christian loves his… um, outfit, and thinks it should win, as always. But it doesn’t matter what they think – what did the judges say?

Chris – He was trying to reinvent the ‘little black dress.” I hate to say it, but this is kind of plain. I want more ‘wow’. And I don’t get the thing down the side – it throws the dress off-balance. And please try leaving Marcia’s hair down sometimes! Sorry, Chris, it’s not my fave this week. Nor the judges' – they say he’s got the right idea but he didn’t take it far enough.
Ricky – The styling is great – awesome boots, nice hair (and I got more of a Brigitte Bardot vibe than Amy Winehouse, personally) and Amanda really did a great job on the runway. The dress itself? Cute, nice seaming details on the front, and the buttons down the front of the bodice are eyecatching. The Levi’s lady pronounces it “cool!” The rest of them like it too, and compliment Ricky so much that he cries tears of joy on the runway. (Heidi is vaguely amused.) During their chat she comments that it’s “finally the Ricky we’ve all been waiting for.”
Sweet P – If you didn’t know this was made out of jeans, you wouldn’t know it until you got up close. I like the colors she used, and I am so glad she took Tim’s advice and shortened it. I’m not sure if the dark parts were supposed to match up and didn’t, or if that was the design, but I kinda like them not matching. And I love the necklace she picked out. The judges love her dress. They think it makes her model look skinny, and MK says he would wear it if he had the right shoe. (Was that supposed to be a compliment?) The Levi’s lady didn’t feel it looked “Levi” enough, but she did like it. I think it should have won.

Victorya – Blech! A walking pile of boredom. I’m not knocking the fact that she used one color for the entire thing – it’s that she chose to use the jeans with the grayish-dirt tint that makes them look like they’ve been buried for a couple of years (I hate that color). Heidi and MK call her out on the fact that she didn’t really do very much but tack a skirt onto a jean jacket – which is exactly what she did, and yet she was struggling to finish on time. What gives?
Christian – Okay, so I wouldn’t let my eight-year old wear this to ride her bike. But it’s still too weird for a ‘biker’ outfit. Would those pants be comfortable to wear while riding on a Harley (or even a dirt bike) for hours? I don’t think so. And the little bit of white peeping out emphasizes the fact that the super-tight jean gives her a muffin top – which is quite an achievement on a model with 0% body fat. The judges like the tailoring and the fact that he made jeans out of other jeans.
Rami – Now this is how you use all one color successfully. This is a really nice garment. It’s actually two pieces but they go together so well that you can’t tell. And each piece is nice enough that you could put them with different tops and bottoms and they’d still look classy. Nina’s ecstatic that he didn’t drape anything! For this challenge, “sophistication” was a good word, as opposed to the prom dress challenge.
Jillian – Not the most exciting thing out there, but it’s passable. I wish she’d done something other than a coat. It’s almost as if she’s hoping the judges’ enthusiasm over her last coat will carry over to today. But it doesn’t, and they basically think she tried too hard to do too many things and didn’t do any of them particularly well. And the coat makes her model look fat, like a big denim marshmallow.

The verdict: Ricky wins! And Levi’s will sell a limited number of his design on their website! He is absolutely floored. But he doesn’t cry! And who’s out? It’s between Victorya and Jillian – who were both in the top last week with a coat, and went straight to the bottom this week with… coats. Victorya’s was by far the worst, so she is out. And rightfully so. That coat was fugly. (But it turns out she’s having the last laugh, as she is showing at Fashion Week anyway.)

Next episode (but not next week! What’s up with that??): The subject(s) of the challenge is moaning and shrieking and grunting behind a big white door. Sweet P and Christian arm-wrestle. And there’s a lot of weird shiny fabric in the workroom.

Floats in a Parade

2008-01-19T00:33:00.000-05:00

Apparently every episode of Project Runway must contain a “bare chest moment” – this week it’s Ricky, and it makes my eyes hurt. Christian in his cowhide-patterned boots don’t make it much better. Let’s get out of the apartments, quick, and get the show started already!

This week, Heidi is wearing a white version of her Star Trek dress from a couple of weeks ago, only this one is sleeveless. She brings out the models and everyone starts laughing, because they all have bed-head.

Hmm, is it time to get a new hair-care sponsor? No, it’s the challenge: create an avant-garde piece inspired by the model’s kooky hairstyle. Right away I know that poor Katie the gawky walker is going to be out, because it really doesn’t look like they did anything to her hair but slick it back at the temples, and that’s really not very inspiring. Her only chance is if Sweet P sticks with her out of model loyalty.

Of course she doesn’t. She knows that hairstyle is bad news, so she steals Lea from Christian instead. Everybody else stays with their same models, so Christian ends up with his original model Fabulous Lisa. (I warned you about karma, Christian!) Ricky is last button out of the bag again, which means he ends up having to choose between three models. He bites his lip to keep from crying and decides that he wants “to play with Amanda.” (Seriously, that’s what he said, I went back and listened to it twice to make sure. She better be scared.) So Katie and the model who got the unfortunate dreadlocks hairdo are out.
In the workroom, Tim tells the designers that a look like this that doesn’t even have to be wearable (meaning the model doesn’t have to be able to get into a taxi wearing it), so it can pretty much be anything. But he has The Velvet Bag™ (which means another damned team challenge) and randomly picks teams: Kit/Ricky (um, ok), Sweet P/Rami (they hug, aww!), Chris/Christian (the very definition of fierce) and Jillian/Victorya (I smell passive-aggressive catfight!). Each team has to choose one model to work with. Tim then tells them, almost apologetically, that each team HAS to pick a leader.

Okay, I have an issue with that “has to” crap. Why does there need to be a leader? I would think that seeing how the designers collaborate is enough – the judges ALWAYS ask “what parts did each of you do?” even when there is a leader. If you’re going to have a leader, and the leader almost always gets kicked off, then that leader should be completely responsible for the end product and it shouldn’t matter who did what. If the individual contributions of each team member are going to be considered in the judging, then there doesn’t need to be a leader. My opinion. Off soapbox now.

The teams get down to business. Chris suggests that Christian should be the leader because he’s worked with Alexander McQueen, so this is avant-garde stuff should be right up his alley. Christian is understandably scared to be the leader, but agrees. They choose Chris’s model Marcia as their inspiration. She is wearing a ten-pound hairstyle made of thick, rough braids – if you unwound them, it would probably stretch for a quarter of a mile- and it looks like a bee’s behind. Christian has the idea to make a dress out of billions of circles out of organza. Good thing they have $300!

Kit’s model, Marie, has a lot of extensions that remind Kit of a bird’s nest, so their theme is “garden and aprons and hoopskirts and a bunch of layers of stuff that looks like a birthday cake.” Rami, of course, knew immediately that he was going to be the leader. You can see it here in this screenshot, taken right after Tim announced they had to pick one:

(Be afraid, Sweet P. Be very afraid.) He decides on “hard and soft” for his theme and sketches – SURPRISE! – a draped flowy gown. Only he hardens it up by putting pants under it. Ooooo. Over at Victorya’s table, neither one of them wants to be… the follower. They end up having to flip for it. Jillian loses. She’s pissed, too. (I think they should have had to wrestle for it.) They eventually come up with a futuristic punk trench coat and pants or something. Victorya looks very smug.

It’s off to Mood! Chris and Christian clear out Mood’s entire supply of cream-colored organza. Sweet P runs through the store yelling “Mommy!” Ricky has confused Mood with the laundromat and brought along his dirty clothes.

After returning to Parson’s, Chris starts building a replica of Sputnik on a mannequin. Christian flounces around announcing that from here on out, he is to be called “Ferosh” because if he was a diva that is what he would be called. (Sorry, Christian, if you type your name into this diva name generator that is NOT what comes out.) Victorya and Jillian, who both have time management issues when making one garment, decide to make three different garments. Makes perfect sense.

Rami is being very condescending to Sweet P and I want to smack him. He has taken on the flowy corseted gown part of the design because it’s “very intricate and detailed” and he is the only one with the finesse, sophistication, and sewing skills to do that, apparently. He agrees to let Sweet P help but only if she makes the pants. (She is not allowed to touch, breathe on, think about, or be within ten feet of the dress part.) After a while, he regrets even letting her do that much, and gets very nit-picky with her. Maybe he’s just tired and things will be better tomorrow.

It’s not! Tim comes in with a “special” announcement. That never, never, never means anything good, like “we’re all going out for ice cream!” or “we’re going to the beach!” It’s always bad. (I bet for the rest of their lives, whenever someone says “special,” the designers will all cringe.) The announcement is that in addition to their avant-garde creation, they have to make a ready-to-wear garment to go along with it. Everybody's really excited!! See?

That popping sound you hear? Veins exploding in several people's heads.

After the shock wears off a bit, Tim sends in the avant-garde models for a fitting. Victorya has only finished the pair of pants, and Jillian, who is worried because her partner has immunity, is getting really snippy with Sweet P back in the sewing room. Chris’s Sputnik has turned into an enormous wing of ruffles! Rami’s ragging on Sweet P again – every other sentence that comes out of his mouth starts with “I need”. What he needs is to get the stick out of his butt, and let the woman work. Sweet P’s feelings are understandably hurt, and her model Lea comforts her.

Tim arrives with a “special” guest (a serial killer maybe?). It turns out to be the Nathanial TreSemme guy to talk about – wait for it - hair. (I have a grudge against him, because I never agree with his “Hairstyle of the Week” on the Fantasy Runway game.) He does mention that the winning team will get both of their looks in a TreSemme ad in Elle, so that’s at least a real “surprise.” So they all go off and talk to him and it’s kinda boring. They could have skipped that whole segment and put in more of Christian's runway walking lesson from earlier in the evening. ("You gotta bring it back, girls, from the side and... turn! Ungh!")

Later, Tim returns to have a look at the garments. He first checks on “Team Fierce” and loves their huge, ruffled avant-garde piece. Their ready-to-wear, not so much. He proclaims Kit’s dress “costume.” Rami’s dress does not impress him either, because it's too much like everything else he’s done so far. “But Tim,” Rami protests, “this one has a corset and draping! That’s completely different!”

Tim loves Jillian's trench coat. But they haven’t even started the other outfit they’re supposed to be making! And they have maybe four hours left! Tim goes off to get his cattle prod for these two. Get moving, ladies! Meanwhile, Sweet P and Rami are no longer speaking to each other, which is probably making Sweet P very happy. She knows they’re going to be in the bottom tomorrow so she works on perfecting her ready-to-wear dress while Rami sticks more crap on his beloved corset. 1am finally rolls around and the zombie-like designers leave the workroom to make the long walk back to Gotham and bed.

The next morning everyone gets ready. Christian obviously put a lot of thought into his outfit.

Look! It's Han Solo's kid brother! He is on the imperial side, of course (“Han, you can go off and join the rebellion and look like a scruffy nerf herder if you want. But the Empire is FIERCE!) and his Sith Lord name is "Darth Ferosh."

When they arrive at Parson's before the runway show, Jillian knows she has to make the entire second dress in a few hours, and promises to move at the speed of light (which means she might actually make it all the way into the workroom sometime today).

After getting their hair twisted and ratted and twirled and teased and sprayed, the models come back to get dressed. Poor Marcia went from a bee to being a caterpillar coming out of its cocoon. Jillian managed to eke out the RTW dress, but it looks really plain and cheap next to the other stuff they made. Kit and Ricky’s second dress is the same way. Sweet P’s, however, is cute. (So there, Rami!) Tim herds everyone out the door and up to the runway.

This week’s guest judge is Alberta Ferrari – no, wait, that’s a car – Ferretti. She’s an Italian designer who, judging by this slideshow, likes to design blousy things. On Wikipedia it says “Ferretti is known for her designs featuring twisting, tucking, and draping techniques” which means she’s going to wet her pants over Rami. Let’s take a look at what each team came up with, shall we? Team "I Need" – Can you tell which one was the avant-garde look? Neither could anybody else. Blah. Blah colors, blah shape, and it looks like she forgot to take her yoga pants off when she got dressed to go out. And what the heck is going on with those pants? MK comments that “her ass is in her front” - guess Sweet P should stick to dresses. That RTW dress is completely cute and looks much better than Rami’s. The judges agree with me on that. Nina calls him out on his one-note-ness – can he do anything other than draping? Sweet P mentions that she had suggested adding more to it and the judges concur. (You should have listened to her, Rami, and put a big bustle on the back to give it some drama!) Alberta is not impressed at all. The judges criticize their lack of teamwork, also. Is the Golden Boy going down this week??
Team Fierce – I am stunned. I cannot believe they did this in two days. That big shoulder piece is AMAZING. Kudos to Chris for pulling that off. I looked up Alexander McQueen and found this garment (not for a second implying that anybody copied anything, seriously, I was just struck by the little similarities) but honestly, I like Christian and Chris’s much better. It’s edgy, totally in-your-face and completely memorable. Nina almost smiled at it, so you know it’s good. The shirt on the RTW look goes with the other one, but they phoned in the skirt. And they know it. But do they care? Nope. The judges fall over themselves with love for Christian and Chris’s avant-garde look. (I like how it could double as an umbrella for someone walking next to it. That’s fashion AND function!)
Team Little House on the Prairie – Kit and Ricky tumble over the edge of avant-garde into the chasm of costume. If Strawberry Shortcake was getting married, she would choose this as her wedding dress. (They even styled their model with doll makeup.) It’s a giant, wearable Baked Alaska. I do like the colors, though. Their RTW dress reminds me of one I sewed for my Barbie doll when I was nine, using one of my grandma’s old handkerchiefs. The judges say that the pieces look cheap, and the avant-garde piece reminds Alberta of Carol Burnett’s version of Scarlett O’Hara’s drapery dress. Kit has to help Ricky off the runway because he can’t walk and cry at the same time.
Team Smug ‘n Sluggish – Can we say “The Matrix”? It’s avant-garde, yes, but very close to following Kit and Ricky into the costume chasm. The two pieces under the trench coat are forgettable. And yes, the model’s hair looks like a horse tail, but they didn’t need to make her a riding habit. Don’t get so literal. The ruffles on the side of the RTW dress are dragging the other side of it down, and it looks poorly sewn. The judges like everything, but not as much as they liked Team Fierce.

Not surprisingly, Christian and the fabulous mounds of ruffles are named the winner (although I wish Chris could have taken it for that construction, really!), while Kit and her melting ice cream cake are out. (While I would have liked to have seen Ricky go first, I have to admit that Kit was the right choice for the auf because she made all the wrong choices for this challenge.)

Next week: a “surprising” field trip to a Port Authority warehouse, Victorya can’t be bothered to learn her new roommates’ names, and Jillian has a meltdown.

**By the way, Christian's diva name? Her Royal Highness Bullshitting Hurricane Hottie. Or Princess Smiling Lightnin' Bug. They both kind of fit, don't you think?

The Prom Queen’s Got a Glue Gun

2008-01-11T23:25:00.000-05:00

Let me start off by saying I’m quite concerned about the air quality in New York. Every single episode contains street shots and the air is so yellow! I’m surprised New Yorkers don’t walk around with gas masks, because the only think I know of that makes yellow clouds like that is sulfur, and that smells like rotting eggs. Eww!

It’s a poisonous morning in New York, and the designers are getting ready for a new day of design torture. Christian is blow-drying his hair, and it looks all soft and fluffy, like a baby sandhill crane. Of course then he will put a bunch of gunk in it and he’ll end up looking more like a lopsided porcupine, but we can revel in the cuteness of the soft hair for a fleeting moment. And I’d really like to buy Chris a new robe, or pajamas, or sleeping bag, or whatever that blue plaid thing is that he’s always wearing. (Sorry, Chris, I’m sure it’s comfy. But I don’t like it.) Victorya wistfully comments that she actually misses Elisa. Of course she does, because they moved her into the other girls’ apartment and she went from sharing a bathroom with one person, to sharing with three people.

It’s time to get the new challenge. Heidi, looking like she’s just gotten out of a catfight where the other gal ripped the shoulder out of her dress, tells the designers they are going to be designing an outfit for “one of the most important days in a woman’s life.” Of course the first thing that comes to my mind is wedding. But that can’t be it, because they did a wedding dress challenge in the first season. (My next idea is childbirth - wouldn’t that be funny to see them design hospital gowns with no backs??)

Heidi brings out the models. A shadow appears on the scrim as usual, and Kevin says he’s thinking midgets or oompa-loompas.

(Um, Kevin? That shadow is nowhere NEAR as short as an oompa-loompa. Even the freakishly tall oompa-loompas from Willy Wonka were nowhere near that tall.)

Instead of tiny orange men in matching outfits, we get teenaged schoolgirls in matching outfits. This weeks challenge: make prom dresses for them. This sends the designers into fits of giggles. Except Christian, who thinks proms are horrible and tacky and anti-fierce. In a surprising twist, the girls get to pick which designer they want to work with, based on the designers’ portfolios. (I really wanna see which girl picked Chris!)

So everybody gets paired with a designer, and they all meet Tim in the workroom. They will have $250 and two days, which should be enough to make some tasteful, elegant dresses that make the girls swoon with happiness for the couple of hours they actually get to wear them before they’re auctioned off. (The dresses, not the girls.)

Several of the designers share their prom experiences during this episode. In our first trip down memory lane, Jersey boy Kevin shows us that in the past he was just as orange as Michael Kors, and at his prom he looked like a tuxedoed cabin boy on leave from his pirate ship.

Christian’s high-schooler turns out to be a ‘fashion student’ who grabs the pencil from him and starts messing up his fierce sketches. He’s more than a bit put off by this, and after she leaves he ends up in the fetal position on the floor, sucking his thumb and crying “Mommy!”

It’s off to Mood! Chris has some lovely pear-colored satin with a big glob of red material sitting on it, and I hope to God he’s kidding when he tells Tim he’s making a poinsettia. Christian informs us that he was voted best-dressed at his prom, which I’m surprised he even went to, considering that earlier in the show he proclaims proms “tacky and gross”. He and his cousin Larry look like they’re having a great time, don’t they?

Back at Parsons, Jillian (in one of the few times we actually see her all episode) is quite worried about her design because the candy keeps falling off. Oh, no, that was last week. This week she is worried about her frizzy poofy hair, which looks the same as it always does. Then we get to see her fabric, which is a range of nice aqua tones, and not a bit of red in sight. (Jillian likes red. So do I. Just not on every piece of clothing she makes.)

Next we get to see Kit’s prom picture. It’s straight out of a Seventeen magazine pictorial shoot. She proclaims it “very Orange County” and shows off her fabric, which is the same color as Cookie Monster. Or Grover. One of those muppets.

Ricky gets all melodramatic on us (quell surprise!) and calls his mom. They chat in Spanish for a while. And he cries. He then states that winning Project Runway opens a lot of doors for a person, which can be true, but if by some miracle he does win, he’ll be hydroplaning through the door on his tears.

Christian is very frustrated by the brown poofy mess of a prom dress he’s making, calling it “tickety-tack.” Everyone’s looking really tired. The stress of constant sewing is getting to them, and they’re all rubbing their eyes. Aww, how cute! It’s time for bed.

The next morning, Sweet P channels Debbie Reynolds in “Singing in the Rain.” Christian got a little sleep and decides that he’s not gonna let some high school chick tell him what to do, so he’s gonna completely change up the design... by putting black lace cutouts and beads all over it. (Take THAT, girl!) Now instead of looking like an overly-roasted marshmallow, she'll look like an overly-roasted marshmallow with burnt parts on it.

Tim brings the girls back in, but this time they have their moms with them. Awkward! Kevin’s client’s mom thinks the dress makes her daughter look pregnant. Chris decides to ask his client’s mom what she thought of his portfolio, and she says they were nice costumes, and is shocked to find out that most of the pictures are of Chris himself. (I had to go look at them again myself, and darned if it isn’t!)

Of course, Christian’s client has all sorts of opinions on her dress - too much junk in the trunk, too short, too brown, too shiny, too lacy, too one-strapped - and it makes her look like a giant Hershey kiss. (Too bad he didn’t make this dress last week!) Sweet P tries to talk him up to the client’s mom but is Christian grateful? No. (Little snot.)

After the girls and their moms leave, Tim comes back in to see how things are progressing. He’s worried about the fact that Kevin is not planning to hem his dress (and also that there are chocolate fingerprints all over it because Kevin’s munching on Milk Duds from the Hershey store while he’s sewing). Kevin brushes him off with a “pshaw, they won’t even notice” and Tim is all, “Oh, yes they will, Nina has unfinished-edge radar!” Tim then moves on to Rami, who apparently couldn’t decide which of his two designs he liked best, so he made one half of each design into one dress. Victorya has a bunch of plastic craft gems and is planning to glue them onto the yoke of her redesigned dress. (Hey, my kids have some of those in their craft supplies box! They look great on a popsicle-stick picture frame, but on a prom dress? I hope she got some pom-poms too. That'd be perfect!)

Tim goes over to Christian, who is moping. He knows he’s making a piece of crap and that his time on PR is just about over. But Tim isn’t going to take that from him, oh no. He gives him a stirring speech to boost his confidence. “Over? Did you say ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough... the tough get goin'!” (Oh, wait. That was the wrong speech - that’s from Animal House. Well, you get the idea.)

After some witty banter in the sewing room (YES! Thank you producers) the second day is finally over. The next morning it’s the usual frantic runaround of finishing and fitting and hair and makeup. Ricky informs us that he once had a girlfriend and he made her prom dress. (I want to see a picture!!) We do get to see Sweet P’s prom picture. She looks real cute with her date, Gregg Allman. Poor Chris didn’t go to his prom, opting to stay home watching black and white movies and crying into his box of wine.

They manage to get their gaggle of teenagers up to the runway. This week’s guest judge is Gilles Mendel, who is the lead designer for J. Mendel. I don’t know how he is qualified to judge prom dresses. I really think they should have gotten Nick, who recently put out a prom dress line, or Kayne. (Or maybe “Jessica McClintock for Gunne Sax,” who was all over my Seventeen magazine prom issues when I was in high school. I still have a couple of those, and for laughs I dug them out. 80’s prom dresses were hilarious! She’s still designing, though – she would have been good to have judge, too.)

The girls, in general, did a good job on the runway, a couple of clompers in the bunch, and some wacky hand signals, but not much different from the professional models they usually use, just shorter apparently.

Let’s get these designers up on the runway (why are they all wearing black and beige?) and see who gets elected Prom Queen, and who runs off to the bathroom crying.

The ‘safe’ designers:

Chris – AGAIN! Why can this man not win a challenge? This dress was great (and not a bit of red in sight, thank goodness!) Very flattering, pretty color, nice peek-a-boo slit in the front, interesting ring details on the back train.
Jillian – The color is gorgeous, but those eyes on the bodice! They follow me everywhere I go! It’s freaky. I do like the way this dress flows, and the length would be just right for dancing – not too short that you have to worry about flashing people, but not so long that you’re stepping on it all night. The only thing I don't like about it is the fact that the thin straps trail down the back of the dress like reins. People will be grabbing them all night.
Kit - I think she got her inspiration from the Fisher Price xylophone. It's different, I'll grant her that... but guess what the guys will be staring at? Uh huh.

And who’s left on the runway?

Sweet P – I love the color of this, and the way it moves – it’s very liquid. The accessories she chose are also very good. I think she could win it with this dress! The judges agree with me on color, but Nina thinks it’s too sophisticated. (She throws this word around during the episode the way the Democratic presidential hopefuls throw around the word “change”. Very annoying.) This is one of only two dresses the judges like.
Victorya – This is the other one. What? I like the blue color but the jewels on the yoke are cheap-looking. If she’d gone for some more realistic looking jewels or some rhinestones even, it might have been okay… but these are made of plastic and it looks like a jeweled toy baby bib. And it’s a bubble skirt. She also needs to take a styling class or two, because that hairstyle makes the girl look like Jan Brady. (Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!!) Of course the judges think it’s chic and hip and “appropriate” (yeah, for a kindergartener).
Kevin – The color is nice. But Kevin, for a straight guy who probably has a healthy appreciation for female anatomy, you put ‘the girls’ too low. (Don’t make her saggy before her time!) And it’s a wee bit too short. I think if you’d put a bit of length on, it would have been better. The judges think it looks cheap and of course Nina jumps all over the hem. I don’t see anything wrong with it, from here, but I guess from a couple of feet away it looked bad. She also doesn't like the red (even though she's wearing the exact same color).
Christian – I think he is subconsciously crying for help with an apparent constipation issue, because his last two dresses have looked remarkably like, well, you know. (And brown? To a prom? Really? How depressing.) He did have a difficult client, yes, but the judges (especially Nina) do not like that he complains about her. They also don’t like the amount of whickety-whack on the dress.
Ricky – He also made a bubble-skirt dress. It’s the same color as his model’s skin, too. If it wasn’t for the belt/sash thingy, she’d look like she was naked. MK tells him he needs to turn the volume up.
Rami – This dress is from the lost M*A*S*H episode where the 4077th has a big party to celebrate the end of the war, and the only material the nurses have to make their dresses are leftover tents. Rami also had an issue with placement of ‘the girls’ – in fact, he flattens one out completely and just denies the existance of the other one by covering it with a big swag of fabric. She looks really lopsided.

I really, really thought Sweet P was going to pull this one out, but the judges decide that Victorya’s Bedazzled romper was better. They also chose to eliminate Kevin, who has been in the top of most of the challenges, over “non-event” Ricky. Both of those decisions totally sucked.

I also have an issue with the fact that they brought the girls out on the runway for the discussions. What girl wants to stand there and listen to her dress being chewed up like that? Or that she looks like a forty-year old? That’ll do wonders for the self-esteem. I also didn’t like the “sophisticated” card Nina kept playing. It’s PROM, Nina. Of COURSE girls want to look sophisticated. What Nina wanted to see, apparently, was something like this (which, of course, is me in, um, an earlier year than the current one.) If the designers can drag out their prom pictures for the whole world to see, I guess I can too. I was happy to be going, but my friend used a lot of hairspray to make my stick-straight hair do that, and I think my face was stuck. (The prom ended up being really boring because my date wouldn't dance. Most definately NOT what I would consider one of the most important days of my life.)

But I hope these girls have fun at their prom, in completely different dresses. Maybe a nice Nick Verreos one.

Chocolate Overload

2008-01-09T00:24:00.000-05:00

Since last week's Project Runway was all about Hershey's, I've been thinking a lot about chocolate lately. So I thought I would post some random chocolate-related things.

Tootsie Roll shot
This tastes exactly like a tootsie roll. And it's super-easy: one part Kahlua to one part OJ.

My sister's Cheese-Swirl Chocolate Cake.
This is extremely yummy. She's only made it for us once, probably about eight years ago, but it was so good that I still remember it.

Kahlua Vodka cake
(also called a Black Russian). There's tons of different recipes on Google. This is also very good; if you bake one, make lots of glaze. (But you might not want to take it to a work or church potluck if you do.)

Chocolate clothes!
Next month on Food Network they are airing a challenge where the contestants have to make actual wearable dresses out of chocolate that must survive a runway show.

Chocolate Cheese Fudge
That evil Paula Dean! Now look what she made. My sister (an excellent baker) told me about this, and when we were at her house over Christmas we made some. It was weird. But surprisingly good.

Chocolate Frogs
From Harry Potter.

Animal names
Chocolate-banded snail, chocolate labrador, chocolate-colored cat breeds (including the chocolate-point siamese, York chocolate, and chocolate persian)

Other things people made out of chocolate
Shoes, a house, a cuckoo clock, a billboard.

Chocolate music
Well, bands named after chocolate. Hot Chocolate (best known for the disco hit "You Sexy Thing"), Chocolate (from Colombia), The White Chocolate Band (rocking the southeast US), and The Chocolate Watchband (from Scandanavia somewhere).

Chocolate-covered bugs

And for those candy emergencies, don't forget the chocolate band-aids.

Fashion Is Like a Box of Chocolates…

2008-01-04T20:51:00.000-05:00

or... Dance of the Sugar-Peplum Fairies

Finally! After a stupid two-week break, Project Runway is back. This week’s episode opens with poor Kevin, all alone in his big apartment. One by one, his roommates have fallen victim to the Curse of the Straight-Guy Designer. The other guys better hope he gets auffed before one of them does. If not, the producers will move him into the second apartment to save money on rent, and Kevin will laugh maniacally as he strokes his weird facial hair because the rest of them will be doomed!

Over at Parsons, Heidi comes out on the runway in a simple black dress, which makes her look just like the other models when they line up on the runway. How rude. “I am wearing what you are wearing, because we are sisters in modeling, but I look ever so much hotter than any of you will.”

Before she can tell the designers about their next challenge, the tedious model-picking must be done. We haven’t seen them since the “fashion-don’t” challenge. Everyone pretty much always sticks with the same models, so I’m tempted to fast-forward past this part. Good thing I don’t because Christian starts it off with a bang, dumping his “fabulous Lisa” and daring karma to pick him off by snatching up this season’s It-Model, Lea, from whoever it was that stole her last time. Rami also dumps his regular blonde model in favor of Steven’s redhead, Sam. Sweet P is shocked that she is not picked last again. Ricky, however, is last and has to choose which two models go home. He decides to keep Fabulous Lisa.

Heidi shirks her hostess job yet again and leaves it to Tim to tell the designers about the next challenge. (I hope they pay him extra when she does that.) Although it’s only 10:00 in the morning (we just watched them all wake up, didn’t we?) Heidi makes them all go back to New Gotham and go to bed, because tomorrow they are going on an early field trip, and they will need 18 hours of sleep to get through it.

Next morning is everyone’s worst nightmare – being woken up by Tim Gunn and having him see you in a bra-less, toothbrushing, bedheaded, half-asleep stupor. So the designers rush to get dressed – Christian’s wearing a jacket that must be his own design because it looks just like several of the things he’s sent down the runway. Jillian’s outfit reveals her secret: she is the long-lost daughter of Mork and Mindy. (See how proud they are?) Kevin grabs his completely straight-guy Mood tote bag and off they go!

Tim walks them down to Times Square and reveals their destination: Toys R Us! (Oh, wait, wrong season.) No, it’s the fabulous, jam-packed, put-you-into-a-sugar-coma-just-by-looking-at-it Hershey store! Elisa is ecstatic that she can imbue her creations with Hershey Magic! And sour-puss Christian is upset that they’re gonna have to “make shit out of candy.” (I think when he was a kid his parents only let him keep the toothbrushes out of his trick-or-treat bags.)

For this challenge, the designers get unlimited cash and five minutes to stuff as much Hershey’s merchandise as they can into their mouths – um, I mean, into their shopping bags. But they only have the rest of the day to work on the garments. I think the Hershey’s people grossly underestimated the amount of material the designers are going to need, because they’ve got a few dinky little shopping bags laid out for each of them. That might do for your ordinary chocolate shopper, but this ain’t no ordinary shopping trip. Tim lets them go, and the designers recreate the scene from Willy Wonka where the kids run wild in the Chocolate Room. Christian attacks the peanut butter cups and threatens to brain anyone who takes even one bag of them, because that’s all he is going to use for his outfit. Jillian is drawn to the Twizzlers because they remind her of her hair. Chris, however, stays away from the edible materials and grabs pillows instead. “Don’t make stuff out of food!” he warns. And he should know. He’s made many a food-themed costume, most recently making dresses out of lettuce for Wishbone. (By the way, have you SEEN his website?? If not, go right now. I’ll wait. I love his stuff. It’s amazing. And check out the pic on his bio page - he looks a lot like the improv comedian Brad Sherwood, whom I also love. But, I digress.)

After the five minutes, the Hershey store is in shambles, and the designers are so laden down with stuff that they can barely get through the doors (good thing Jillian wore those suspenders – she uses them to hold a pillow, making it look like she’s pregnant with a baby Twizzler). But back to Parson’s they go, like candy-laden Pied Pipers, probably being followed by an increasingly large crowd of tourist children picking up the odd Rolo or piece of Bubble Yum that falls out of someone's bags.

I should mention here that I loooooove chocolate. And I really wish the TV had Smell-O-Vision because I bet that workroom smells AMAZING. Candy is flying everywhere. There are giant Hershey bars the size of sidewalk slabs. I didn't realize Hershey made so many brands of candy. I think I’m getting hyperglycemic just watching it.

I’m scratching my head over Sweet P, who is disemboweling stuffed bears and skinning them, then moves on to smashing crockery. I don’t have any idea where she is going with this. Neither do any of the other designers, who keep giving her funny looks.

But what happens next is so sad, I can barely watch. Christian sits at his table unwrapping thousands of peanut butter cups and THROWING AWAY THE CUP PART! Oh, the humanity!! That’s so wrong!! He’s not even keeping the foil, just the brown inside wrapper. That’s what he’s using for his dress? I thought he was kidding.

Because the producers think too much fun and gaiety is bad, they immediately bring the mood down by having Elisa recount her horrible car accident several years ago where she got smashed by a Porsche while walking in London, which left her briefly dead, as well as broken and comatose. But she puts a positive spin on her tragedy and is making the most of her second chance. Good for you, Elisa!!

Christian… is done!?! Completely. Because all he did was sew a basic high-necked sack dress and glued waxed paper circles all over it. (Heck, my daughter’s Brownie troop could do that.) He thinks it’s the shit, and I agree. It does looks like poop from a distance. (Gee, when he said earlier that he was going to have to make shit out of candy, I didn't think he was being literal.) Couldn't he have used the gold foil wrappers to make a belt, or something, to break up the expanse of brown? So since he’s done, he hippity-hops around, pretending to be Tim, giving his unsolicited opinion on everyone else’s garments. Kevin is so glad he’s got Tony Soprano on speed-dial because Christian’s gonna need to be whacked pretty soon.

The real Tim comes in to see how it’s going. He goes over to Victorya and starts talking with her. She comments that she liked her dress until she started putting the ruffles on it. (Then why put them on if you don’t like them??) Tim expresses some logical concerns (as in, "why did you sew your silver material on upside down because it looks awful") and she says “Really?” or “You think?” after everything Tim says. What she’s really passive-aggressively saying is “Oh, Tim, you’re full of crap and my dress is perfect so I’m going to patronize you so you’ll go away.” Tim also talks with Jillian, who is sculpting a bullet-proof vest out of Twizzlers, and Sweet P, who has scrapped her teddy-bear pelt skirt and is making a giant maxi-pad skirt instead.

The next morning Christian just farts around again since he’s “done” and refers to the workroom as a “tranny mess.” I am not sure how he got that from a room full of candy wrappers. Maybe transvestites like to eat loads of Kit Kat bars and throw the wrappers on the floor? I don’t know.

Jillian is still having issues with her Twizzlers. But it’s time to fit the models. Luckily, and much to Jillian’s surprise, her model knows how to sew! (Fashion designers are not the only ones who get to learn that skill.) She offers to help attach the candy so it doesn’t start dropping off the dress as she walks down the runway, because that would make both of them look bad. (I'd also like to say that the model looks great in her glasses. I wish I looked that good when I wear mine!)

Christian tries to get his new model to join him in badmouthing everyone else, saying stuff like “there’s so much ugly in this room” while completely ignoring the fact that his dress looks like it’s covered with miniature chocolate cowpies. But she doesn’t seem to like to trash talk as much as his last model did. (Good for her!)

The models traipse off to hair and makeup and I get my first good look at Ricky’s dress. My initial impression is that it looks like a giant (full) Hershey diaper. But at least it’s kind of interesting, as opposed to Victorya’s, which is just white and ruffly and looks like a giant pile of meringue.

Out on the runway, Heidi shows up in her second nice dress of the episode, which I think might be a record for this season (and back into last season). She lets the designers know that all of their garments are going to be auctioned off to benefit a breast cancer charity so she hopes they’re good enough to fetch some big bucks. She then introduces guest judge Zac Posen, and off they go!

The 'safe' designers:

Ricky - It’s a bubble skirt, but at least it’s a well-made bubble skirt with a point of view. And I’m quite proud of Ricky for making it through this episode without shedding a tear. He also managed to style Christian's ex-model correctly and not make her look like a forty-year old spinster. Love the hair, the neck bow is a nice touch, and the bows on the back of the shoes are super-cute.
Kevin - Very classy, with not a hint of logo anywhere, except for the clutch, which is cute. You could actually wear this out somewhere and nobody would know it was made from giant stuffed Kisses and cheap velvet Hershey Bar pillows.

Christian: - What? They let this through? Oh, it’s because he had immunity from winning last week. Too bad, I would have loved to hear MK and Nina rip into it. He is clearly shocked that he did not win. And wow, did he manage to make the "It" model look horrible. That hair is too severe. And what's with the chocolate pancake on her head? The more I look at this outfit, the more I hate it. In this photo it looks like it's made of Bigfoot fur.
Kit - I don’t like this particularly. I think there are too many words on it, it looks chunky and the boots do not help that. Plus she had the hairstylist make her model look like a Kewpie doll.

And who’s left on the runway?

Chris - This is a great garment. He could have easily gone over the top with this, as MK notes, but he wisely kept far, far away from costume. I like the way he cut the words in half and sewed them together vertically, so that they became more of a pattern instead of letters. He mentions Andy Warhol and Stephen Sprouse as his influences here (I had to look that guy up, and after seeing his work I can completely see where Chris was coming from). The judges love it. Nina even says it could be part of an Elle spread. (Of course it won’t be, but wasn’t that nice of her to say!)
Elisa - Oh dear. She keeps saying she was going for a “macabre Gretel” but her definition of macabre must be a lot different from everyone else’s. The judges use words like “sad” and “flea market.” There is no joy on Elisa’s planet with this design. Those odd foil balls on the elbows really do nothing for the overall outfit.

Sweet P - Uh oh, she gets the "boring" card of the night. This design fits right into Sweet P’s aesthetic but it’s too simple for this challenge, considering all the stuff she had to work with. (She should have gone with her original skirt, at least.) The skirt makes me think of the little paper bib they put around your neck at the dentist’s office, and that is about as far from candy as you can get. Also, it's a little short. But I love the earrings she picked to go with this.
Rami - I wasn’t too fond of this because the top and the skirt look like they were pulled from two different outfits. But it’s got a lot of nice details, the construction is great, and it fits the model perfectly. She looks like something out of the Jetsons, but he did say he was going for a futuristic look and I think he nailed it.

Jillian - All the Twizzlers stayed put! Hooray! The judges were impressed that she used so many edible materials. I didn’t like the way she had the two bodice pieces separated by the clear plastic. I think it would have looked better if the two pieces had been right next to one another. And the stiffness of the candy made the top immobile, which was probably pretty uncomfortable for the model and her chest area.
Victorya - I don’t know where this woman’s brain went during this challenge. The bodice on the dress is all lopsided. The judges think she ducked out to go to Dairy Queen and that’s where the inspiration for the dress came from. For the runway show she told her model to walk with her arms rigid on both sides, like she was a giant walking doll with no elbow joints. It was kind of scary looking!

This judging was a bit different than the others. They’ll usually have one they love, one they hate, and the rest fairly evenly spaced on the scale in between. This time, they seem to really love the top three and really hate the bottom three. When the dust settles, Rami is declared the winner, getting immunity for the next challenge.

Elisa, sadly but predicatably, is out. (This episode contains, quite frankly, the worst case of Loser’s Edit they’ve ever done on PR. They’re not even trying to hide it now.) She is very gracious throughout and retires from Project Runway with her dignity intact, having spread her magical presents across our planet and leaving a wake of happiness and sound effects (SWISH! FWAH!) behind her.

I have to applaud the production company for this challenge - it was fun! Do more fun stuff. Or at least show us the fun stuff they're doing in the workroom because we know that it's going on and you're just not sharing. And kudos for putting the episodes on the Bravo website. Now please fix the website because it doesn't work half the time. Thank you. (And I am angry with you for making this show about chocolate because I seriously must have gained 5 pounds while watching it. I was so hungry!! Every commercial break I was up looking for stuff to munch on. BAD!!!)

Next episode: The designers take up scrapbooking, apparently. Ricky cries. Again. And Christian argues with the judges. Again.

McDonald's Bugs Me

2007-12-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, so yesterday I had gone out to McDonald's and picked up an Asian chicken salad to eat for lunch while working on my PR recap. I love these (especially the Newman's dressing).

You know that most fast-food salads are iceberg lettuce (not the most nutritional kind) because that is cheap. I also know that McDonald's gets their salad in big bags and some machine has just chopped up entire heads of lettuce. They don't have time to pick out the useless parts at the restaurant. This particular salad has a higher percentage of white stalky parts than usual and I have had to pick a lot of it out. I'm about 2/3 of the way through what is left. I go to pick out yet another white piece when I notice... there's a dead beetle on it. (I know this is gross, bear with me.) It's kind of dried up so it's been there a while.

Ordinarily I don't eat bugs. I know they're all protein and you can eat them (and in this particular salad the bug was probably one of the more nutritious things in it). It isn't a huge beetle either. So I throw it away, along with the rest of the salad. (Good thing I was almost done.) I'm not too freaked out, because I know that when I make salad at home from full heads of iceberg lettuce, I sometimes find bugs. They climb into the heads in the field and go way down in the bottom and get stuck and die. It's just a fact of farming. You just have to make sure you wash the lettuce really well and don't use the bottom parts.

As bothersom as the bug in the salad is, it will never - NEVER - top the Chicken McNugget Episode. One evening a couple of years ago my kids wanted Happy Meals. It had started to snow, and there was a big storm coming and we may have been stuck inside all weekend, so I say what the heck. We go through the drive-thru. At home, the kids start opening their Happy Meals. My son, however, is staring at his open box of McNuggets with a puzzled look on his face. I ask him what's wrong and he says, "Mom, what's this?" I look in the box and find that IT IS FULL OF MAYONNAISE. No nuggets, just a big glob of mayo.

I don't know if someone was cleaning out the nozzle on the mayo squirter and used a nugget box, and then someone else accidentally put it on the rack, or what. My husband immediately got on the phone and tried call the restaurant, but nobody answered. We didn't take it back because by this time the storm was in full blizzard mode. In the end his little sister gave him half her nuggets, and I made them grilled cheese sandwiches.

But to this day, whenever he gets any kind of fast food in a box like that (especially from McDonald's), he always says, "I hope there's no mayonnaise in here."

A Different Kind of Recycling

2007-12-14T21:31:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know... I skipped last week's episode. I was saddened by Chris's elimination. And then I had to go Christmas shopping. I'll put it up later this weekend in case anyone is dying to read it.

It’s the day after the cruel, sad elimination of Chris. Everyone seems pretty bummed out, because he was by far the most fun-loving designer of the bunch and the only antidote to Crying Ricky. Sweet P in particular seems to be hurting over Chris’s departure.

Jack is hurting too, but in a different way. Something strange is happening to his upper lip – it seems to be swelling, like the lips of a C-list starlet after a bad collagen injection. But he troops off to Parson’s with the remaining designers, to find out what horrors await them in the next challenge.

Heidi comes out on the runway carrying The Velvet Bag ™ and wearing a hideous hound’s-tooth skirt that makes her hips look a mile wide. (I saw a jacket at Macy’s today that looked a lot like that, in the Michael Kors section. Hmm…)

It’s model-picking time. But wait! Who are these women filing onto the runway wearing ill-fitting clothes? Mothers and sisters again? Been there done that. The designers are shocked and awed to find out that these women have recently lost weight – a LOT of weight. The amounts range from 48 to 160 lbs. Heidi presents the challenge – take the women’s favorite large clothing and remake it into an everyday outfit for their new, slimmer figures.

Some of the designers embrace the challenge and some start to freak - especially Steven, who by luck of the button, has to rework a wedding dress (which he refers to as “death on a stick” – I wonder what that looks like? I couldn’t find death on a stick, but I found some in a tin.)

After everyone has been assigned to their new models, they head back to the workroom to talk to Tim. There they find a touching note left by Chris, and Sweet P gets weepy again. Dry it up, Sweet P, your clients are coming in! The designers get a half-hour to talk with the ladies. Christian, who was not looking forward to this challenge at all (it’s anti-fierce I guess) gets the client who hates: pattern, texture, skirts, dresses, and anything that’s not black or denim. Steven is completely dumbfounded by the wedding dress. (I understand the sentimental attachment to wedding dresses – I loved mine but it’s been in my mother’s closet since my honeymoon – you're telling us that this lady had no other item of clothing that she liked??)

The designers get a whopping $10 to spend at Mood. Steven walks around the entire trip looking like he’s about to puke. Jillian decides that she’s not even going to use the shirt the lady brought, but she’ll get the same color fabric and make a beautiful dress that will make the judges forget that she didn’t actually follow the challenge.

Back at Parson’s, poor Jack’s face is getting worse. His upper lip is now roughly the size of a hot dog, so he calls his doctor. He assures us that while he is HIV-positive, the skin infection he’s gotten has nothing to do with it and can happen to anybody. I think it looks painful, and also highly embarrassing, to have your lip swell up like that on national television. After talking with Tim, Jack makes the agonizing but prudent decision to leave the show and go to the hospital. Everyone likes Jack (except Ricky, because Jack took his model last week) and the news that he is sick and also leaving hits everyone hard. Pretty much everybody cries but Ricky, which is a new development for him. (I am also wondering how Christian is going to make it into the workroom every day without Jack to carry him.)

The mood in the room has switched from panicked to bummed and people are having a hard time concentrating on their sewing. Ricky tries to lighten things up by trying on his client’s jeans inside out and slipping on a kicky pair of gold heels. Tim comes back in after a while for another announcement, and the designers are wondering what other horrible bombshell he’s going to drop on them.

But… SURPRISE! Who should walk through the door but CHRIS! (Woo hoo! I’ve got goosebumps!) The lights on people’s faces could illuminate Times Square. Tim says that they’ve asked Chris back to “keep the level of competition high” which translates to “next week is a group challenge and we need an even number” but I don’t care because CHRIS IS BACK! (Don’t mess up, Chris. I don’t know if I can survive you being auf’d two weeks in a row.) Since he’s getting such a late start, the producers are kindly letting him stay up all night to catch up. Chris looks completely thrilled. Not.

The clients come back in to see how things are going. Luckily, the lady Chris will be working for has another favorite outfit that he can cut up. (I’m assuming he also gets to go to Mood at some point but they don’t show that.) Christian is making a short-sleeved version of the same jacket he’s made all season. His client must have made an off-camera comment about the way the pants fit because Christian quips “I can’t make you have an ass!” (Actually he can - she’s got him, doesn't she?) Victorya’s dress is looking weird – one long sleeve and one no sleeve. I’m hoping that’s not the design and she’s only had time to put on one of them, because that looks really crappy.

Tim comes around to check things out after the clients leave again. He actually uses the word fierce (guess who he’s talking to). He’s concerned about Elisa because it looks like she’s making a maternity outfit. Steven only has a sketch to show Tim, and he’s hardly using any of the wedding dress in his design. Tim says he’s “courageous” and I can’t tell if he really means that or if he’s being Tim-nice.

Oh no! Chris is heading down the path to costume again. It’s kind of sailor-themed. Past a certain age (which is six), women should not wear sailor-themed ANYTHING, unless they are drunk and at a Margaritaville restaurant. Tim advises Chris to make important design decisions now, while he’s still awake, instead of waiting until the middle of the night. He then makes one of the funniest un-Timlike comments ever – “I've made more bad decisions at three o'clock in the morning than I can list!” This of course cracks everyone up and Tim blushes.

Everyone sews frantically until midnight, when they all get to trudge back to their apartments and sleep. Except Chris, that is, who works for five or six more hours and then crashes on the couch in the lounge. The other designers find him there the next morning, snoring away, and everyone coos at how cute he is. He’s gotten about two hours of sleep and has to be running on fumes at this point. I fear for his safety on the runway.

Kit and Christian are becoming good friends – so good, in fact, that they can now communicate entirely by humming. (I also found this amusing shot on Bravo.com of them doing fake karaoke in the lounge – why are we not seeing this stuff on the show??)

Two hours ‘til runway! The clients come back to get dressed. Kevin’s outfit looks awesome, and he feels confident that he could win this challenge. Chris’s doesn’t look too sailorish, but for some reason he’s sewn pleats on the bodice that makes it look like there are two giant handprints on the lady’s breasts. Ricky’s client tells him how amazing she feels and that she wants him to do well, and I want to yell, “Don’t!! You’ll make him cry again!” But too late, he does.

Steven is in serious trouble. The basic black dress he’s made is mostly finished, but he has to glue the hem down, and three other people come over to help him finish attaching the cuffs and collar. (I guess that shows how well-liked he is among the other designers, so that’s good!) Victorya is literally sewing the collar on as they walk out of the room to go to the runway.
Heidi appears in a dress that has an obscenely short skirt and is kind of see-through, and she has 1960’s Cher hair. (Heidi, nobody looks good with Cher hair, not even Cher.) Somebody needs to slap the hairstylist around a bit. She introduces the usual judges and the guest, who is the head designer for Gap. Gap? Really?? Why??? (And when did they drop the “The” from their name?)

The runway show is quite amusing, as the non-models attempt to act like they think models act and use huge arm-gestures and exaggerated poses. A couple of them can walk fairly well (better than some of the actual show models).

The 'safe' designers:

Sweet P: In any other color this would look cute. Who deliberately buys something that is baby-poop green? But the color isn’t her fault.

Ricky: I'm sorry, but his client looks like she belongs on The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Victorya: She didn’t give her newly-svelte client much of a waist. And the top doesn't seem to fit very well. But I can see why the original dress was the lady's favorite - that green looks good with her red hair.

Kit: The hot coral with the black and white print is nice, and it’s a cute dress, but kind of basic.

Rami: Again, basic sleeveless shirt and pencil skirt, accentuates the lady’s waist but nothing too special.

And who’s left on the runway?

Jillian: I can’t believe the judges didn’t blast her for not using any of the original shirt. The only part of the outfit she used was the black piping which came from the pants. Yes, the dress is nice, and the placement of the black gives more of an hourglass figure, but she didn’t follow the challenge and should be in the bottom three, in my opinion. Did she get immunity winning last week? Maybe that’s why she wasn’t out.

Chris: This is okay… I question the red he chose. I get why it needed a pop of color, but the blue and the red reminds me of 3-D glasses and it's giving me a headache. If he’d picked another color, maybe it would have worked better. And lose the ribbon around the neck, because it makes her neck look fat. (I see they took it off for the picture and it looks much better.) The judges like his shirt, but overall they feel that the look was too "Parisian hooker" and also “forced,” whatever the heck that means.

Christian: He has an advantage in the fact that his client looks the most model-like. The detailing on the jacket is nice – again, he’s a very good sewer – but it’s the same kind of thing he’s been doing every week. (I think he is banking on the fact that if he keeps making the same thing week after week, eventually the judges will wear down and he will win.) The Gap guy likes it (of course) and MK merrily refers to it as “super commercial.” Wait. I thought that was a BAD thing! I’m confused. (Also, on a more personal level, Christian needs to quit stuffing his pants and raiding Napoleon Dynamite’s shoe rack.)

Elisa: Her model reminds me of Caroline Rhea, the comedian. I question the choice of the boots – they make the poor lady’s legs look chunkier than they are. Heels would have been better. The judges don’t like the way the layers chop the lady’s body, and the navy and black are too close together, color-wise. Nina goes on and on about this outfit looking too much like Elisa and not enough like the client’s personality – but does she actually know this lady? No. The client seemed to like it just fine.

Kevin: This one should win. It’s beautiful, and you can tell the model feels really great in it. Unfortunately he put it with leggings, and the judges are sick to death of leggings by now, so he won’t win.

Steven: He has done the unthinkable – left MK at a loss for words. When he does find his voice again, the words “funeral” and “French maid” fall out. I don’t think it looks that bad, a bit too “lady who lunches” for me but it makes her look nicely curvy, and she likes it. They thought he should have used a different color and more of the wedding dress. The Gap guy even says women would like to have a wedding dress they can wear in the daytime. Really, we do?? I don’t see many wedding dresses in The Gap. Oh, excuse me, in Gap. (That sounds stupid, put the “The” back in there.)

In the end, Christian takes the win. Kevin is like “DAMN! I didn’t win again!!” But Heidi pats him on the head with a “good work” and sends him on his way. Jillian and Chris (yay!) are still in. That leaves Elisa and Steven. The judges play the boring card on Steven and he knows what’s coming. Sadly, he’s out. (Why are they getting rid of all the funny people and keeping Crying Ricky?) As far as the challenge is concerned, I really liked this one. This is the way to do an "everyday woman" challenge. Bravo, Bravo! (I also hope they let the ladies keep their outfits if they wanted. That would be kind of mean otherwise.)

Next episode: The designers take a field trip, everything falls off Jillian’s outfit, Elisa uses baked potatoes as sleeves, and The Attack of Christian’s Ego!

Bonus! Because I always thought Steven looked like Tommy Smothers, here is one of my favorite Smothers Brothers routines.

Chocolate Chip Woes

2007-12-05T19:43:00.001-05:00

I love chocolate chip cookies. When I was little my grandma would always have some ready for us whenever we'd go over to see her - she used the basic Toll House recipe from the chocolate chip bag. They were soft and chocolatey and always cooked perfectly in her old 1930's oven. When I was in college, she would send me a couple dozen cookies packed in an old metal Hostess fruitcake tin. (I still have a couple of the tins, I keep my sewing supplies in one of them.)

But every single time I try to make chocolate chip cookies, they turn out wrong, even if I do exactly what the recipe says. The first batch is always too brown and crispy, so my husband won't eat any of them (he only likes chewy cookies). So I take the cookie sheets out sooner and the next batch is better, but I've never managed to make them like Grandma did.

I've tried using butter, margarine (she always used margarine), half butter/half Crisco, you name it. I switched from artificial vanilla to the good stuff. I've sifted/not sifted the flour. Tried different brown sugars. No matter what I do, they are never right. And it frustrates the heck out of me. The only thing I haven't tried is cooking them in a 1930's oven.

I think I'm finally getting around to accepting that they may not ever be as good as Grandma's. But I'll keep trying. (And I will still eat them.)

Celebrity Look-Alike Models

2007-12-01T20:17:00.000-05:00

While I was putting together the model photos for my PR recap, I was struck by how many of them reminded me of someone else. See if you agree.

David Bowie

Corey Feldman

Keanu Reeves ("Dude! That was a most excellent modeling gig!")

Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz

Musician, author and actor Henry Rollins

A younger and funkier Prince Charles

The snooty maitre'd from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (It was hard to find a picture of him!) They even have the same eyebrow-cock. During the show, though, I thought the model looked more like the kid who played Cedric Diggory in the fourth Harry Potter movie.

And last - but never least - Alfalfa.

To Boldly Go...

2007-11-30T18:24:00.000-05:00

Fashion: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Runway. Its season four mission: to explore strange new looks; to seek out new talent and new silhouettes; to boldly go where no designer has gone before!
Captain Klum: Designers, you have a difficult mission ahead. Perhaps the most dangerous and difficult mission ever. But of course I will not tell you about it now; I prefer to let you stew in worry and speculation. First Officer Gunn will meet you on the surface of planet Rockefeller 10 to fill you in on the details. In the end, one of you will be victorious, and one of you will be the expendable anonymous crewmember that is sacrificed in every episode. Now all of you get to the transporter room! GO! RUN!

In last week’s episode, we had the ‘best judge ever’. This week, we have the challenge they’ve “been waiting a long time to do.” Let’s see… they’ve already done plants, trash, beauty pageants, postal workers, wedding gowns, dolls, and dogs. What else is left? The designers head over to Rockefeller Plaza to find out.

But oh, there is something left. For this challenge, everyone is going to have to do (cue ominous music) MENSWEAR. Tim introduces Tiki Barber, who used to play football but now does commentary for The Today Show. Kevin, reminding us once again how straight he is, launches into a detailed description of Tiki’s entire football career, while most of the rest of the male designers are like, “Who? What’s football? Oh, that game where they run around wearing spandex pants? LOVE it.” The winning design will be worn by Tiki on The Today Show.

He explains to the designers that he has a really hard time finding clothes that fit him due to the fact that he has a huge neck and a fair amount of booty, and that he’ll pretty much wear anything on camera as long as it’s just like what he’s wearing now, because his wife picked it out. He’s not afraid of color, or pattern, or texture, as long as it looks just like what he’s got on. I’m wondering where they’re going to get the models for this. If the outfit has to be for him to wear on the air, they’re going to need dress forms and models that are built like football players. And let’s face it, the typical model is not built like that. And the majority of the designers typically do womens’ wear. This should be interesting.

After their usual sketching time, during which most of the designers sit there staring at blank sketchbooks, they head off to Mood. They get a more reasonable budget and more time for this challenge. This is good, considering that menswear requires more tailoring, details and pieces per outfit. The few designers that actually have a clue what they’re going to make have really ambitious designs: suits mostly. Did they not learn from Michael Kors in season 2 where he said “mens’ suits are the hardest things to make and sew”? (Um, how else would you make a mens’ suit without sewing it?) There’s a lot of frantic running at Mood, and a lot of dark colors being purchased.

They return to Parsons. Christian plays Chihuahua to Jack’s Paris Hilton and lets himself be carried into the workroom in a tote bag. Everyone gets to work, but it doesn’t take long for most of the designers to find their way into the dreaded 'fear box.’ Jack, however, get the bright idea to take apart his own shorts to use as a pattern. (And since he can’t run around the workroom in his underwear, he also fashions himself a nice kilt out of muslin.) A lot of the women are asking Jack for advice, even though he admits that he’s never actually made menswear.

Being a giving kind of guy, Jack shares his deconstructed shorts with Carmen and Victorya so they can make patterns too. (I don’t know how much good that will do them – Jack is muscular but he’s no Tiki.) This irritates the heck out of Rami, who whines that it’s not fair, but really is just steamed he didn’t think of it first.

The next morning, Kit sets the tone for the day by commenting, “OK, get ready, this is the last time we’re gonna have fun today,” as they run out the door to Parsons again. Is she ever right! These people have a LOT of work to do. Some are sewing actual garments, while others are still working on their muslin mock-ups. Pants are strewn everywhere! Chris’s description of what they are – “... just two big sleeves sewn together” – is surprisingly true. I never thought of it that way, but yeah, they kinda are. Over in the sewing room, Christian appears to be sewing his entire garment on the serger. Is that normal? Won't the seams be all bumpy?

Rami is quite proud of his draped pants (as opposed to others’ dirty rotten cheating traced-shorts pants). I'm starting to think he doesn't know how to make patterns at all. But he doesn’t have much more time to bitch because Tim is sending in the models!

Swoon! The first set of professional male models on Project Runway! (And wow, some of these guys look familiar - but that is a topic for another post.) There are many good-looking guys here, and pretty much everyone in the room (except Elisa, who can’t bear to watch her model change) is admiring the view. There are a lot of gratuitous butt and ab shots. Kevin, again, chooses to inform us how straight he is. Ricky is so stressed out that he can’t even chat with his model. Several people have to start from scratch after attempting to fit garments and failing miserably, which adds to the stress level tenfold.

Tim comes in to interrupt them yet again. For some reason, the producers decided to bring Tiki’s wife in to look at what everyone is doing. She likes some things, and shoots down others. Especially Carmen’s jacket, which causes Tiki’s wife to invoke the cursed name of Member’s Only. Tim even advises her to reconsider what she’s doing, but darn! She didn’t buy enough fabric to do something different. (I've seen them use this edit before. She’s either going to be out, or she’s going to rally and win the whole thing.) It also looks like Ricky has gotten a little ambitious with his design and doesn’t have a lot done. So the two of them release some frustration by composing an insult-laden opera in the sewing room.

The next morning, they return to the workroom to finish up as much as they can. Christian appears to have forgotten how to walk because Jack is carrying him AGAIN. (What does he weigh, like 75 pounds? Maybe it was windy and Jack was afraid he was going to blow away.) They have three and a half hours left, and Carmen has no shirt. Why was she making a jacket when she had no shirt?? Is she seriously going to send her model down the runway in a pants, jacket, and bare chest? That will go over well on The Today Show.

The models return to get their final fittings. Ricky immediately puts his to work sewing buttons so he can work on his jacket. He doesn’t finish and ends up answering the question I posed earlier about suit construction – you use safety-pins! Doesn’t that boy have any glue? The judges are going to see those pins in a second. Sweet P’s shirt looks, basically, like an eight-year-old sewed it. The neck is huge and crooked, the sleeves are too short, and the model’s biceps will rip the sleeves off entirely if he flexes them even a tiny bit. Carmen desperately makes a shirt substitute out of a big piece of fabric, but it ends up looking like she’s wrapped Linus’s blanket around the model's neck and tucked it in to the his pants. (I'm thinkin' there's your bottom three right there, for certain.)

Captain Klum: Welcome back, away team. Remember, one of you will be getting a commendation from Star Fleet, and one of you will have an unfortunate transporter accident. Before we see the strange alien life forms you brought back from your expedition to Rockefeller 10, let me introduce you to the judges:
Dr. McKors, Yeoman Garcia, and Klingon warrior Tiki Barber. Let’s start the show!

The safe designers:

Christian – What is up with that collar? It looks like he’s got the shirt on sideways. Did the model put his arm in the neckhole and his head through the sleeve? And the little weird rectangle appliqués on the jacket pockets are at the same level as the waistband. They need to be either higher or lower. It visually cuts him in half.
Jillian – She made four pieces. FOUR. Amazing. Doesn’t look half bad either. Imagine how much better it would have been had she concentrated on just making three. Maybe she would have won.

Rami – He has made his hot model look like a nerd. All he needs is a pair of taped-up glasses.
Steven – I can just hear his model saying “Come, Miffy, let’s take a cruise on Daddy’s new yacht” as he straightens his ascot.

Victorya – I don’t think that white jacket will work on television. But for everyday wear this is cute.

Chris – It’s so dark that I can’t see many of the details. A little color would have been nice. Put this on Tiki and he will practically disappear.

Elisa – A bit too casual I think. It would be perfect if Tiki does a story on camping, or a historical retrospective of Woodstock.

Who’s left on the runway?

Kevin – This was my pick to win. The color he chose would look good on Tiki, and the pattern on the tie is subtle but interesting. Heidi’s not fond of it at all – she says he made it for David Beckham (and it would look good on him, yes). Apparently Heidi’s not fond of Mr. Beckham either, as she says his name in the same tone of voice as one would say ‘baby vomit.’
Kit - The blue fleece jacket makes me think of Mr. Rogers and his cardigans, but in a good way. Tiki likes it. The other judges like that she used the unusual fabric for the jacket.
Jack – Stripes everywhere. Maybe it’s stylish, but I just don’t like stripes with other different stripes. Or the way he set them on an angle for the pocket. The model looks like a piece of Fruit Stripe gum. Nina doesn’t like that he only made two pieces.
Carmen – Oh, this is more horrible that I imagined it would be. The golf cap – what on earth made her decide to put that cap with this outfit? The color blue she was going to use for her shirt doesn’t go with anything else she made, the jacket is way too short.

Sweet P – It’s a mess. Everyone agrees. Her model looks like he had a rough time at the office Christmas party. All he needs is a little lipstick on the collar. (But they like the tie, at least!)

Ricky – Yawn. You can buy this at the Men’s Wearhouse. Without the pins. And the judges drag out the ‘boring’ card again. How many more of those can he survive? At least his model looks happy.

After the Q&A period is over, they announce who’s in and out. Jack wins, and in his joy makes devil horns and drops an F-bomb on the runway. Carmen is out – no surprise. I would have auffed her for that weird topknot alone.

Next week: a team challenge causes bitchiness. What else is new? And I hope that I can get a download of the episode somewhere before I write my recap, so I can quit torturing everyone with my photo-editing.

What to get for the person who has everything?

2007-11-28T20:53:00.000-05:00

Have a difficult relative on your holiday gift list this year? Well, look no further. Dave Barry has come to the rescue, as he does every year, with his Holiday Gift Guide. Every year I say, "I can't believe these are real things you can buy!" but they are. I'm sad, though, that there is nothing toilet-related in this year's list. I guess they've finally done everything that can be done with toilets.

This year I think I'm partial to the Tattoo Sleeves. Since I am not the least bit interested in being stabbed repeatedly with a needle, and yet feel a bit left out when my friends are showing people their tattoos, I think this would be a nice (removable) alternative.

The one that really kind of scares me is the 10 Plagues Bowling Pin Set. Are they serious? Is this something people are actually buying? And I had to go look up what the ten plagues were, because I could only think of frogs and locusts. I can just imagine some parent playing this with their preschooler. "Oh, honey, that's great, you got a split! If you hit 'locust' just right he'll fly over and take out 'the dead firstborn'!" Whoa.

The first thing I thought when I saw the Freud-head lollipops was "Oh, it looks like Tim Gunn! Only with a beard!" Wouldn't that be FABULOUS? There's the Tim Gunn bobblehead - can Tim Gunn lollipops be far behind?

Anyway, I hope you all get a good giggle from that. Thanks to my sister for bringing it to my attention. (What size arms do you have, sis? We could get matching tats for Christmas and give Mom a heart attack. On second thought, she'd probably want some too. Wanna go halvsies?)

The Best Judge Ever?

2007-11-24T13:11:00.001-05:00

Before I start with this week’s recap, I have to comment on the show opening. They’re cheesy every year but I think this one wins the prize for cheesiest. I mean, what is up with Jillian’s goofy ballerina-princess pose? And the ghost model kissing Marion looks like it belongs on Ghost Hunters, not Project Runway.

After all the hype last week about this week's judge, I was thinking they might skip the whole first part of the show and jump straight to that part. But they don't. It’s the day after the runway show, and some of the guys are talking about what happened. Simone, who was out, seems to be held in much higher regard than Elisa is. Elisa could care less, and hums "I'm organic, essence-imbued rubber and you are synthetic glue and whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

This week, everyone gets a chance to pick new models. Heidi has her Magic Velvet Bag (tm), and calls the models out on the runway. Wait a second. This is supposed to be the day AFTER the runway show, yes? Then why are all the models sporting the exact same hairdos and makeup as the day before? Did they SLEEP in that? (I’ve noticed that the editing on this show is really bad. For example, Tim will come in to look and a dress will be almost finished, but in the next shot it will be in pieces on the dress form. I hate that!)

For the most part, the designers stick with the models they were given. Until we get to Ricky, who decides to switch and picks the model Elisa had last challenge. In the first speech he’s made so far without crying, he tells us that he doesn’t care if everyone thinks he’s "the bitch that stole Elisa’s model." But nobody’s thinking that, because we don’t know any of these people well enough to have an emotional investment in anybody’s model. So Ricky just ends up looking like "the bitch that’s trying (and failing) to be Zulema." But kudos to him for not crying. It won’t last.

After that, pretty much everyone switches models. At the end we are left with Kevin’s previous model (the brunette that has a very pretty face but is really gangly, like a baby giraffe) and Ricky’s (the blonde that looks like Nicollette Sheridan). Sweet P will have to make the difficult choice between the two. Well, I don’t think it’s that difficult – I figure she will definitely go for the blonde. But she doesn’t! She picks the brunette.

Heidi quickly moves on to the challenge because Ricky’s starting to get teary-eyed again. This week they will be designing for a "pop culture and fashion icon." Speculation in the workroom runs the gamut from Madonna to Snow White. Luckily Tim comes in to let them off the hook and introduces… (drum roll)… Sarah Jessica Parker! The actress who, back in the eighties, made giant bug glasses all the rage. I used to watch her on Square Pegs! (Oh, and I guess she was later in some TV show about fashion and sex. I don’t have HBO. *shrug*)

The designers start freaking out to varying degrees. Christian takes the name of the Lord in vain about forty times, and Chris just flat out bawls his head off. Most of the designers look like this: Sarah Jessica tells them the details of their challenge – design a two-piece look that will fit into her new line, Bitten - which is the reason she finally agreed to come on PR, so she can plug it repeatedly. The line is supposedly affordable high-end sportswear (you go look at it and tell me what you think). The outfit they create can only cost a buyer $40 – which means that they have to make it for a lot less. They get a whopping $15 (which at Mood will maybe buy you a couple of buttons - I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of tootie showing on the runway). Chris feels he will get more garment for his money if he buys his supplies at Staples. This also turns out to be a dreaded team challenge, because SJ will only pick seven designs.

Everybody begins sketching, except Ricky, who starts doing this again.
And if this whole fashion designer thing doesn’t work out, I think Ricky could have a good career as the Train Engineer in a Village People tribute act. He’s already got a mesh engineer’s cap.

Now it’s time to pitch to Mrs. Broderick. I am impressed with some of the designers' sketching skills – notably Jack’s, Christian’s and Kit’s. Chris is so nervous he can’t even explain what he’s drawn. Elisa has drawn a Boobah (which explains a lot, actually). Christian gets all fanboi on SJ and hugs her. Rami has designed an outfit inspired by Transformers (“a woman can buy this, then get married and get pregnant, take off the belt and still wear it, and it also turns into a baby carrier and a high chair and a car seat”). Carmen takes the opportunity to unashamedly network like nobody’s business.

The pitching is over, and it’s now time to find out who SJ picked as team leaders. Her fashion credibility goes flying out the window when her first choice is Elisa. Everyone is stunned. (Come on! She drew a balloon with a head!) The other leaders are Kit, Victorya, Marion, Ricky, Christian (like he needed an ego boost), and Rami. Carmen and Chris are devastated. SJ also comments that the winning design MAY be sold with her fall line if it doesn’t suck too badly.

After SJ leaves it’s time to pick teams. This is how they ended up: Marion/Steve, Ricky/Jack, Victorya/Kevin, Kit/Chris, Rami/Jillian, Christian/Carmen, and Elisa is left with Sweet P, who gets very very scared. Then Tim gives them their $15 and herds them off to Mood to pick stray threads off the floor, which is all they can afford. Marion nicks a blanket that an employee brought from home, and Elisa picks the same exact material she bought last time.

Back in the workroom, everyone gets down to business. Since Elisa doesn’t believe in tape measures, she holds the fabric up to Sweet P to measure it. Then, to Sweet P’s horror, we find out that she also doesn’t believe in writing utensils – she uses spit to mark the fabric! (I guess it’s better than some of the other things she could have used.)

After they’ve been working a while, Tim comes in to see how things are progressing. His first stop is Marion and Steve. Their blanket-shirt is almost done, but their skirt is laying in pieces on the table. The design of light and dark heather grays in stripes is really interesting – I’m curious to see how it looks when it’s all put together. (Looks hellish to sew, though.) On to Christian, who of course thinks his outfit is perfect no matter how much Tim tries to tell him that it’s not. Victorya has designed a dress made out of an extra-large garbage bag and a little boy’s suit vest. When Tim comes to Elisa, he is flabbergasted that she is hand-sewing all the edges, and actually uses the word “cuckoo”. Elisa smiles serenely as her animal friends cavort about the workroom.

The next day, the designers have a little bit of time to work on the finishing of their garments. Ricky’s dress, while pretty, is not technically a two-piece outfit, even though he made a belt for it. I just really don’t think a belt counts as a second piece. A belt is an accessory. I hope he gets blasted for it on the runway. Rami’s Transformers shirt looks like a paint smock from a preschool classroom. Marion and Steven are worried about their skirt – apparently Marion doesn’t know how to measure and made it way too big. But it’s okay, because you can’t see the skirt anyway - the blanket covers the whole thing up! Victorya’s got some kind of giant Goth Christmas bow around the neck of her model.

In the hair and makeup room, there is a LOT of teasing going on. (I think the phrase is “hair teased up to Jesus!”) And I really think Christian must have skipped the classes on model styling because his looks are just really awful. Again, he has aged his model about twenty years and given her a very severe hairstyle. Out on the runway, Heidi is wearing a top that looks like a very different type of runway. Maybe it is a landing strip for Elisa’s alien friends.

The ‘safe’ designers:

Kit and Chris - This one should have been a contender for the win. It’s simple, but it would fit in with the other pieces in the Bitten collection very well. (You can't tell in the picture but the leggings are a deep maroon color.) Their model is really pretty. I love the kicky beret, too.
Rami and Jillian - Big hair, very black, eh. I’m glad they used the cute model though.
Ricky and Jack – More giant hair! The color is pretty, the design is nice, but I hate the belt.

Who’s left on the runway?

Elisa and Sweet P – This actually turned out way better than I expected. The shapes of both pieces are really nice. Elisa makes the mistake of telling the judges that she spit on the dress, causing Heidi to blurt out “What planet are you FROM?” Elisa replies that she’s come from her happy planet bearing gifts. Whatever that means.
Marion and Steven – This looks very ‘1960’s hippie commune’ to me. The colors are depressing, the top is way too long, and you can’t even see the skirt that Steven spent so much time on. The top is actually getting longer as the model stands on the runway. (I predict that it will be a floor-length dress by the time the season is over.) Michael Kors comments that a short woman would look like Cousin Itt if she wore this outfit.

Victorya and Kevin – The judges gush over this, calling it ‘interesting’ repeatedly. Maybe it looked better in person but like I said before, it looks like a garbage sack to me. And I can’t tell if the bow is part of the dress, or just some extra fabric that they hemmed and tied around the model’s neck.
Christian and Carmen – The first thing that popped into my head when this came down the runway was “flight attendant”. Yes, the jacket has some intricate pleating that looks like it took a long time. I’m not going to deny that Christian appears to have some excellent sewing skills. But I agree with Michael Kors in his assessment that the model looks like she just stepped out of a Robert Palmer video. I’m not sure Christian actually heard that comment because he was too busy cutting him off – he only wanted to hear what SJ had to say, because he was SURE she was going to say it was fierce. She didn’t.

So it was between Elisa and Victorya for the win, and of course SJ picked the garbage bag over the spittle-encrusted alien dress. Poor Marion was out, because his design made the judges sad. I think if his top had been different, the outfit would have worked, because what I can see of the skirt is very impressive. And as far as Sarah Jessica Parker being the best judge ever, I'm not sure I'd agree with that, even though she seems to know what she's talking about.

Next week: Heidi continues the space theme and dresses up like Lt. Uhuru from Star Trek. The challenge is described as “something we’ve always wanted to do,” and the designers appear to be ripping clothing. (So THAT’S what happens to the throwaway clothes on Tim Gunn’s other show!)

Something that REALLY matters

2007-11-22T11:51:00.000-05:00

It’s Thanksgiving in the United States, a day when we take a moment and remember all the things we are grateful for in our lives. Hopefully we also give a thought to those in our country and other parts of the world who don’t have it as good as we do, and how we might help. We all know that there are a lot of things in the world that need fixing. It seems like every day some celebrity is throwing a party to benefit this, or a golf tournament to benefit some other thing. Perhaps they donate a personal effect or something they created to an auction to benefit charity. (I looked up celebrity charity work on Google and found a ton of things like that – CD’s, t-shirts, lunchboxes....) Or maybe they just show up at a premiere or awards show wearing a ribbon to show support for a cause. That’s all good. I definitely applaud those who use their celebrity to spotlight issues (and not those who use the issue to get the spotlight on themselves).

Here’s one I read about recently that impressed me a lot, but you might not have heard about. TOMS Shoes, created by entrepreneur and Amazing Race contestant Blake Mykoskie, donates a pair of shoes to a child in an impoverished country for each pair purchased through their website or in the few stores that carry them. The company has already done one ‘shoe drop’ in Argentina, the country that inspired Mykoskie to create the design for TOMS slip-on shoes.

This fall TOMS partnered with indie band Hanson to sell shoes at each of the shows on Hanson’s fall tour. In addition to providing shoes for fans to purchase, the Hanson guys did a one-mile walk with fans prior to each show to raise awareness for the TOMS mission. Hanson usually walked barefoot, and encouraged other walkers to do the same. Sure, a mile on dirty American city streets is nothing compared to a child who has to walk around all day every day with bare feet, but it gave the walkers an idea of what it would be like. Hanson might not be as much in the public eye as they were when they were younger, but they are very passionate about this cause, and have a large and loyal fanbase that they were able to inspire to action, which helped TOMS meet its goal of 50,000 pairs of shoes.

This past week, the TOMS staff and Hanson have been in South Africa to personally fit children with the shoes. One of the photographers traveling with them has posted video and photos on his blog here. You can also see some videos that explain how Hanson got involved with the project here. Having been a teacher for many years and having a soft spot in my heart for children, it was very touching to me to see these photos and videos. Each individual that bought a pair or two of shoes may have done a small thing, but add up all the small things and you get something huge that is benefiting so many children.

Learning about this amazing effort made me ask myself, "What have I done today?" So I decided to do a small thing and write about it, to bring more people’s attention to the good work that these people are doing. After all, it’s not the size of the step you take, it’s the fact that you take it.

Return to the Runway

2007-11-16T01:52:00.001-05:00

Hooray! Project Runway has returned! Will this year's group of aspiring designers have the talent, the drive, the snarkiness of past seasons? Let's find out.

Of course the first order of business is to get the designers all moved in to their new digs, the Gotham (something or other not important). Hmm…the new apartments look just like the old Atlas ones, right down to the number plates on the doors. Did they rename the Atlas? Are we sure they even moved? Or is it a red herring, because the producers did not want people stalking the designers during filming?

Wherever they are, during move-in time, the designers need to make good first impressions on not only their fellow designers, but on the viewers. What have we got here? First the men. I have absolutely no opinion, good or bad, about Rami at this point. He’s just…there. Chris, I love already. He seems like such a genuine person and I just want to hug him. However, the same cannot be said for Christian, whom I already want to smack into next week the next time he uses the words “like, kinda…” Plus, even more annoying is the fact that he is an ‘uptalker’. Ricky rounds out that set of roommates. In the next apartment we meet Kevin and Jack, who are very rugged in two completely different ways. Steven arrives and I think, "When did Tommy Smothers take up fashion designing?" Then Marion sneaks in, looking like a Victorian street waif, so I hope they have the kitchen stocked with some nice thin gruel for him.

On to the women. For someone who is a former model and should know better, Carmen is wearing a god-awful T-shirt that is slashed across the chest. What horrible thing did her breasts do to warrant being strapped up like that? Curly-haired Jillian informs us that she is not going home, ever - so I guess after the show wraps she’s just going to be a squatter in the apartment. The two of them gleefully try and get their toiletries into the tiny bathroom before anyone else arrives. I guess Kit (very blonde) and Sweet P (very tattooed) will have to find somewhere else to keep their toothpaste. The second female apartment contains Victorya, Elisa (who labels herself an ‘accidental designer’ and that scares me a lot), and Simone. It’s good there’s only three of them in there because Elisa needs room to do her yoga.

During this first act we can clearly see the Project Runway notecards sitting on the counters, and everyone making a point to not notice them until instructed to, and then they act all surprised to see them. Of course, it is Heidi’s summons, and the designers are instructed to head over to Bryant Park to meet Mrs. Seal and Mr. Gunn.

Once they get there, the champagne starts flowing, because God forbid they start designing anything without being tipsy, and everyone mingles with varying degrees of success. We find out more about Jack, Victorya, Kit, Marion and Ricky (who is already going for the Andrae Gonzalo Project Runway Scholarship by crying, and we’re less than ten minutes into the show.)

But all too soon, Heidi and Tim show up to spoil the party. Heidi gives the designers a stern mommy look, tells them “the party is over”, and that it’s time for the first challenge. They will be making clothing out of the tents set up on the far side of the park. Christian haughtily sniffs that the tents look like they’re made out of cheap crappy plastic, but it actually turns out to be expensive fabric from Mood. Oodles of dollars’ worth. (Shows what he knows – shouldn’t someone who’s a “kind of a big deal” designer be able to tell the difference between fabric and plastic, even at a distance?) Anyway, Tim explains that in other seasons the designers had to use crap to make fabulous expensive looking things. This time they get to use expensive fabric to make what could very likely be crap!

So it’s ready, set, go! The designers sprint across the lawn (except for Chris, who gets a rude edit while running slower than the others, but I prefer to think that he knows he can knock out something fabulous with whatever is left, so why hurry). Elisa shoves a sunflower at Heidi as she runs by. (Apparently it was Heidi’s birthday, and what else to get for the woman who has everything? A cheap silk flower, of course.) Christian runs the entire way with one hand on his hip, which looks really prissy but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt – maybe his battery pack was falling off.

The designers start grabbing for fabric like they’re little old ladies at a K-Mart blue light special on knee-high hosiery. Elisa puzzles everyone when she starts rubbing expensive silk in the grass, for “natural” color, and you just know everyone is thinking “what a nutjob!” When the dust clears, the only thing left on the tent frame is some fake fur. (Later in the show it shows up as a couch cover. Watch for it!)

They have thirteen hours to whip up their designs. I’m wondering what is going to happen to all that fabric – there’s no way any of them are going to use the obscene amounts they shoved into their bags. I hope Mood has a discount remnant section. (I doubt they’ll take back any of Elisa’s silk though.)

Everyone sorts out their fabric and gets started. Rami has his entire dress draped in less than five minutes. But what the hell is Elisa doing? She’s shredding her fabric – apparently continuing her grass theme by making it look as though she ran over the material with a lawn mower. Then she gets up on the table and starts using herself as a dress form. It looks like she’s sewing herself into a shroud! Could that be a bit of foreshadowing? (At this point, Christian makes a comment about her strangeness, but, um, Christian? When you are sitting there with that haircut you have NO room to call anyone’s anything strange.) And Jillian cannot seriously be putting a red-orange skirt onto a hot pink bodice. Can she? Please don’t.

Tim comes in to see how things are going. His first stop is Rami, and he proclaims the dress ‘stunning’. Yes, it looks nice, but why did he have to pick that cement color? Does that color look good on anyone? Tim goes to visit Christian next. Christian has made a puffy-sleeved brown plaid top that was really fashionable in the nineties… the 1890’s. Simone’s dress is kind of bleh. It’s very pale with a yellow stripe around the middle, and a little shruggy jacket thing. And with only four hours left, she still has a lot of work to do. Not good.

And now we come back to Elisa. (If she sticks around past this episode I can foresee lots of time spent with Elisa in the future.) I was actually kind of surprised at what she’d made, at first, because it was a really nice form-fitting teal tube dress with an interesting collar. That was before she turned it around, and we see that she’s done a Santino - tacking a lot of shredded crap onto the back of it. After Tim frowns over it, she decides she’s finished and trots off to the lounge to sleep for 2 hours.

Everyone else scrambles. Sweet P voices a concern that her dress keeps shrinking – uh oh! Are we in for more sabotage conspiracy theories like last season? Is someone resizing her dress form every time she leaves the room? Hmm…

Chris looks at his watch, shrugs, and says, “Huh. Ten minutes.” From out of nowhere we hear Christian’s frantic voice: “Don’t go into the fear box, people!” I don’t know where the fear box IS, but it sounds like Christian’s already there. And with that, the night is over, and everyone trudges back to their apartments (well, except Elisa, who’s pretty bouncy after her nap).

Next morning – HELLO Jack’s underwear! Oh… my. And the guys from Chris’s apartment have apparently given themselves a name: Team Star! How cute and cheerleader-ish. But now it’s time to head back to Parson’s for final alterations and to meet the models. Chris completely lucked out with his model – not only is she gorgeous but the colors in his outfit looked amazing on her. And someone needs to give Carmen some static cling spray, because there are fabric scraps are stuck to the back of her jacket. Elisa weirds her model out by “hand measuring” her. (She’s not a horse, Elisa! What else are you going to do, look at her teeth?)

The models are fitted and hairstyled and makeup-ed, and it’s off to walk the plank! Oh wait, I mean the runway. After last season's, um, questionable styling choices, I'm half-dreading what Heidi's going to be wearing. She comes on wearing a heavy-looking gold dress that looks like it came straight out of Chloe’s final collection from season 2. She introduces the judges. Michael Kors is looking much less orange than in past seasons. Nina actually smiles. The guest judge for this week is designer Monique Lhuillier.

So let’s take a look at each piece and what the judges had to say. Since this is the first episode, a lot of people are sent off the runway early and we don’t get to hear any comments from the judges.

The ‘safe’ designers:

Chris – Gorgeous! Love the rich colors he used. But he wrongly is not selected as one of the three top designs. Boo!
Kevin – Cute little dress in red, silver, and black. Might not have been the best outfit for his model, though, as she has very long legs and very long arms.
Sweet P – She’s made a nice gold potato chip bag. She has a very beautiful model, though.

Jillian – It’s a bubble skirt! Ack. At least she changed the bodice color to match the bottom better.
Jack – Very classic, and it reminds me a bit of Robert’s first dress last season. It’s kind of off-the-rack looking but I’d wear it.
Marion – Eek! He’s paired a flimsy lace top with a skirt made out of fabric that’s way too heavy and clunky – it looks like army tent canvas. You can almost hear it clunking as the model walks down the runway.

Steven – A very nice black business suit with red accents.
Carmen – Another eek! Put this genie outfit back in the bottle from whence it came, please. (And oh, you were looking for that donut you put down in the hair salon earlier? It’s stuck to the side of your model’s head.)
Kit – This looks nice coming down the runway from the side, but when we get a front view it appears that she’s forgotten to sew on the other half of her jacket!

And who’s left on the runway?

Rami – Yes, his dress is pretty, but ew, that color. And the model’s hair REALLY needs to be down. That bun is too severe with this dress. The judges coo all over him though, and the words “sophisticated” and “chic” are used. We know where this is going…
Christian – This outfit, and the styling he chose, made his model look like she was in her forties. And did no one think to tell the poor girl that one side of the skirt was tucked up into her panty hose? Of course the judges ate this one up, because it was “quirky”. I will admit that it was well-constructed, just ugly.
Victorya – She made a basic black dress with weird sleeves that looked like the model’s bra straps were falling down. Then to dress it up, she adds an ugly flower made of what appears to be foil from the baked potato she had at dinner. Of course the judges love it, because they were all hungry. (Her model also resembles a vampire with all that heavy black eye makeup.)

Ricky – His black and silver striped babydoll dress is sweet but boring and safe. And we all know that neither of those is a good word on this show. The judges did admit that it was very well sewn, so that saves him.
Elisa – Train wreck! Her model stumbles and trips all the way down the runway, and is wearing really ugly boots. While describing her design to the judges, Elisa uses a lot of sound effects. Michael likes the basic dress but not all the junk in the trunk, which Heidi so elegantly describes as ‘the dress looks like it’s pooing fabric.’ (Cut scene to Elisa in the waiting room, ripping the train off the dress.)
Simone – From far away this doesn’t look bad… but it doesn’t look particularly good either. And what is up with her model’s hair? It’s rolled very strangely. She ends up getting criticized for poor construction and the fact that her jacket material is too random (Michael calls it “dressed in the dark”). Her model looks very worried.

In the end, Rami is the winner (Chris was robbed, I tell you!) and gets immunity for the next challenge. Simone is out. Poor construction will lose over freakish and safe any day. (I hope someone picks her model next week because she is cute.)

Next week promises to be Big! Huge!! With the surprise guest judge to end all surprise guest judges! (Oh, I hope it’s Kayne. That would be awesome.)

PR4 Fashion Show, continued.

2007-11-14T11:08:00.000-05:00

Before I finish up my commentary on the PR4 fashion show, I have to make a couple of observations. Firstly, what is up with some of these models? I know I would walk like that in heels that high, but models are supposed to be able to walk in anything. And the worst ones have an arm-swinging issue – stiff as a board! I hope they are not models on this season's show because I would really hate to be their designer. Secondly, I am sure that all of the models had their hair pulled back so severely so as not to distract the viewer from the clothing. But ooo!! I hate that schoolmarm thing, and it was very distracting to me at times. Some women just need to have their hair styled to cover their ears.

Okay enough of that. On with the rest of the show!

Ricky: He chose to show lingere, which was kind of nice in the middle of all the ‘heavy’ clothing. His pieces were nice – a black floral robe with pink undergarments; a little pinstriped babydoll teddy; and a black lace robe with a Peter Pan collar and a grayish nightgown underneath (maybe geared a little towards the older lingere-wearing woman).

Chris: He brought a simple black halter dress with little detailing (that I could see in the picture anyway) save a Greek trim design around the neck that plunged into a deep V at the back, a silver sleeveless mini with chains at the neck and around back, and a floor-length dress made from an interesting M.C. Escher-esque print. His three dresses were nothing earth-shattering but nothing insane, and overall were very pleasant on the eyes.

Jack: His pieces were a black dress with a patterned cape (it looked good from the front but as soon as the model turned around she looked like the back of a wing chair), a geometric black/white print dress, and a pink and cranberry floor-length dress with a large floral pattern and a plunging V-neck that strongly reminded me of Uli’s stuff from last season. (And how is it that he scored three of the best models from S3??)

Steven: I really liked his first look – it had gray, black and white vertical striping that made the model’s waist look thinner. And she was wearing flats, which was refreshing in a sea of stilettos and teetering. And here comes the clompy walker again, wearing a black mid-calf dress with a fluffy tulle overlay. Lastly is Javi in a giant chocolate-brown dress that reminded me of Susan Sarandon’s Oscar dress from several years ago. Now, Javi is a muscular gal (which is good, don’t get me wrong, I hate twiggy models that look like they’re starving) but she doesn’t have much of a waist – this dress gave the illusion that she had a TINY waist. Perhaps he bakes on the side and got his inspiration from this.

Kit: Her first piece was a black knee-length coat dress with sleeves that were poofy to the elbow and had a weird pink scrunchy detail across the back. Next came a teeny sleeveless mini-dress with a black bow at the neck and a wide belt. Her last look was mind-boggling – a black bathing suit with a jeweled bodice, tasseled leg warmers, and striped pink tights. I was also quite amused by Heidi’s look of polite interest during this part.

Christian: He started off with a black riding habit paired with patterened panty hose. (Try saying that last part three times fast!) It was very chunky and made the model look that way too. And her shoes had collars, or something. Next came a black miniskirt and patterned shirt with lots of ruching and curved black panels on each side, which made a nice waist shape. His last look was a “what the…?” – a light brown pinstripe suit that would have been quite nice actually, had it not been for the hat made out of a grocery sack, a giant beige scarf that used to be old sweaters, and strange detailing on the pant cuffs.

Sweet P: Waists? Who needs ‘em? She sent out a gold sack dress with a knitted scarf and –gasp- ankle socks with heels. Next came a coral sack dress with wide sleeves and bright orange pantyhose. Her last offering was a long pink tunic with a black ribbon and some nice smocking around the middle. Underneath was a black skirt that you could see through the pink, and black hose. Too light on top, too dark on the bottom, it just seemed unbalanced to me.

Carmen: This lady scared me. The first outfit was orange and brown striped shorts, a maroon jacket/shirt thing, way too many chains, and an orange 1920’s style hat last seen on the cast of “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” The second outfit was truly horrifying – a velour jogging suit the color of spinach baby food with maroon accents, and it had puffy knickers cuffed below the knee. When the model turned around there was a weird shiny pattern on the back of jacket that might have been a skull. I was surprised at the last outfit because it was so… normal. It was a quite nice aqua plaid coat with a hood. I kept waiting for her to take it off or open it to show the dress, and then I realized it WAS the dress, not a coat. At least I think that’s right. I’d wear it as a coat.

Overall I’d say it was an interesting show. Some outfits were nice, some were red-carpet worthy, and some would make me laugh 'til I hyperventilated if I saw them walking down the street. I don’t know how much time the designers had to make these pieces (maybe they were the ones they brought to the audtions) but I can’t wait to see what they do in the time-crunch of challenges. I think I’ll end by showing my three personal favorite pieces, from Steven, Kevin, and Chris.

The fun starts tonight! With Tim Gunn proclaiming these designers "the strongest group EVER", I'm sure this season's gonna be a doozy.

Project Runway S4 - It’s Sew Time…

2007-11-12T20:17:00.000-05:00

…to stop with the puns in taglines for every single series, Bravo. I’m sew serious. Stop.

To usher in this season, Bravo decided to put on a little fashion show at Lincoln Center and show off the new designers. I think this was an excellent idea. Now, instead of forming my opinions based on headshots alone (I’m still sorry, Kayne, loveyameanit!), I got to actually see some clothing.

The show started with Daniel Vosovic’s mom doing the welcomes. (Okay, it’s NOT his mom, but Bravo prez Lauren Zalaznick looks enough like Daniel that she could be his mom.) Then Heidi came up in a blue dress that... how do I describe this? Remember the original “Parent Trap” movie where one of the twins cuts the back out of the other twin’s party dress while she was leaning up against a deck rail at the dance? Someone did this to Heidi’s dress, but in the front. I don’t know how she managed to not notice. Anyway, she did a lot of thank you’s and welcomes, then went into the sponsor list. Apparently the Macy’s collaboration from last year didn’t work out so well, so this year is sponsored by about eight hundred different companies, all of which will have blatenly obvious product placement throughout the season.

Let’s start the show! (Clicking on the designer’s name will take you to Daniel Vosovic’s blog, where you can see pictures of their three outfits, along with Daniel’s much wittier comments. I’ll do half of the designers today and the rest tomorrow.)

Kevin: I thought the first dress was best of his three - a nice little cream-colored piece with a bustier top and black trim. The other two looks were classic pieces in reds and blacks. I do have to say that I am not a fan of shorts as pieces in fashion shows, and definately not in hip-and-thigh-widening plaids. (He scored a S3 model whose name I can never remember, but she had to put up with Angela a lot.)

Victorya: All of her dresses seemed to be the same basic style in different colored fabric – a navy, a pink, and a red. One had a trench coat (did she make that? It was nice). Her big plus was having Camilla from S3 as a model.

Elisa: Beige EVERYWHERE - a surreal hooded jogging outfit with a cut-up-to-the-unmentionables skirt instead of sweatpants, a dress with weird straps and a corset-styled back, and a longish nightgown. Nice to see model Javi from S3 (love the haircut). Oh, and Elisa's models were wearing NO SHOES, which made her stuff look even more like pajamas.

Rami: He showed a cute little silver mini with interesting pleating, and a black sleeveless Morticia Addams dress (hey, there’s Amanda from S3). First thing I thought when I saw the black number was “This is the dress Malan wanted to make for Miss USA last year”. Rami's last piece was a dusty coral-hued dress with blousey draping and a wide waistline with some detailing that reminded me of the stays of a corset (modeled by the lovely Marilinda from S3).

Simone: Pink! Green! My eyes!! This seriously reminded me of some of the mix-and-match outfits my daughter puts on her Barbie dolls. (And this is a girl who will wear orange flowered capri pants with an electric purple polka-dot shirt.) The first two looks were miniskirt variations (Pink! Green! Shiny!). Her last one was black shorts and a creamy white jacket with a pink halter top underneath. It looked nothing like other ones. Plus, someone cut the wrist parts off all her gloves. (And at least one of her hems had strings hanging off of it.)

Marion: His first look – a nondescript skirt-over-pants and jacket in black and white - came down the runway on an extremely clumpy model. (I’ve seen baby elephants who could walk the runway better than that! I hope she's not one of this season's models.) His other two looks were a silvery-black dress with some odd cutouts at the top and a feather pillow exploding out of the bottom, and an Eighties-inspired one-shoulder poof dress with a thin skirt.

Jillian: Her first model teetered down the runway in too-tall boots. The outfit was a wheaty-gray military-styled peplum jacket with fur-rimmed hood, paired with olive pants. The second was a silver mini-dress with lace overlay and the garters showing. (Oh! I remembered the model's name. Clarissa. And she looks like she's been crying, or perhaps is merely suffering from allergies.) Last was an outfit that looked like it belonged in a sci-fi series about stylish military vampires – a high-necked silver coat and mullet dress (you know, long in back - short in front) that was accessorized by tights made of discarded Mylar balloons.

To be continued… in the meantime, catch a video of the show here.

The Cyber-Adventures of Indy and Han

2007-11-09T10:17:00.000-05:00

(or... Why I Never Posted My Recaps)

When I first got the idea to send Indiana Jones to look for my missing Top Design recaps, and suggested he take Han Solo along, I thought it would be a piece of cake for them to find my drafts out there in the cable-HD-satellite-internet-TV universe and speed back with them. Wow, was I wrong. "Never send two fictional men to do anything" is my new motto. After a month of waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more, I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to go find them, too. I should have known better - they're two good-looking, macho male characters, and cyberspace is full of female characters and cool gadgets, so it was inevitable that they get distracted from their mission.

I finally tracked them down on the Enterprise D in Star Trek, of all places. Indy was off playing 1940's private eye with Jean-Luc Picard on the Holodeck, and Han was - where else?- down in Engineering tinkering with stuff. With great difficulty I managed to remind them of the task at hand and get them back on track.

We spent most of the summer criss-crossing the worlds of fiction and entertainment, following up on leads but finding nothing. We also spent a large amount of time arguing over my clothing. I tried to convince Han that slave-girl outfits, while helpful when trying to get information out of people, were not practical for everyday wear, and to convince Indy that there had to be a middle ground between the Bette Grable pin-up bathing suits he wanted me to wear, and the Donna Reed spinster clothing from It's A Wonderful Life that most 1930's women seemed to favor.

About the end of September it finally hit me - why were we wasting all this time traipsing from genre to genre when we could just use Google? After all, you can find anything on Google. Big mistake. The first thing those men did was Google themselves, and then I lost them. Han discovered Star Wars: Galaxies online role playing game and found that there, he was stuck in a cantina full of Twi'lek dancing girls on a remote smuggler's outpost planet, and that Princess Leia was stuck on a completely different planet, and never left it. So naturally he decided to stay. And Indy discovered that he had a long-lost son (who looks remarkably like Shia LeBouf), immediately started calling him "Junior" (take that, Sean Connery!), and they ran off to do some father-son bonding over movie-making with Steven Spielberg.

Now all I'm left with is a bizzare story, and no recaps. So if you are the person who was waiting all summer to find out who won Top Design*, you can just go ahead and Google it, because that is just really pathetic.

But take heart! Project Runway 4 starts in ONE WEEK! Bravo has bios and previews posted! They've also done a fashion show featuring the new designers, which I'm planning to write about next. And of course I will be recapping each episode again. But... this time I'm not taking any chances. I've hired Harrison Ford as ex-CIA agent Jack Ryan to guard my recaps. We'll see how that goes.

*Ok... it was Matt.

Whodunnit!?

2007-04-15T23:19:00.000-04:00

Hey! Someone has stolen my recaps! I have to call Harrison Ford!

HF: Hello?
TQO: Hey, Harry, it's me. I seriously need your help.
HF: What's the matter?
TQO: Someone has stolen my Top Design recaps!
HF: NOO!! I love those! What can I do to help?
TQO: Well, I know you're getting ready to start shooting that new Indiana Jones movie... so I thought maybe you could throw on your fedora and get out your bullwhip and go find my stuff. You know, get warmed up to the role again.
HF: That's a GREAT idea. I'll get started right away.
TQO: You could bring Han Solo along too, if you think you might need a good blaster at your side. This might get ugly. Also, one of you can please make my sister stop bugging me about writing, if you have time.
HF: Hmm... that might be the hard part, but I'll see what I can do.

Whew. Now that Indy's on the case I'm sure those recaps will be back in a jiffy! In other news:

*I made myself watch the premire of "Shear Genius", the latest in Bravo's "Top (Insert Profession Here)" shows, and wow. Are they not even trying? Someone needs to tell them that just because they come up with a cute, witty pun for a title, doesn't mean they need to turn it into a show. The contestants had to do "hair art", so they took them to Michael's (craft store) and gave them ten minutes to find stuff to stick in their models' hair. The guy who won used a wooden box. On the girl's HEAD. Then had her open it up to reveal what looked like plastic dress-up jewelry. And I will never complain about a Project Runway model again, because most of these girls were just slouching and stomping down their 'runway', and I think they just grabbed girls off the street that could use the fifty bucks. (Also host Jaclyn Smith must have a cursed portrait of herself in her attic because she looks just about the same as she did when she was on Charlie's Angels back in the 70's. Shades of Dorian Gray!!) I won't be watching it again. But I did enjoy the Project: Gay summary of the episode.

*I've also been watching "Dancing With the Stars" for the first time. Personally, I love dancing. I wish I could do it better (although my girlfriends say I do a mean cha-cha) but I don't have the guts to take a class. But I have really enjoyed watching other people dance on TV (most of the time - some of the pop songs they use make me cringe! And Leeza Gibbons in leather? Ack. But woman's got guts, so I admire that) and yes, my feet move along with them involuntarily. I'm too self-conscious to dance in public most of the time (unless I've had a daquiri or 4), but I admit that I dance while I do housework on occasion.

*We are deeply into the Harry Potter books now at my house. I have been reading them aloud to my son. I do voices for each character, too. I've always done that - when I was teaching preschool the kids would protest if I tried to read a story 'straight'. In fact, if I forget who's voice is whose, my son will say, "That's not Ron, you're doing Fred and George's voice now" and then I have to read it over the RIGHT way. I am no Jim Dale, who does all the HP audio books and is FABULOUS. But I like to try. Doing voices is as close as I'll get to another fantasy I've had for years, which is to act. In fact, if I could act AND dance then I could be in a musical, which are my favorite type of old movie. West Side Story, The Music Man, Carousel, etc... man, that would be great.

Anyway, I'll keep you updated on Indy's search for the missing recaps!

Mission: Top Clean Sweep Organization Designer

2007-03-10T11:57:00.001-05:00

There were times during this episode when I wasn’t quite sure what show I was watching. I had to keep looking at the guide to make sure I hadn’t accidentally changed the channel during a commercial break!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Bravo must be trying to win the Emmy for Cryptic Introductory Phrases for Reality Show Challenges, because in introducing this week’s challenge, Todd says something about it being “a family affair in more ways than one” – what the heck does that mean? Are they bringing in the designers’ families? Are they going to make two of the designers get married and the rest of them have to design their newlywed bungalow?
But no. A family pulls up in their new car – I see kids, I see a dog…

I see that actually, Bravo is trying to win the Emmy for Obnoxiously Blatant Product Placement in a Reality Show. Almost every single time they talk about the car during this episode, they use the full name and then they show us a shot of the nameplate of the car, too. If anything, it really turns me off to even considering buying that kind of car.

They’re focusing on the car so much, I’m starting to think that the challenge is going to be to redesign the interior so the family, who unfortunately just became homeless after using all their savings buying it, can live in the car. But actually, the designers will have to simply redesign their garage for use by the entire family, and still be able to put the car in it.

Back in the design studio, the family describes what they’d like done with the garage, which, judging by the photo, is a disaster. Dad wants to put the kids in there to do their homework. The kids want a stage and a playground and a Chuck E. Cheese and an in-house band to provide music on demand. Mom wants to have an office space for her. What I want to know is, what’s wrong with Dad that he wants everyone out of the house and they’re all happy to go? Who puts a home office in a drafty, barely heated building? And what’s the rest of their house look like that they feel the need to go live in the GARAGE???

Thoroughly confused and overwhelmed, the designers have a daunting task ahead of them. Todd makes it worse by telling them that instead of sketching, they have to build a model, and then they only get 3 minutes to pitch the ideas to the family. The winning designer will be the team leader (dammit! Another team challenge!!) and also cannot be kicked off this week. So if the design ends up being crappy, one of the worker bees gets squashed while the queen (or king) bee sits back eating bon-bons and snickering.

Even with immunity, the idea of being team leader doesn’t appeal to Goil at all. He just really, really wants to work by himself. Nobody seems to like making models. Some of them are good, some of them look like they’re made out of discarded cereal boxes. Carisa invokes the spirit of Tim Gunn, uttering “Make it work!” Carisa, you are no Tim Gunn. Plus you may get sued for copyright infringement.

Now it’s time for the presentations. Todd is standing by to time them. Andrea woos the kids by including a swing in her design. Carisa also goes straight for the kids, asking “Does it look cool?” and completely ignoring the parents in her presentation. Smart move, actually. She knows that if these are typical kids, they will whine until the parents give them the design they want, so Carisa wants them to want hers. Ryan starts his presentation by telling them they need to get rid of most of their crap. They don’t like that at all. Ryan’s not going to be team leader, and I think he could care less. Ralphie has a lot to say, so he starts talking really fast like a winner at the Oscars who has a lot of people to thank but hears the orchestra starting to pick up their instruments.

In the end, Andrea wins. I notice during her little interview about winning that someone has helpfully labeled her “THE BOSS.” She gets a budget of $5,100. But before they can get started, Carisa has to claim her prize from last week – picking a carpenter. This is boring so I’m going to skip it.

Andrea then gets to assign roles to her team. Goil is Andrea’s “special helper,” doing the architectural sketching and basically whatever else Andrea wants him to do. Ryan is in charge of graphics - duh, because she doesn’t want him touching anything else lest it get art all over it. Plus, graphics are expendable if they run out of time. Ralphie and Erik are sent to buy the fabrics. Carisa will design the office space and work on final styling and organizing. But Matt – poor Matt! She puts him in charge of organizing the mountain of crap that’s in the garage.

Matt and Carisa run off to The Container Store. I’ve read and watched enough about organization to know that the main rule of organizing is to sort what you’ve got and THEN see what kinds of organizational materials you need. Of course they can’t really do this. All they had was a picture of junk. So now they have to decide what size buckets to put the junk into. That’s hard!! And I’ll bet they won’t be able to use some of the things they buy. But I don’t see how Matt is going to have much of an opportunity to do any interior designing, which is what I thought this show was supposed to be about.

Andrea goes to visit the house. The homeowners throw an empty shed into the mix, so Andrea has to change the design a little bit, putting the office into the shed. That at least makes more sense than putting it next to the car. Back at The Container Store, Matt and Carisa have basically moved the entire contents of the store to the checkout counter. Some of that organizational stuff is expensive – I wonder how much of the budget they used?

I have to digress here and say that I hate Carisa’s skirt. It looks like she sat in chalk. And if you have to wear leggings with a miniskirt, you probably shouldn’t be wearing the miniskirt in the first place.

Materials in hand, the designers make their way to the garage. This is where it stops looking like Top Design and starts looking like Clean Sweep. They have to take all the crap out of the garage (I really think the family could have done this part for them, don’t you?) and then clean it before they can get a really good look at the space and start working. It’s a good thing it’s a large garage, because there are about a hundred people in there working.

Let’s see what everyone’s up to. Ryan thinks it’s a goofy challenge but he’s going to “make it his own” – so what does he end up doing? He paints big gray stripes on the floor to show the parents where to park the car. Goil gets fixated on building a dog bed on wheels so the kids can pull the dog around. Other than that, there’s so much activity that it’s hard to focus in on anything.

People start getting irritated because Carisa is back in the little shed puttering around while the main garage is in danger of not getting finished. Everyone stops what they’re doing, however, to listen to Matt argue with her about where she needs to be. That’s five minutes of work time they can’t get back. She goes back to putting photo boxes on shelves, and then moving them to different shelves.

Meanwhile, Matt is my new hero. He has definitely done more of the organizing – he had a lot of crap to work with and there’s no WAY all of that stuff is going back into that garage. He and Ralphie have a giggle at Carisa’s expense while trying to put an inflatable pool into a plastic tote. The arrival of Todd, looking cool as a cucumber, means that time is up. Apparently some stuff had to be cut, probably Ryan’s painting. Goil did NOT like being anybody’s special helper. He says that’s not what he’s here for. I have to agree. All these team challenges are annoying. The show is not called Top Project Manager.

The judges arrive to take a look at the garage. Again, the designers are lined up really far away from the judges. I realize now that it’s because of camera work, but it’s still very off-putting. And poor Kelly! Somebody mistook her for junk because they’ve put her into a black trash bag. Luckily they left her head out. Our guest judge is Mark Rios, who is a designer with a new product line to push. Now we finally get to see the finished product. First thing I notice is the swing. It’s right where the car is going to go. Their new car is going to get scratched! But I notice she did hang a tennis ball off the ceiling, which is a good trick for telling them when to stop pulling forward (if for some reason they don’t stop when they hit the swing).

Back in the White Room, the judges send everyone but Andrea backstage. Then they ask her about the design. We also get to see the family’s reactions. The kids love the swing and the stage. Dad loves the storage. Mom says her office is better than nothing, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Carisa’s work. They pull the car into the garage, and Glory Hallelujah! -it fits, but they don’t show whether they had to move the swing. My guess is no, and that the first time the kids forget to tuck the swing up and Dad hits it with the car, that swing is coming down.

Andrea then talks about division of labor. The judges question the big blank back wall. They’re surprised that Ryan didn’t commit any art atrocities on it. Of course they have to ask about the color of the stage curtains. Andrea says that Michael chose the purple, but in actuality, there was dark purple on her design board, and the purple that ended up in the curtain really looked about the same, at least on TV. Maybe it wasn’t.

For once we get to see what the designers do when they’re not in the White Room. They sit around on couches drinking out of their weird water bottles or whatever they are, discussing what’s going on in the other room with Andrea. Ralphie knows she’s blaming the color on him, because he shows the other designers where the bullet will go after Andrea dodges it.

Erik points out that the finished product lacked in styling. So Ralphie asks, “Who was in charge of styling?” And Carisa answers, “Matt and I.” No… Matt was in charge of organization. Andrea said you were in charge of the office and overall styling. We are then witness to the first and probably only time someone on TV says the words squirrel urine.

The guys all berate Carisa for not helping Matt and hiding away in the back room all day. Her excuse is that there were too many people in the garage, and that she was supposed to do the office, so that is what she did. Then Ralphie runs off to the bathroom, which they really could have left out of the show.

The guest judge didn’t like that Matt simply organized everything. He was supposed to compose while he was organizing stuff. Like he had time!! I’m just impressed that he managed to put all that stuff away neatly and I thought it was done well. Sometimes organizing is just organizing. It has very little to do with interior designing. Plus it’s a GARAGE. Pick on someone more deserving.

Goil thinks he’s way funnier than everyone else does. He makes a joke about being mini-Andrea (which is slightly amusing since Andrea’s so tall and he looks so short next to her) and then laughs an uncomfortably long time about it. By himself.

The judges chastise him for spending too much time on the dog bed. I’m going to chastise him for using purple fabric for a bed for a WHITE dog. Dogs shed, Goil. Dark fabrics and light dogs do not mix.

Ryan apologizes for ranting all the time, and then insults them again by referring to them as ‘decorators’. He then basically says that this job was stupid and he’d never take it and that he really didn’t do much. This is when I know that he’s setting himself up to go home. And comments he made during the show make sense (something along the lines of “I could leave right now and go back to the art slums and be perfectly happy”).

Kelly tries to get Erik to badmouth Ralphie and the purple color, but he stands by him instead and says he thought it was fine. Then Jonathan coos over Erik’s roman shade, which was basically some muslin tied up with black fabric scraps. It was “original and fresh!” It was muslin tied up with black fabric scraps. I don’t think it fit into the room at all.

Ralphie of course defends the fabric, saying that if the kids thought the purple was ‘down’ they could flip it over and have gray - which is of course much happier and peppier than purple. He says several times that it was what Andrea wanted, implying that he thought it was gross but she was The Boss (because it said so on her shirt), so being a good little worker bee, he got purple.

Carisa was working. She says that about eighty times. Andrea says the shed looked better than the rest of the garage, and she wanted the whole area to be on the same level of unfinishedness.

The judges send everyone out and then discuss each person’s contribution. Jonathan, Kelly and Margaret give Matt kudos for the Herculanean task he had, but that guest judge is just stuck on there not being any art to it. Give Matt another day and he might have been able to get art out of it. He was just trying to figure out how to put all these people’s crap back into the garage.

Even Kelly can’t defend Ryan this week, although she reeeeeeealllly tries hard. The other judges won’t let her. I think Kelly has a secret thing for Ryan.

I must be missing something. The judges cannot get over how great Erik’s last minute shade was. I thought it was ugly and looks like something I would make. And that’s not saying something good.

The judges are convinced that Ralphie picked out the purple, when I think it’s pretty clear from this picture that Andrea did.

They comment that he’s never met a shade of grape he doesn’t love, when in fact he has only used purple in one other room out of four. Now if they were talking about Carisa and green/orange, then I’d agree. But they’re pulling at straws here with Ralphie. And not being fair. Margaret says sophisticated fabrics don’t belong in a garage. I disagree. It’s a GARAGE. Most garages have cars and tools and recycling bins and lawn mowers! Not couches and draperies. So it really doesn't matter what kind of fabric you put in there.

So finally, Jonathan asks them if they all agree about who’s going home. Kelly’s body language (crossed arms and legs, and that pouty “yes”) shows clearly that it’s going to be Ryan and she’s not one bit happy about it - and that’s exactly what happens. Ryan really could care less. Surprisingly, he’s the first latered designer we’ve seen getting hugs from the rest of the group as he leaves the room.

He goes off to talk to Todd in the workroom, and makes a rambling speech about sociopolitics, convservativism and vases. Then, showing that he’s an equal opportunity insulter, he makes a bizarre comparison between himself and a soldier in Vietnam, commenting, “a glass of Agent Orange and a shot of napalm and I’m happy.” Huh? I don’t get artists.

Next week: another $#@&*$^#(@ team challenge!!!! Aaaarrrggghhhh!! And somebody makes Goil cry.

Speaking of Goil - glasses color count for this episode: only two! Slacking this week, Goil!

Designing for Designer Wanna-Be's

2007-03-09T21:07:00.000-05:00

Ryan starts the show with his getting-to-be-a-regular-segment of saying how he’s an artist. That means one of three things: he’s either going to win, he’s going home or he’s going to argue with someone. I don’t like any of those choices.

Todd gathers the designers on the lawn of the PDC for outdoor story time! This week’s challenge involves “eclectic places all over Los Angeles” and “the most opinionated clients you’ve ever had” according to Todd. As he starts to tell the designers what the challenge really is, a large group of people swarm around him from nowhere, right in the middle of his sentence. Are they autograph seekers? Camera moths? (You know, people who see cameras and then dance around behind the reporter making faces and mouthing “Hi Mom!”) How rude! But he’s nice about it, and even invites them to sit down, because… these are the clients! They’re interior design students! Oooooooo, scary! I can see where they would definitely be opinionated, but does this mean the designers are going to be in an actual ROOM instead of the 3-sided box? I hope so.

On to the challenge: Our group of designers have to create a one-room post-college living space that their clients can use for sleeping, working, playing the ukulele, building pyramids out of beer cans, making ramen noodles on a hot plate, stuff like that. Everyone splits up into designer/client pairs and start to plan their rooms.

Now, Todd tells us that the students have been “randomly assigned”. Have you noticed that those are two of his favorite words? He says them several times an episode – I never noticed before this episode, but I went back and watched previous ones and he says it ALL THE TIME. Anyway, I’m not so sure how random the assignments are. All the designers seem to have gotten a twin – the clients seem to have very similar aesthetics to the designer they’ve been paired with. They get a huge amount of time for this challenge compared to the last one, too – an amazing two and a half days! They’ll pick out paint and fabrics tonight, but not get any furniture until tomorrow.

And their time starts… now! (That’s another of Todd’s favorite sayings.) It’s a mad dash through the PDC! Matt hates everything he sees, which is probably going to make doing his room a bit difficult. Felicia tells us that she’s going to give her clients what they want, as long as it’s exactly what she wants. Ralphie, in a rare edit showing the actual thought process a designer uses when planning a design, tells us how he bases his room on a fabric and then draws from its colors and texture (and quite possibly how it tastes and smells and how the fabric sounds when you sit down on it. After all, you can’t have your upholstered chair making a rude noise when Aunt Hortense sits on it, can you? Of course not).

On the other side of the coin we have Ryan, who’s never bought fabric before. Of course he had the golden opportunity to rectify this last week, but chose to pick out ugly furniture instead. So how does he do? He picks out ugly fabric! Why am I not surprised?

Hey! That was totally uncalled for, Ryan! Sheesh.

Finally, looking exhausted, the designers make their way back to the lofts for some much needed sleep. But ha ha! Todd shows up at the girls’ loft at 6:45am, sneaking around like he’s about to do a panty raid in a sorority house. He calls up to them sweetly, looking like he’s auditioning for a lead role in Romeo and Juliet. Carisa comments that she never thought she’d be waking up to Todd Oldham. (Hey! That would be a great product - an alarm clock with his voice as the alarm. Good morning! It’s a lovely day! Join me! Hey, I’d buy one of those! You know you would too, admit it.) Waking up to the golden tones of Oldham is nice, but giving three women only ten minutes to get ready – and be presentable enough to be seen on national television - is horridly mean. But hey, at least he brings giant muffins. How can you stay mad at a man who does that?

Bleary eyed and sucking down coffee like there’s no tomorrow, the designers gather in the men’s loft and Todd tells them the reason he got them up so damn early. No, it’s not early bird hours at the PDC. It’s…

YES!!! Shopping at a garage sale! I called it!!!!! No wonder they got up so early. Anyone who garage-sales knows that you have to get up at the butt-crack of dawn to get the best deals. Cue designers: eye-rolling, slack jaws, dull stares. Todd gives them this deliciously wicked look that completely makes me fall in love with him. My conversion into Todd Oldham groupie-dom is complete.
Soooo evil.

So while Todd heads off back to bed, the designers tumble out the front door and into their waiting cars to head off to the sales. By my calculations, they will not find the best crap because they wasted time eating breakfast. They will only get moderately good crap. You’re supposed to eat in the car on the way to the sales. Have none of these people ever done this before??

Apparently these sales have been scoped out by the production staff beforehand. There’s a strangely large amount of furniture, and a much lower proportion of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys than a typical sale. Ralphie picks out a chair that looks a lot like the pair of Heywood-Wakefields that my mother didn’t know she owned. It’s a nice find, but obviously the person did not realize what they were selling (because people will pay several hundred dollars for them) and it was priced ridiculously low, or else Ralphie is only going to have this one chair as the lone furniture item in his room.

Felicia is whining about the fact that they only get $500 to spend. $500?! That’s huge. Besides, you almost NEVER pay full price for something at a garage sale. It’s part of The Code. I could do some serious damage with that much cash at a garage sale. But wait! What’s she picking up?

It’s a little-known fact that before a woman is allowed to become a grandmother and have the opportunity to let her grandkids do all the stuff she wouldn’t let her own kids do, she must take a mandatory afghan-knitting course. (This is waived if you know how to sew, because baby quilts are an acceptable substitute for baby afghans – thank goodness my mom quilts!) Most women who are not in possession of the crafting gene simply make one hideous afghan, get their Grandmother Union card, and then give the afghan to their children, who are then required to hold onto it and display it until their mother either passes on or moves very far away, at which point they can sell it at a garage sale to a desperate interior designer on a reality TV show. (Felicia, Felicia, Felicia. Your client did say she liked old-fashioned mixed with modern, but somehow I really don’t think this is what she meant.)

Everyone loads their moderately good crap into trucks. They meet Todd back at the PDC where he unveils…twist number 2!! They usually get random carpenter assignments (see, there’s that word again), but after this challenge the designers will get to pick a carpenter to keep for the rest of the show. Whoever wins gets first pick. The designers are all excited about that.

Todd calls the carpenters in. I just noticed that all of them are wearing black t-shirts and khaki pants (kind of like all the models on PR wear black slips. I guess carpenters don’t look good in slips, nor would that be practical when you’re building stuff). I’m kind of annoyed by the female carpenter who feels the need to wear a dressy necklace with her work clothes. We know she’s a woman. It just looks… wrong. I think on some power tools it actually tells you not to wear dangly jewelry while using them. Get your necklace caught in that table saw and it’ll pop your head clean off your neck! She’s working with Carisa, who is also wearing a large chunky necklace. How matchy-matchy!

Everyone starts working on their rooms. Well, on their boxes. I really hate those boxes. How realistic of a design are you going to get in a three-sided area with no windows or doors? All the garage sale loot is brought in, and people start painting. Ryan finally gets his wish to go artist-nuts and paints his room black with white stripes and puts crushed glass all over it. He also appears to be upholstering with black electrical tape. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.

Meanwhile, some building is going on, and of course we can’t get through this part of the show without some conflict. No, I’m not talking about Goil being miffed that his carpenter apparently can’t measure. That’s small potatoes. This week it is Carisa and her carpenter, Sarah. Being the control freak that she’s turning out to be, Carisa comes over to “help” and Sarah basically tells her to get the hell out of the way.

On day two, everyone’s rushing around like crazy people. Carisa’s room looks like she just started, whereas Matt’s looks just about done. Felicia has to put up her wallpaper with rubber cement (which you would think would be bad, but she’s not the first one to do it - the people who owned my house before I did used that same technique in my living room).

Carisa and Sarah are not having a good morning. The design calls for Sarah to build a really long rolling desk with supports at one end and in the middle, and I guess the other end was supposed to rest on the counter at the back of the room, with casters to roll around on. Now I am not a carpentering kind of person, but even I know that you can’t have a long piece of wood with one of the ends unsupported, unless you’re building a slide. Carisa blames it on Sarah, saying she bought wood that was too heavy. What? It’s a desk! You can’t make it out of balsa wood. And why does the desk need to roll anyway? I hope she wasn’t planning to put any other furniture in the room, because the client would have to move stuff out of the way if she wanted to roll the desk around, and that would be a pain in the butt. Needless to say, the desk falls apart and Carisa goes off the deep end, even commenting that she’ll “never trust a carpenter again.” Give me a break. Never is a strong word, honey! You’re going to build all your own stuff from here on out?

Over in the non-drama section of the workspace, there is actual work going on! Ryan is making giant spin art. Ralphie’s paint job looks a little drab considering his client said she wanted “lots of light”. I’m wondering if that bird painting came from the garage sale. (See what I mean about not getting the good crap?) Or maybe he painted it himself.

Todd calls five minutes, and everyone scrambles around to make sure the Pledge products get shown on TV as much as Pledge paid for them to be. The rooms all look nice and clean from what I can see, but WOW! The work area in the middle is a horrid mess! Cables and equipment and scrap lumber and dust and paint everywhere. I feel sorry for the people who have to clean it up. Luckily the designers get to go change clothes before heading off to the White Room. Maybe they won’t have to stand so far away from the judges like they did on the beach.

Todd introduces the judges, just in case the designers forgot who they were from two days ago. I will never be able to look at Jonathan Adler again without thinking of Gilligan, thanks to some of the other TD blogs. Kelly appears to have gotten into the spirit of garage sale-ing, buying a vintage 1980’s crimping iron and giving herself a huge mane of hair that makes me want to start singing “Hakuna Matata”.
And she apparently got some materials to make herself a flapper dress using nylon pantyhose and a beaded divider curtain. (She must have slept in, though, because it looks like she ended up with just plain crap.) This week’s guest judge is the guy who designed the White Room. Oh, and he got nominated for a bunch of Emmys or something. He’s got big teeth.

Let’s take a look at the designs.
Matt – His client liked it, but the judges diss his choice of sage green paint as being used too much. He said he was going for something called Armani/Casa that I had to go look up, but after looking at it I can see that Matt really did incorporate that style, but with his own twist. I like this room. The colors were muted but it was very classy, and the two-lamps-into-one was clever. You really can’t tell that he got all this stuff at a garage sale.

Andrea – Her color scheme is very neutral but she has a lot of interesting items in her room. I like how she used an old suitcase and dresser drawers as wall shelves and beat-up doors as a table, and so do the judges. They think her sofa/bed is too narrow, but her client liked it.

Goil - He did a very weird thing with the chairs, by cutting off the back legs and making them slide around a low shelf instead. I hope he put coasters on them because that would really scratch up the shelf! It kind of limits where you can use them, too. The judges love it. They question his recessed bed, but the client says it would be perfect for her and a guest. (Too much information!) I don’t like the artwork – the proportion is all wrong for the room, and it looks too high on the wall. Also, the desk is too small for an adult to work at, unless they’re using one piece of small paper. Basically, the judges like the pieces individually, but not the overall design.

Felicia – Oh, no. That afghan does not go with vintage Thai fabric. Oh, and that animal pelt on the floor, combined with the afghan? Screams “pioneer cabin.” The room would have been fine had she left those out. But her client did not like pretty much anything about it. In fact, she said she would “shoot herself” if she had to live in the room. The judges like her fabric wall, but that’s about it.

Erik – Either Felicia’s client went ahead and shot herself in Erik’s room, or he must have murdered his carpenter because the canvases are splattered with blood! Oh, sorry, it’s ART. (Says so right on the canvas in huge letters, in case we couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be.) Yeah, it’s art - serial killer art. The judges didn’t like it. Neither did the client. Kelly gushed over a tiny plastic chair on a lighted pedastal. The rest of his room went over fairly well, although Jonathan trotted out the dreaded “taste level” criticism.

Carisa – Even though she was horrified by a comment Todd made to her earlier in the show about using Carisa green and Carisa orange, and vowed not to use orange, she did. And green. And red. The judges love her kitchy garage sale finds – the 70’s plastic chair, the 1950’s commercial hair dryer lamp, the stolen street sign. They also love that she made pillows out of old napkins. They ooo and aah over those pillows as if Carisa was the first person to have ever thought to do that. As far as the missing desk, I think the room looks perfectly fine without it. The client bemoans the lack of storage in the room. Maybe the invisible fourth wall was full of storage! We’ll never know.

Michael – His room makes me hungry for some wine and cheese (the judges must want fruit because it makes them think of grapes and bananas.) It also makes me nostalgic for The Patridge Family – the big cutout birds on the wall look just like the opening credits where the baby partridges break out of eggs. This room has some major garage sale crap going on. An ugly picture on the wall, a lamp carved out of a hunk of firewood… and hey! I recognize those green chess piece bookends! They’re really candle holders. My grandma had some like them, but hers were red. They look even uglier in green, and they don’t go with the color scheme of this room. And did he buy that Mac at a garage sale?? I will give him credit for pretending the fourth wall was actually there by putting his desk up against it.

Ryan – Ack! Who knew that “art” meant “build a cage of random scrap lumber in front of the bed”! And that bedspread is U-G-L-Y. It doesn’t go with anything at all. I actually think Felicia’s afghan would have been perfect in this room. The table and chairs are painted as multicolored bullseyes – I think Ryan is making a subtle bid to redesign the Target logo. What looks like random circles on the wall actually turn out to be the chairs, and you have to pull them off the wall in order to sit on them – a unique idea, but too much work for the sitter. And then he tells the judges that the table turns into a drafting surface but couldn’t make the mechanism work. The only thing I like about this room is the neat table he made out of a glass door. The client liked his art – but the cage, not so much. Ryan defends his vision to the judges, and then proceeds to try and win them over by dissing interior designers. This annoys Margaret so much that her perfectly-coifed feathers start to get ruffled.

Carisa wins and will get her pick of the carpenters for the next challenge. Just a hunch, but somehow I’m thinking she won’t be choosing Sarah. I’m also thinking this won’t be quite as dramatic as the Zulema/Nick model-snatching smackdown from PR2. But we’ll have to wait until next week to see. My personal pick for the winner would have been Matt.

That leaves Ryan and Felicia at the bottom. Ryan skates by because he has Kelly in his corner – she defends his “point of view” even though he insulted her profession, and despite the fact that the other judges are looking at her like she's insane. Poor Felicia is out simply because of the afghan. (That happens sometimes – after all, it only took a few popped rivets to sink the Titanic.) I disagree with this decision – overall, Ryan’s was much uglier. The judges even say that Felicia is a well-referenced designer and knows her stuff, whereas Ryan is lacking experience, is angry and derogatory and insulting. Hmm… That seems like a no-brainer to me, as to who should have gone. But I’d let Felicia design a room in my house any day. I wouldn’t let Ryan fingerpaint with my kids.

Goil glasses color count for this episode: six. At one point I couldn’t decide if he was wearing orange or yellow frames. It might have been because he was outside. I’ll make the executive decicision that because they look yellow, they count as a separate color even though they may actually be the orange ones.

Cope-a-Cabana

2007-02-24T18:08:00.001-05:00

Just in time for episode four… it’s my recap of episode three! You see, I planned it this way… to keep last week’s episode fresh in your minds. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Uh huh. Sure. Anyway, on with the recap!

Todd comes in wearing a super-cute argyle type sweater. He instructs the designers to open the beach bags that are in front of them (you KNOW someone already peeked before he came in). Inside the bag are various beachy items, which they all start playing with, and postcards of exotic places. Their challenge this week is to design and build a beach cabana. Everyone starts nodding and talking about how awesome they’re going to do because they were raised in a cabana, or something. (Except for Goil, who has to ask what a cabana is. Then, to let all the viewers who might not know either off the hook, they let Matt helpfully tell us what it is.) But yes, there’s a twist – isn’t there always? In each bag is a postcard, and that will determine which TEAM you’re on! *groan* Teams AGAIN?
Now, every time I type the word “cabana” I hear Barry Manilow in my head… so let’s let him tell us about the teams.

Her name’s Carisa, she’s a designer
She, Goil and Ryan say “hooray”, they all have cards from St. Tropez
Then Matt and Erik, they get Miami
Elizabeth says “that’s our scene
So let’s use burgundy and green”
And on Team Tahiti, the threesome hug with glee
Another team challenge ALREADY?
You’ve gotta be kidding me!
CHORUS:
Now they’re copin’ with their cabanas
And driving each other bananas
They’re all copin’ with their cabanas
Painting and passion and Kelly’s odd fashions
Who’ll be latered?
We’ll wait and see…

Um, thanks Barry. Anyway, that’s our story so far. Todd tells them their budgets and name-drops Pier One, which is where they will be getting all their furnishings this episode. (Hmm, I haven’t seen a Pier One commercial… getting a name drop must be cheaper than doing a whole commercial.)

Erik, who has immunity from winning last week, can’t be eliminated. That sends Matt into spirals of profanity and negativity right off the bat, which does not bode well for Team Miami. Elizabeth has picked out some very un-Miami-ish colors – burgundy and a green that is… well, I can’t decide if it’s “unripe banana” or “safety patrol vest.” Meanwhile, Matt is shaking his head at Erik with a look like, “Man, these colors SUCK, I can’t believe we’re actually going to use them” but doesn’t say that out loud, which he should. And the Tahiti sisters (Andrea, Felicia and Ralphie) are off to a great start – you can tell already that this is not going to be the drama team because they hugged right away. Nothin’ but love from this group. They’re all sketching merrily and actually working together nicely. In the back corner Goil, reaching deep into his bag of architect tricks, uses pencils and the flip-flops that were in the beach bag to make a 3D model of his idea for the cabana.

So who IS the drama team? Well, it’s a toss-up at this point – they could focus on Elizabeth kind of taking over her team, Matt whining about everything but not offering any suggestions of his own, or else something is going to clash over at Team Tropez, where we’ve got artist Ryan, architect Goil and set designer Carisa, any one of whom could have an massive attack of self-importance at any moment.

Sketching time is over, and Todd makes each team split up the work – one person will go shopping at Pier One, one will go to the hardware store with the carpenters, and the other person will be in charge of fabric. Most teams take this in stride and quickly divide up the tasks… except Team Tropez. Ryan and Carisa each think they need to go to Pier One – Carisa, because she designs sets and knows more about furniture, and Ryan because he’s an artist, which means he’s an expert on everything. Plus, guys just don’t go to the fabric store, apparently. It’s just not guy-ish. (Or something stupid like that, I tuned him out.) Goil just kind of helplessly flops around the table, shooting worried looks from behind his lavendar glasses. So in the end, Carisa gets shunted off to the fabric store (“because I’m a girl”), and Ryan gloatingly heads off to Pier One. And here is where we see that this team now needs to be referred to as Team Drama. I think the defining moment is when Carisa says “I’m worried, no offense,” to which Ryan replies, “Whatever.”

Much shopping ensues. Ralphie is pumped – he has “good taste” and he’s gonna make sure everyone knows it - *snap*! Carisa, on the other hand, who is already tiring me out, is all, “They made me come here, they’re not helping, so I don’t care, I’m gonna buy the ugliest stuff I can find.” Meanwhile, over at Pier One, Felicia has put together a nice set of silver-toned pitchers and glasses, etc. while Ryan continues to espouse on his superiority as he buys what looks like a red blanket in a plastic bag. (Wait a sec. Would blankets fall under accessories or fabric? I’m really not sure, but I am sure that it’s going to piss Carisa off.) I won’t spend time on the hardware store people because watching people buy wood just isn’t too interesting, frankly.

So they bring all their goodies back to the PDC and we get to see what crap Ryan has brought back from Pier One. First, we have really ugly pillows, which Carisa insists they have to recover immediately. They have a discussion about what St. Tropez really MEANS – Carisa says “classy”, Ryan says “topless women in motorboats”. I’ll tell you what, topless women in motorboats would laugh hysterically at Ryan’s pillow choices. (Unless they’re topless senior citizen women.) We don’t get to see what else he bought because then they get into this whole boring discussion of conservativism, and Ryan disses all of Carisa’s rooms so far. I’m waiting for the fists to start flying. Actually, that would make this whole scene more interesting.

Let’s move on to more civilized people. Todd comes around to look at everyone’s designs, and he stops at Team Miami first. I notice that Todd’s sweater is almost the exact same color palette as they’re planning to use. He likes their overall design for the structure, but despite the fact that he’s wearing them, he expresses concern about the colors. After all, the colors are on his sweater… sweaters are not Miami. They’re Minneapolis. He then stops over by Team Tahiti, where Ralphie is showing off his seamstress skills by making a mattress. Already? Wow. Way to save money, Ralphie! Todd strolls over to Team Drama, and after discovering that they really don’t seem to know anything about St. Tropez, educates them a little. Basically, without saying it, he seems to be trying to tell them that they’re designing a thrift store version of St. Tropez.

Todd then drops this episode’s bomb – they only have four hours to construct an entire cabana from scratch and then take it back apart so that it can be put on trucks. FOUR HOURS. Yeah, I guess they’re not building an entire HOUSE, but really! All the pieces have to be on their way to the beach at 12:01. (Isn’t that a little late to be dropping lumber on the beach? Or is the beach six or seven hours away?) Also… the beach isn’t wired so they will only have non-electric tools to put their cabanas together.

Everyone rushes off to the construction area, which is already full of carpenters and power tools. Team Miami is painting enough lumber to make an entire house. Matt is concerned that they’re not going to get done, and he finally gets the courage to squeak out, “I’m scared.” Erik kind of blows it off. While all this construction is going on, Felicia and Ralphie are stuffing the mattress, which is either a description of what they’re doing or a new euphamism for… well, you can figure it out. Felicia praises his new-found energy and gung-ho-ness. She is also wearing her homemade superhero costume. (What is she, Doily Woman?)

I can’t ignore Team Drama (no matter how hard I try). Carisa tells Goil that she and Ryan are “having a little tension” and Goil plays stupid (“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed that”), and behind their back says both of them are being whiny babies. Then Carisa and Ryan spend two hours arguing over cutting an angle at the edge of their rafters that NOBODY is going to notice. Goil agrees with both, depending on which one is closest to him at the time (that way the other one can’t hit him). He’d make a good politician.

Time winds down and all the lumber goes bye-bye. The designers trudge back to their lofts to try and sleep, but too soon it is morning and time to head out. As they get started I am surprised at what some of the designers consider “beach wear”. Especially Carissa, who is wearing what looks to be black bicycle shorts under a denim miniskirt. They hurridly put their cabanas together, along with a small army of seamstresses and sweaty, shirtless carpenters that get a LOT of screentime. Carisa appears to be spending the entire time spraying down the shirtless carpenters.

But sooner than you think, time’s up, and the judges appear from whatever shady place they’ve been hiding. All that building and running around in the sun and sand must have made the designers a bit pungent, because the judges are standing FAR away from them. Like fifty feet away. In addition to Jonathan, Kelly, and Margaret, we are joined by Kathryn Ireland, who is an interior designer I’ve never heard of and NOT Kathy Ireland the model-turned-entrepreneur. They all walk around and inspect each cabana, making notes and faces. After what seems like several hours, everyone heads back to the PDC.

On to the judging. Of course, I can’t go further into this without discussing what Kelly’s wearing. It’ll be impossible to concentrate on the designs if I don’t. The top of Kelly’s dress appears to be made out of discarded 1980’s shoulder inserts - or maybe they’re a couple of absorbant pads that are used under a nursing bra. I’m not sure which. And she takes the “socks and sandals” thing waaaay too far by aqua wearing knee-highs with strappy high heels. There. Now that’s out of the way; let’s discuss the designs.

Team Tahiti builds a raised platform for their cabana, much like the huts on stilts that are found on the beach in Tahiti. Their curtains are beautiful – large and billowy. Their room is entirely open on top – they have a basic frame but decided at the last minute not to add any roof. But as artistic and sculptural as their “roof” looks, where would the shade come from? To be honest, I’ve never been in a beach cabana, but it seems to me that part of the usage of a cabana is to get out of the sun a bit without leaving the beach and perhaps get some refreshment, but look more sophisticated than sitting under a big striped umbrella drinking out of a can. The judges like what they did but take them to task for the roof.

Team Miami has too many heavy curtains. And in the wind, the heavy fabric is blowing right onto the couch, which would be incredibly annoying for someone sitting on it. They appear to have put half of their rafters on upside down, also. They’re very scary, like they were spiky fortifications on a Civil War battlefield built to keep the enemy from storming over the earthworks. The inside, while shady where the other two teams’ cabanas are not, is actually too dark because of all the heavy canvas. The judges hate the colors – I understand that they were trying to do sophisticated Miami and not sherbet, but why not just darken the sherbet colors? They also jump all over Matt for not adding anything to the design and basically letting Elizabeth and to an extent, Erik, steamroll him.

Team Drama’s cabana looks like a sweater drying rack. The giant towels draped across the top would only offer useful shade at high noon. Carisa mentioned, at the beginning of the challenge, that St. Tropez was elegant and rich and sleek and sophisticated and they would have to play off of that… but what kind of furniture did Ryan pick? Thick, chunky wicker and rataan-looking stuff. They might have saved it had Carisa picked out light, flowy fabrics, (much like Team Tahiti) but instead they’re using bath mats and throw rugs and afghans in dark colors and heavy upholstery-weight fabrics. Just looking at them makes me feel very sweaty. Their cabana would be better suited to a beach on Lake Erie in October than St. Tropez. The judges rip into all the things I just mentioned. They approved of Goil’s design for the structure, althought Margaret thought it looked like a hamburger stand, but thought Ryan and Carisa basically sucked at their jobs.

After the usual long, drawn out camera work where we have to ponder everyone’s facial expressions and listen to tense music, the winner is… Team Tahiti! Even though they had no roof, their fabric and styling choices were inspired and very Tahitian. They are all very appreciative. They win a weekend getaway at some hotel where Kelly designed the cabanas. I picture them all getting facials and mani-pedis and lounging poolside sipping fruity drinks, and then hanging out in their PJs all night having pillow fights, ordering room service and watching chick flicks. I’m jealous! Hope they have fun!

For our final three, it comes down to Ryan, Elizabeth and Matt. Jonathan chastises Matt again, but lets him stay. Ryan slips past once again, and Elizabeth is “latered” for her crappy color choice. I think that was kinda weak, personally, but I guess someone had to be sacrificed, and Ryan promises to bring too much drama to get kicked off yet.

Elizabeth has to go pack up her stuff, and Todd comes in. I love how they show Todd talking to each designer before they leave. He is always so positive and sympathetic and tries to make them feel better about a crappy thing. Kudos, Todd! And good luck, Elizabeth – you may have helped pick the wrong colors but you’ve still got more design talent in your little finger than I have in my whole body.

Goil glasses color count for this episode: four. Although I couldn’t tell at one point if his glasses were gray or black so it might be five. That's still a heck of a lot of glasses - I wonder if they're prescription or for vanity purposes?

Pint-Sized Design

2007-02-09T11:09:00.000-05:00

Last week, Top Design started off with a bang and a whimper, as the ID's were challenged to create a room for a mystery client with questionable taste in accessories. They were put into teams of two, given an ungodly amount of money, a carpenter AND a seamstress, and still most of the rooms sucked. The amount of orange and green used in the designs last week was unfortunate, and none of those rooms won, either. They probably would have had better luck with this judging panel.

Still reeling from losing two of their number so early in the game, the ID's blow off a little steam back at the lofts by taking turns riding Ryan's skateboard in the living room. (The producers are obviously hoping to get a shot of someone taking a humorous spill so they can send it to America’s Funniest Videos or a VH-1 "reality TV embarrassing moments" show.)

But they're all giggling and having a good time, when John-Ralph decides to let them know that he's HIV positive and was given a huge dose of testosterone by his doctor, which accounts for his aggressiveness towards Michael-Ralphie. He then tells them that he doesn't hate Ralphie or anything, he just thinks he's a talentless whiny pansy, and then goes off to take a bath. The fun has been sucked out of the room, and they all sit awkwardly, watching Andrea knit something. Also someone has apparently slapped Ryan across the face, or maybe he fell off the skateboard and hit his face on the credenza, which I'm sure will end up on the DVD in the bloopers section, but for now just looks kinda painful.

The next day, the ID's return to the workroom. The table recently occupied by Lisa and Heather is sitting there, huge and empty, and I'm surprised that one of Ralph[ie] hasn't claimed it. Mr. Todd breezes in and gives them their next challenge - design a bedroom for an unknown client. (Hmm... this sounds familiar... oh yeah! That was last week's show! Reruns already?) Each ID gets a short bio of the person they're designing for, and they're supposed to plan the room using that. They will be getting a mattress but they have to design and build the bed themselves, AND they only get $600 for paint and $8,000 for furnishings. (They got a little spoiled the last time with that $50k, didn’t they? I’m hoping a future challenge has them shopping at garage sales with a $100 budget.) This week, the winner gets immunity – but someone else will be going home. Carisa acts like that’s a surprise. Weren’t you paying attention last time, girl?

Everyone picks a design bio and gets to work. They also get to choose a hardwood floor sample from a table. Felicia picks the one John had his eye on, and he’s all “Bitch stole my floor!!”

So he decides to go with linoleum. In a BEDROOM?? That's like putting wall-to-wall carpeting in a bathroom. Maybe his room is someplace warm where the floors never get cold in the wintertime. Either that or he's going to put a kitchenette in the room (hey, that wouldn't be a bad idea!).

Mr. Todd comes in to take a peek at the designs. Goil has built a tiny room out of a box! He’s even made a tiny cardboard person to show scale. Todd asks how tall the person is, and Goil replies, “Six feet” to which Todd nods knowingly. Felicia’s design has a big bed, in case her client brings home a ‘lady friend’. Well, at least she’s considering the function of the room.

Now it's time to go memo-ing out. Surprise! All the furniture is insanely expensive. Nobody can afford anything, so they all have to build their furniture out of posterboard and spit. Well, I guess they get a little bit of stuff but it's still all pretty much ugly.

Enough shopping! The clients are here for their presentations. Mr. Todd ushers them in and - jaws drop - they're ten-year-olds! (This immediately gets my attention, because I have two kids and I'm trying to get them to decide how to decorate their rooms. This episode is going to be their after-school viewing tomorrow.) It also makes Goil’s "scaled-for-a-six-footer" mock-up room and Felicia’s “lady friend” comment that much funnier, and I have to rewind and watch Todd’s reaction to those, since he knows the entire time that the clients are children. Ah, what a poker face. He's good, that Todd Oldham.

How well do the designers adapt their ideas to fit their youthful clients? Andrea admits that she's scared of her young girl, because she only had brothers and has two sons, and doesn't know thing one about girls. Matt's girl is an actress, and she looks all sweet now, but he'd better give her EXACTLY the room she wants, or she's going to go Veruca on him.

The ID's now have to figure out how to make all that high-end designer showroom stuff they just picked out work in a kids' room. Luckily it's Mr. Todd to the rescue, with $300 more for each of them (plus a bonus c-note for Elizabeth and Goil since they won last week) to go shopping at Target to get more "kid-friendly" stuff. (Of course, they don't SAY they're going to Target, because Target's not a sponsor, but we all know that's where they are.) What I want to know is... in which department do you find giant chains? I LOOOVE Target but I didn't know they had a harbor accessories department.

But enough fun. It's time to get down to business and create magic, people! Ralphie apparently took a crash course in wall-painting overnight. (That's because he really wants the judges to like him so they'll give him an official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model staple gun with a color wheel in the handle and this thing that tells time.) Goil decides that cutting the walls worked so well for Felicia and Matt last week, he's going to do it too. Only he'll cut TWO holes instead of just one, which should be twice as good! Andrea builds a cool Murphy bed that I covet.

But poor John. His carpenter came back without linoleum (because he knew it was a stupid idea) so now John's room has no flooring. He's very upset. (His testosterone has worn off and now the estrogen is kicking in.) And painting time is up, so he can't even paint the floor, and he just chooses to leave it with big dirty drywall-dust footprints all over it.

After a tiny bit of sleep, the ID's finish their rooms and it's off to the White Room. Again, I feel the need to comment on fashion here. Jonathan is wearing a tie that looks like my daughter made it for her stitchery badge at Brownies. And Kelly? She's mixing decades: a 70's Princess Leia-ish poofy Danish on just one side of her head, a very 80's spangly black jumper/bicycle shorts/leggings combo with high heels, and black Madonna-esque fingerless gloves. (Not even Jonathan gets her outfit.) And our guest judge Liz Lange joins in on the fun, looking like she's been shopping in the chain section of Target with Erik.

Let's assess the damage, in no particular order. (But before we do that, bravo to Bravo for managing to get ceiling-less pictures of the rooms this week. Thank you.)

Andrea - The first thing that jumped out at me in Andrea's room was the black and white pillow. I immediately thought of Mickey Mouse's glove. I love the Murphy bed, too. Her color palette was a bit too brown and not enough pastel, and I know she wanted the girl to be able to do her own thing with the space, but the judges were right to question the lack of sparkle and shine in this room.

Erik – This was my ten-year-old son’s favorite room. It was fun and funky and colorful and had places to hide things (very useful when Mom tells you to clean your room before you can play). Kelly thought it was a “bit overboard” (hahaha! A pirate room going overboard! She’s so funny. Bleh.) but it’s EXACTLY the kind of room a kid who likes pirates would want, and that magazines love to publish. And I could see that as the child outgrew the pirate theme, this room could still work by removing some of the theme decor stuff.

Matt - The judges made me mad on this one. They kept saying, "Black for a kids' room? Too funereal." So??? THE GIRL LOVED THE ROOM. See? Look.She loved it, it was her, Matt gave her what she asked for. Shut up about it. Some kids do like black. The makeup-mirror lights were a great idea, too.

Carisa - I liked this room. The judges did too. The huge expanse of red wall took me by surprise at first, and I wasn't sure I liked it, but I think after the boy put up a bunch of travel posters or something, it would be just the right amount of red to pop against the green. Her bed/desk/sidetable was great. I wish she could have finished the tops differently so it just didn't look like particle board, but I see the natural-finish thing she was going for.

Goil - The cutouts were cute, but 1)where DOES the bed go? In a real house, there would either be another room on the other side of that hole, or the outside of the house. That's a good way to teach kids about space, all right. And about what kind of noise a bed makes when it's shoved off the second story onto the back deck. And 2) you CAN'T hide in a hole in the wall with nothing to cover the hole. Good ideas, but not completely thought-through. And enough with the random objects sitting on the floor, already.

Ryan - Cat, cat, cat. We get the idea. The girl has a cat. And I, as a mother, am extremely concerned about the jagged platform around the edge of the mattress. That girl will swing out of bed and scrape the heck out of her legs every morning, and her mother will hate you. I do appreciate the fact that you chose to wear a blazer that matched the color scheme of your room, though.

Michael – The top judges' comments on this room were: that it "looked like a room in an assisted living facility", "it was a room", and "it was decorated". Not good comments. This is not a kids’ room. But I know what the problem is. Ralphie doesn’t know how to design for kids because he never WAS one. Last week he made the comment that when other kids were outside playing, he was watching “Dynasty”. He probably never SAW another kid’s room because he was too busy looking at Joan Collins’ rooms. So… what he actually designed was a room for a “Dynasty” kid. I do like the color he chose, but other than that it was just not right for even a “sophisticated” ten-year-old. Way to go on the paint job though, Ralphie.

Elizabeth - Eh, it's not bad, it's not great, I've seen better soccer-themed rooms. I don't get the yellow dots all over the walls. The judges didn't have a lot to say about it, and I really don't either. My soccer-player son wasn't impressed.

Felicia - A kid that likes chess is probably a more serious-minded kid, so I think this was a good design. And I like the bed lengthwise against the wall like that with the giant chessboard as a headboard. When he goes to college he could take it down and him and his buddies could play chess using beer bottles as chesspieces. I could kind of see where the judges were going with their "it looks like a hotel room" comment, though.

John – This room was, to quote Tim Gunn, a hot mess. The floor problem notwithstanding, there are blotches all over the walls, like he was spackling nail holes and didn’t get the right shade of touch-up paint.

(On closer inspection I think it’s some kind of leaf/vine thing, but it’s so subtle as to not even be worth the trouble. He should have spent the time painting the floor instead. Maybe it looked better in person.) I don't know what was up with the rug - at least I think it's a rug... or maybe it's the painting dropcloth. And one of the big rules in a room where kids will be spending a lot of time is to put things at their eye level. The flower pictures in John’s room are at the eye level of Shaquille O’Neal. The mirror was Shaquille-sized as well. It desperately needed to be mounted on the wall, too - if the kid went behind it (and kids do that kind of thing) and it fell over, it could crush the poor little girl. He tries to explain his problems to the judges, and they act sympathetic to his face, but when he's gone Jonathan calls him the "Mayor of Excuses Village" (which is the lamest thing I've heard Jonathan say so far, but I'm sure it won't be the last. The ladies laugh politely but you know they were rolling their eyes the second he looked away).

But whose scene reigned surpreme? Goil, Carisa and Erik were the judges' favorites, and Captain Erik walked away with the win and immunity for next week. (I have a feeling there's going to be a run on giant chain at Target, as kids everywhere insist that their parents give them pirate rooms.) Congrats, Erik! Well-played.

And "walking the plank," we have Cat-Man, Granny's Boy, and John No-Floor. It's a hard call, but John is out. (I'm hoping we make it through the episode without a "See ya later, decorator!" but alas, there it is. I will NEVER like that.) He goes back to the workroom to chat with Todd and hug him repeatedly. John's got the right attitude, though - he WAS picked out of hundreds of people for this show, and that's impressive. So we wish John "good luck" as he makes his way down the Walk of Shame and they turn the lights out behind him.

Next week's show promises to be a doozy - another team challenge. Groups of three this time, to mix it up a little. Are they going to kick off three people at once? Wow! This is going to be the shortest reality TV show ever!

Ack! I almost forgot! "Goil eyeglasses frame color" count for this episode: five.

Project Runway models go Hollywood!

2007-02-05T11:13:00.000-05:00

Looks like a couple of PR2 models have their sights set on Tinseltown! First up, we have the lovely Rebecca, shown here in a shot from her screentest for the upcoming Flintstones movie "Bedrock High", starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. as BamBam Rubble. Rebecca's up for the role of Pebbles Flintstone. Good luck, Rebecca!
And in our second bit of model news, we have this never-before-seen still photo from "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", where we can see the stunning Grace in her role as the oldest Weasley sister, Tessie. Unfortunately, Grace's few scenes were cut from the film after HP author J.K. Rowling pointed out that there WAS no older Weasley sister in any of the books.

Obligatory Disclaimer: In this age of instant news and gossip, I don't want anyone thinking that either of these things are true. They're not. I just wanted to show off my poor PhotoShop skills. It's sad that I have to even put this on here.

It's Time for "Top Design"!

2007-02-01T00:34:00.000-05:00

First, there was “Project Runway”. Then, “Top Chef”. Now comes the unimaginatively but serviceably-named “Top Design”, which aspires to do for interior design what the other two shows did for fashion and cooking. I've gained a bit more fashion sense from PR and gained several pounds from TC (watching other people make food makes me hungry, okay?) And quite frankly, I could use a good course in interior design, so my hopes are high for TD. Let’s take a look at the premiere episode and see how it’s shaping up, shall we?

By now, the Bravo formula is set: start by showing the contestants moving into their apartments, figuring out where to sleep, and sizing each other up. Our first designer, Goil, takes advantage of being the first in the guys’ room and rearranges the furniture as soon as he walks in. We soon meet all the other guys (Matt, John, Erik, Michael, Ryan) and the gals (Elizabeth, Felicia, Andrea, Carisa, Lisa, Heather). Now, I didn’t watch any of the extra tidbits Bravo posted on its website so I know very little about any of these people’s personalities apart from what they showed in commercials. But a few of them look kind of familiar...

Erik: it’s kind of a toss-up between Sean Hayes from "Will & Grace", and Jai Rodriguez from Queer Eye. He'll be fun.

John: kind of a gay Ralph Kramden, big and blustery, I expect a lot of harmless threats of violence towards other contestants out of him.

Lisa: Yes, it's obvious and everyone else is going to say it so I'll just get it over with and then never mention it again. Storm. X-Men.

And last but definitely not least, Michael. Don’t let the name fool you. This is Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”.

So, they all get settled down when from out of seemingly nowhere, envelopes appear with notes from their host. Of course they are all tickled to find out that it is Todd Oldham, so they jump into their Sponsor Mobiles and away they go to the Pacific Design Center in Hollywood. They meet Todd out front, and as he begins to welcome them I am struck by two things: one, he’s kinda cute. And two – his line delivery is rather awkward. Not in a grating sort of way, but like he’s speaking not to a bunch of adult interior designers, but to a bunch of kids. Preschoolers, even. In fact, if this decorating thing doesn’t work out for him, he’d have a successful career in children’s broadcasting or preschool teacher (“Hi kids! Today we’re going to be fingerpainting! Join me!”). But I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as it’s his first TV hosting experience and I’m sure he’ll get better as he gets used to it. (Wait. It’s not? He's had shows on MTV and HGTV? Ohhhh boy.)

Todd shows them around their work area, which is big and very white (but apparently they’re supposed to decorate it – how cheap is that, Bravo? Cutting some corners on the budget, are we? You didn’t have the PR designers dress Tim and Heidi, did you? Although, come to think of it, Heidi could have used some help last season. But that’s beside the point).

Their first challenge, Todd says, is to design an ‘inner sanctum’ for a busy celebrity client. The client is SO busy, that he/she doesn’t even have time to come talk to the designers. So he/she sent over some objects for the designers to study (but they can’t use the objects in their rooms). Good thing, too, because to my untrained eye they pretty much look like stuff you’d win at a carnival game (“pop three balloons and win this mini-disco ball on a pedestal! It even plays The Bee Gees!”). If my kids won stuff like this I wouldn’t let them in the car.

Now that he has them confused, Todd takes them over to their design spaces. On the way out, he tells them to pick a paint chip off the table as they leave. Wait. Is this going to be the challenge? Design a room using the paint chip you picked up? No, it turns out to be much worse - the first challenge is a TEAM challenge, and whoever has the matching paint chips are teammates. Jaws drop. Including mine. A team for the FIRST challenge?? How cruel, not to mention annoying. How are we supposed to get a feel for each designer’s aesthetic and style if they have to compromise with another person right off the bat?

The teams are: Elizabeth/Goil, Felicia/Matt, Ryan/Andrea, Heather/Lisa, Carisa/Erik, and John/Michael (how coincindental that the two people I related to characters named Ralph are stuck together. I think from now on I will refer to them as Ralph[ie] – it’ll just be easier). The teams get a budget of $50,000 to use in the design showrooms to pick out fabric, furnishing and accessories, and another much smaller amount to use for paint and lumber. They also get a carpenter. AND… a seamstress. Wow. They got it GOOD. No Trading Spaces roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-everything-yourselves junk here. These are DESIGNERS, dangit, not Joe and Jane Homeowner and their neighbors, whose idea of interior design is for all the velvet paintings of Elvis and large-eyed children to hang in a straight line.

The reasoning behind this team challenge is soon apparent – they’re going for the drama. Take Ralph[ie]. (Please!! Seriously. Take them.) These two get into it right away. They don’t like each other’s ideas, colors, personalities, clothing, hair, speech patterns – you name it, they hate it. Much eye rolling and cussing and pouting and flouncing and hmph-ing and mouth-taping ensues. They bicker like an old married couple. And of course, so much time is spent on these two that we see very little of what the other teams are doing, because they all seem to be getting along just fine. The only other tension that seems to be going on is that Heather is letting herself be steamrolled by Lisa into doing an Asian theme that has little to do with the objects that they were shown.

They then go shopping. Well, not really, since they’re not actually buying anything. The correct term, as Mr. Todd tells us, is “memo out” (at least I think that’s what he said). I see a lot of very ugly stuff, and some stuff I wouldn’t mind having, but mostly ugly stuff. I guess this is why I am not an interior designer.

Now that they’ve picked out furniture, it’s time to get back to their demo rooms and start painting. So they rush off to get started, and right away I see problems. First of all, half the teams are using green. And two very ugly shades: “canned peas” and “LED alarm clock numbers”. Michael-Ralphie doesn’t know how to paint and John-Ralph won’t let him do anything, so he wanders around visiting the other teams. (PR fans – think Vincent/Angela from last season – same thing.) Felicia and Matt cut a hole in their wall. This worries Heather, who feels inadequate about her team’s plan and lack of innovativeness (is that a word?).

Midnight comes and goes, and in the morning they get a few hours to finish up their rooms. Todd drops another bomb – TWO people will be going home. This is a big bummer. Not only do two people have to leave, but they really won’t get a proper chance to show us why they got picked for this show. Bad form, Bravo. Then Todd calls time, and whisks them off to the White Room (“Join me!”) to meet the judges – designers Jonathan Adler and Kelly Wearstler (who is wearing what appears to be two end-to-end candystriped lampshades and gray flannel longjohn pants) and Margaret Russell, editor of Elle Décor magazine, all of whom the designers ooo and ahhh over.

There are three people in the room, but four chairs, and since Todd’s not judging, that must mean they’re finally going to meet the celebrity client. Todd tells the designers she’s an actress, and a member of “Hollywood royalty”. I immediately think Drew Barrymore. I mean, what family fits that description more than the Barrymores? And I could see her owning those strange objects, which in the context of Drew Barrymore don’t seem so much tacky carnival junk as quirky conversation pieces.

But it’s not Drew Barrymore. Surprise! It’s Alexis Arquette, the brother/sister of David and Patricia and Rosanna Arquette, who is probably best known as the Boy George lookalike from "The Wedding Singer". The designers are sent back to their ‘rooms’ and the judges walk through each one, asking questions and taking notes. Let’s examine the rooms and what the judges had to say about each one.

Ryan/Andrea - Margaret comments that while this room is glitzy and mod, it looks like a dorm room, and I don't disagree. (In fact, my actual college dorm room was this exact same color. I hate this color.) Kelly makes a comment about a "dialogue" between the walls and the floor, which is painted the same green. They're probably discussing how depressed they are about being that color.

Carisa/Erik - Speaking of paint, they painted their walls to look just like the shirt Steve from "Blue’s Clues" wore all the time. While that might be a great design for a preschooler's bedroom, I'm not so sure it's right for the inner sanctum of a busy celebrity. There are also eight thousand pillows in this room, and a lot of glass vases. Not a good combination.

Heather/Lisa - The judges feel this is too themey, like a Chinese restaurant. I am concerned about the boxes at the foot of the bed. What if Alexis needed to get up in the middle of the night? She'd break her toes on those, or fall right over them. It's also waaaay too symmetrical. Even I know that. Symmetry is bad. And feng shui comes in there somewhere too.

Side note: What is it with all the orange and green in these three rooms?? Yuk. Being a child of the seventies, this brings back some bad decor memories. And I think next week, Bravo should try to take pictures of the rooms that DON'T show the studio lights. Unless that's part of the design.

Felicia/Matt - The colors are a bit drab, but I guess adding any of Alexis's objets d'art would put a little color into it. And might actually make them look less like midway junk. The lighted niche they built into the wall is very cool.

John/Michael - Blah. White. Dark brown. Orange. Green. Smelly shoes under the coffee table. Eww. The judges like the 'narrative' they put into the room (the shoes, stuff scattered around to make it look lived in). Also, Ralph[ie] does a lot of bitching to the judges about how horrid it was to have to work with such a narcissic imbicile who doesn't know how to paint and gives them a rash. (Time to get out that Red Ryder b-b gun again, perhaps, Ralphie?)

Goil/Elizabeth - A very relaxing room - nice cool blues and whites, and an interesting swinging couch with a sandbox underneath it. That would be totally fun to sit on it and draw in the sand with your toes! Margaret says that the big rake they put in to use on the sand makes her think of a giant litter box. Let's hope Alexis doesn't have cats.

Jonathan, being the lead judge, gets to say "You can stay" to the people who don't win but didn't lose (Carisa/Erik, Ryan/Andrea). The top two teams are Felicia/Matt and Elizabeth/Goil, with the latter taking the win! (I liked their room best anyway, mostly because it wasn't green and I like sandboxes.) That leaves Ralph[ie] and Heather/Lisa. You know that they can't possibly get rid of such a drama factory as Ralph[ie] yet, so poor Heather and Lisa are out. Jonathan simply says "goodbye" which I think is a nice, classy way to do it, much like the auf Wiedersehen you get over at Project Runway. Then he goes and spoils it by sending them out of the room with a "See you later, decorators!" and I gag. That is pure cornball. Who thought THAT up?? I think I'm going to have to mute that every week so I don't get sick.

Heather and Lisa get nice hugs from Todd, who comes in to talk with them and is very sweet. But I still don't think it's fair that they got kicked off so soon for a team challenge. Just dumb. Sorry you couldn't schedule more episodes, Bravo - next time just pick less people.

Will I tune in again next week? Sure. It's only the first episode, they'll get into a groove. But I hope that they show more of the design process (sketching, inspirations, etc.) and less of Ralph[ie]. Plus, it will be fun to see exactly how many different colors of eyeglass frames Goil owns. And I've already learned that it's bad to leave the selvage on fabric if you're hanging it up (so that's why my bedroom curtains look weird! No more using the selvage as the bottom hem I guess. Thanks Todd!).

Oh wait. Before I go, I have to get this off my chest. I know this isn't a show about fashion. Several of the designers were wearing somewhat questionable outfits. But look at this preview shot of Michael-Ralphie. What is he WEARING?? I don’t know if all those outfits Aunt Clara made for him finally confused him to the point where he just gave in, or if it was the soap poisoning, but grown men should NOT wear cutoff khaki pedal pushers. Don't try and tell me they're shorts.

What Happened to Proofreading?

2007-01-10T20:26:00.000-05:00

I don't usually watch Access Hollywood, but while my husband was flipping through channels I happened to catch a very short blurb on Marcia Cross being put on bed rest (she's expecting twins). As 'newsmagazine' shows are so fond of doing, they put up a little fake headline with a clever attempt at a pun, as shown here (captured from the free video feed on their website, which I'll probably get sued for).BUT this is NOT what I saw!! What I saw was this (and yes, I re-edited the capture because the version that aired is NOT what ended up on their website 20 minutes later, and I wanted you to see what I saw).

Can you spot the difference? It was on the screen for maybe ten seconds, but my eagle eye spotted it anyway. I made my husband rewind the DVR so I could make sure I actually saw what I thought I saw, and even he was surprised that made it on the air during the broadcast.

I know I'm not the only person watching Access Hollywood tonight that saw it. (Well, okay, I just said my husband saw it, so I guess we're not the only 2 people.) Someone at Access Hollywood caught it too (after it aired of course, because nobody was checking the spelling when they put the clip together!!) and it got changed rather quickly.

I'm aware that this is the age of 'get it in the media fast!' but come on. Do some basic proofreading first, so people like me don't catch your mistakes and blog about them.

*Did you see it? Leave a comment!

Even Tim Gunn Wants to Know...

2007-01-09T23:34:00.000-05:00

I kinda fell off the face of the Internet, huh? Sorry about that. You know that "slippery slope to sweatpants and a minivan" that Laura Bennett warned us about? Well, what she failed to mention is that there's a ditch full of big rocks at the bottom, and I'm stuck down there - but piling up rocks like crazy so I can at least get back onto the slope and attempt to claw my way back up. Anybody got a rope?

I am still planning to post my recaps of the last PR shows I missed (for my sister, who does not have Bravo and unbeknownst to me was relying on my recaps as her PR episodes), and I'm looking forward to recapping "Top Design" as well. PR has taught me a lot of valuable lessons about fashion, fashion sense and my own lack of it, and I hope TD will do the same for interior design. Goodness knows I could use it!

Don't Read This Book!

2006-09-23T00:34:00.000-04:00

Don't even think about reading this book. In fact, don't look at this book or think about looking at this book! Ack! I saw you! You're thinking about it.

Today is the beginning of Banned Books Week. My mom sent me an email about it yesterday, figuring I’d be interested to see what made the list of “Most Challenged Books”. I was curious to see how many of them I’d actually read already. I was a voracious reader in my childhood (thanks to the good example set by Mom) and still do a lot of reading. I think I probably own enough books to start my own library!

So I headed over to the ALA’s Banned Books Week website to check out the list of what some people think kids shouldn’t read. I was a bit surprised by some, and not surprised at all by others. See if you agree.

2005’s most challenged book was Robie H. Harris' It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health. Another book about the same topic, It's So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families, is #10. Why were they challenged? Sexual content. Go figure. Books about sex with - GASP! - sexual content. (Like these are more damaging than a parent sputtering through that whole "bees and pollenization" routine.) And of course the Captain Underpants series made the list. Because the world has more than enough books about superheroes in their underwear, thank you very much. (Superman, I’m looking at you here!) Oh, and don't you dare go find out your Poopypants name. *

Here’s the top ten for 1990-2000:
1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz – I remember reading this as a child and getting all scared by it, but I also checked it out repeatedly because it was so deliciously scary that it was fun.

2. Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite - I’ve not read this one, but it got good reviews on Amazon.com for how it deals with the issue of two-daddy families. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman, a similar book, comes in at #11.

3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou – I was never interested to read this book and they didn’t make us in high school. I know what it’s about, though. Besides, they never picked any good books to make us read. It was all stuff like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair which in parts talks about rat droppings and dead bugs in meat processing plants before they had the USDA, which is gross, yes; but you want the kids to eat the cafeteria food after 3rd period English, don't you??

4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier – What’s so bad about a kid who stands up for himself against a bunch of bullies? Or even more importantly, one who doesn’t want to participate in a school fundraiser? (Story of my high-school life right there. Band Candy! Cheese and sausage! Candles! Gah!) This book does have a lot of violence in it, but kids can probably get the same exposure to violence playing video games or watching certain cartoons. At least this way, they're reading!

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – Okay, yeah, this is full of derogatory terms for ethnic groups, but come on. You have to consider the time in which it was written, and think that maybe, just maybe, the author was trying to make a social comment on those types of labels. And you know, I think there are some ethnic groups today that call themselves the exact same things. On purpose.

6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – Read it, liked it okay, didn’t think it was nearly so bad as the ending of The Grapes of Wrath, also by Steinbeck. That’s got a high ickiness factor to me. I can’t even type it! (Just click on the link and read the summary.)

7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling – I’ve read all of these numerous times, and so have lots of kids I know, and not one of us learned any witchcraft from them. I do know one boy who, out of curiosity, checked out a "serious" book about witchcraft and after he read it, said to me, “That book was about stupid.” Plus we have to be honest here: who wouldn’t want the ability to summon items? Accio car keys!!

8. Forever by Judy Blume – Teenage love and sex. I read it as a teen and it didn’t make me want to go out and do anything. If anything, it probably made me a lot more wary of boys and relationships in general for a while. (Which may explain my pathetic choices in high school boyfriends.)

9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson – Two friends create an imaginary world in the woods. This book has a death in it but I always thought it was handled very well. I got a lot more freaked out by the death in A Separate Peace by John Knowles (where the main character breaks his leg and some bone marrow gets into his bloodstream and kills him), which we were required to read the same year I had foot surgery, and it caused me to worry endlessly that I would meet the same fate.

10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor – Oh no! Another series about a teenaged girl growing up and facing all the icky things in life that everyone else has to face! How dare they publish these? Don’t they know that teenaged girls don’t want reassurance that they’re not the only geeky awkward girl in the world? Sheesh.

You can find the rest of the list here. But here are some I’m puzzled by:

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak – I’m hoping this one gets challenged for a better reason than the main character is naked in two pictures as he’s changing clothes! But if there’s a better reason, I sure as heck can’t think of one. It’s just about a little kid’s dream, which is not any worse than Where the Wild Things Are - which is going to be made into a movie. I hope they don't screw it up like they did with...
James and the Giant Peach – Okay, James’ parents get eaten by a rhinoceros. That’s pretty gruesome. But most kids know that rhinos do not eat people. And besides, the way his mean aunts get squashed by the giant peach is AWESOME. This is one of my favorite books ever. (But the Tim Burton movie? Eh, not so much.)
Where’s Waldo – Huh? What’s so bad about this? Maybe there are naked people doing stuff in the pictures that I just never saw… must go buy one of these and see! And for more Where's... fun, try Where's Dan Quayle? and Where's Elvis?
Speaking of naked people doing stuff in pictures, Sex by Madonna is all the way down at #19. I’d think THAT would be closer to the top. At least worse than Harry Potter!

Anyway, there are some ideas for your fall reading list. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for parents’ rights to not let your own child read books you think are inappropriate. What I’m NOT for is someone else being able to tell me what I can let my own children read. Will I let them read books from this list if they bring them home? Heck yeah. If it’s one I haven’t read, I’ll probably read with them, and get a good discussion going if needed. I think that’s what we all need – more discussion and less dictation.

*Mine is Poopsie Barfbuns.