Even better than the “real woman” challenge

Project Runway week 2 – I’m writing this as I watch the episode, so don’t judge me for my use of the present tense!

I don’t know why, but I really like this group of designers. They’re not bitchy yet, and they seem really happy to be with each other and still in the competition. There’s even a level of cooperation that seems more universal that usual. Everybody seems to be getting in on the fun. They seem more functional than previous years’ groups, and I feel like most of them would not annoy me in person. Gordana is awesome, and watching her crack up with Ra’Mon when he said “semester” instead of “trimester” was pretty terrific. Maybe his passion for fashion wasn’t the only reason he decided against a career in medicine.

I’m happy to see a pregnancy challenge. It’s good when the competition goes in new directions in terms of what is being asked of the contestants. I like that the designers are really thinking about what pregnancy clothing means, and considering things like the gap between maternity clothes and regular fashion, and what will be comfortable on a pregnant woman.

It’s hard to hear Ra’Mon second-guessing himself now, when he did so well last week. It’s a shame that he seems to be ignoring the positive comments his dress garnered, and paying so much attention to the judges’ advice against being too safe. I hope he doesn’t shoot himself in the foot by going too far away from where his natural inclination will take him.

Rebecca Romijn is, once again, seeming like the most awesome person ever. I would babysit for her and my eighth grade love Jerry O’Connell whenever…

Oh my god, what is happening on Sandra Bullock’s head in the “All About Steve” commercial? There are no words for how wrong that color/style combination is on her…

Oh, Malvin. He’s talking Ari-talk right now, and I think we all learned how well that turns out. I really really want to like him, but he’s beating the quirk drum just a little too hard right now. Tim’s “cuckoo has already happened,” is pretty much my idea of heaven. He didn’t say it aloud, but you know that sentence was continued in his head as “Bless Ari’s little heart.” I wish Tim Gunn would come to my job and critique my performance. “Oh Nicole. I really want to like what you told that woman, but you know that there’s another edition of that book in storage, right?” I guarantee that I would be more productive and awesome and my ideas would be fabulous. Project Library would rock so much.

Whoa! Look at Mitchell being an underminer. I want to believe that he’s being this way unintentionally, but it seems like a particularly brilliant strategy. “It looks better from back here?” Oh, you cad! I don’t know what it says about me that this made Mitchell go up in my estimation.

While at the hospital earlier today (not for myself) I saw two pregnant women today who were actually in labor (I think my fallopian tubes crossed in sympathy), so watching these otherwise skinny models glide around with their basketball bellies and lack of waddles is sort of killing me.

Qristyl, who smarter people than I have dubbed Spell Check, is super bitchy. I find it laughable that she is the one who is talking about unfortunate choices in style and what is and is not au courant, considering that she was nearly sent home last week for bad sewing and questionable taste. How quickly they forget.

Carol-Hannah is wearing a beautiful dress. It’s halfway through the episode and I can’t remember what her design for this challenge looks like, but I hope it’s as least as cute.

Ra’Mon just mentioned Stella! and Leathuh! What a nice callback. And it’s cool to see that the designers have an awareness of what happened on previous seasons, which we already know, but they don’t always seem to want to acknowledge. This is why I don’t get it when they pretend that they have no idea how this show works. HELLO, you’re on the sixth season already. The time for disingenuousness has passed.

Aw, Malvin way to rally. I appreciate his acknowledgment that some of the other designers have something to show and say, as well. Confidence is one thing, but it is really off-putting when a designer refuses to even acknowledge that any of his or her competition could possibly be playing at the same level.

Now it’s time for the runway challenge! Heidi explains the rules, and that there’s no Michael Kors. Noted designer Monique Lhuillier bravely tanned in his place and then took over his chair. Way to take one for the team, Monique. The judges are all female, and they’ve all been pregnant, and woe is the designer who tries to BS them about a design that is just not working. They shall lay the smackdown with a quickness!

I really liked Logan’s top, but overall thought his design was pretty generic. Shirin, who is probably already my favorite of this season, had a dress that was awesome on its own, and then added a fabulous coat. Somebody must have told her how much I like coats. Nicholas’s model looked like a pregnant streetwalker. Christopher had immunity, but I thought that he took a good risk and his top was great. Spell Check’s dress looked like she threw an orange sack over her model and then cut a couple of holes. I gave her an extra week to gain some taste, but I can see why the judges were concerned about her overall lack of refinement. Epperson’s look is okay. I’m not sure how I felt about the jumpsuit. Louise’s dress was cute, but I think that her model’s belly was more pregnant that some of the others’ and the whole outfit ended up looking slightly comical.  Gordana, as I’ve come to expect, made such a great outfit. Johnny toned down the emotion by a factor of a thousand this week, AND made a beautiful dress. I have a feeling that my love for him will exist in inverse proportion to how much he emotes. I hate hate hate what Malvin made. I feel for Ra’Mon. I don’t think that his dress is amazing, but I would have been interested to see what he could have made if he wasn’t worried about avoiding the appearance of safety. Mitchell’s look is tight and unremarkable. Carol-Hannah’s dress is okay. I like the ruffly jacket she put on top of it, but the draping around the pregnant belly seemed a little trippy to me. I love Althea’s dress, but her model’s girls are barely contained by the fabric, which sort of ruins things. There’s nothing worse than the feeling that one of your boobs could make a break for freedom at any time. You can’t relax in a dress like that. Irina’s dress seemed pretty safe, but was super cute.

I can’t believe that Spell Check is safe. Ra’Mon’s dress had definite faults, but they seemed to be laughing with him, as opposed to at him. That’s okay, right? Malvin, I thought you weren’t supposed to mention the Mother Hen thing. Oh, wait. That was the chicken thighs thing. Oh, Heidi. I love you. Mitchell, the underminer, HA. HA, to you, sir! Too tight t-shirt and too short shorts. They love Shirin like I do. I’m wondering if maybe two weeks of underwhelming is all that Mitchell is going to get. We’ll see. Rebecca mentioned the bowling ball bag thing in regard to Ra’Mon’s dress. Awesome. Hey, I never said that Mitchell was wrong in his critique of Ra’Mon; it’s just that it wasn’t nice. Or helpful.

I don’t know that much is added to the program to hear the judges discuss the top and bottom looks. We don’t hear them say who won, and the editors are trying to tiptoe around accidentally revealing anything before the final commercial break. It’s tedious. Since I can’t find out the results at this point, the only thing left to do is watch how the judges interact with one another. It’s funny when it’s obvious that a judge really likes or doesn’t like something; they’re all pretty much decided on their opinions by this point, and yet they try to convince one another to adopt their opinions. All the tension makes me want to suggest a group hug. Nina shot down Louise’s dress, even though Rebecca quite liked it. I ended up feeling like Nina was questioning Rebecca’s taste for not feeling the same way about the dress that Nina did. I think I found the drama that was missing from the workroom.

Okay, it’s time for them to reveal the winners and losers. Somebody’s gonna cry. I knew that Shirin won when Rebecca looked in her direction. It would have been cruel to look her way and then say that Althea won, and my imaginary friendship with Rebecca could not have survived such a Meredith Viera-like move. Yay!! Ra’Mon is in. Okay, is it going to be crazy or sloppy that’s out? I think that crazy is going to live to work another day.

Am I right?

No. Continuing their streak from last week. Mitchell barely manages to survive the competition, and the oddball designer gets the boot. Sorry you got auffed, Malvin. You were fun to watch, although you probably couldn’t have realistically lasted much longer than week 2, anyway. I guess Lifetime is less accepting of crazy contestants than Bravo. I wonder how long Santino, Wendy, or Angela would have lasted if they were on the Lifetime version of Project Runway…

Project Runway West

First: Tim Gunn is awesome. He’s so cool, and even when faced with the craziness of some of these designers, he manages to convey both his support and his doubts. I wish that all people could have a Tim Gunn in their life.

I’m really happy that this first challenge was to design for the red carpet, instead of making an outfit out of stuff in the apartment, the clothes off the designers’ backs, trash, or supermarket finds. Those have been done to death. I was concerned when Ari said that she didn’t draw, but only because that made me think of Angela, which is always unfortunate. It’s good to know that the shameless promotion of Mood could continue with the show’s change of venue; for a second there I was worried that the designers would have to go to a Michael’s or A.C. Moore for their silk charmeuse. I don’t know if it was this group of designers, the way the editors spliced the show together, or some combination of the two, but the atmosphere in the workroom seemed pretty good. People were stressed and working hard, but I didn’t see anybody get the side-eye or be on the wrong end of a harsh word. I wonder how long this can last.

It might have annoyed me in episode five or so, but since this was the premiere, I didn’t even mind Johnny’s meltdown. He did have a valid concern, and I think that the other designers were amazingly supportive in a way that one might not have expected, given the newness of their acquaintance. Plus, Tim talked him down from the ledge and he mad it into the top three, so I hope he can carry his confidence forward, because if he does this again, I will not take it as well.

I’m shocked at how happy I was to see Nina Garcia and Michael Kors. Nobody can bitchslap a designer like those two. it was great how excited the designers were when they saw Lindsay Lohan. Nobody is that excited to see her, except for the paparazzi. I feel slightly ashamed at how surprised I was at her coherence. I know she’s not all “Dur, Sam, argh,” all the time, but I still didn’t expect her to speak as well as she did.

There were a few designs that I looooved. Shirin, Louise, Gordana, and Irina’s dresses were super. I liked Ra’Mon and Johnny’s dresses, too, but not as much. I thought that Christopher’s dress was okay, but not amazing. I was surprised that none of the women I mentioned were included in the top three. In fact, the whole top three was men; what’s up with that? I think that it would be interesting if, for one season, the designs came down the runway without the judges knowing who made them. For this to work best, I think the designers would not be able to be in the room, either. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that female designers did better when the judges didn’t know who made things. Plus, this would prevent designers from being pigeonholed as good or bad, and stop people from coasting on past successes or being punished for past disappointments. Blind judging, Project Runway. Think about it. If you use my idea, though, I’d like some credit (and free clothes).

I’m happy that Michael Kors managed to include the phrase “taste level” in the very first show. Is that a record? How can they already be worried about Qristyl’s taste after viewing only one of her designs? Going into the runway show, there were a couple of people who I worried about, but there was so many unfortunate things going on in that room that there wasn’t anybody who was a lock to go home. I was pretty unimpressed with Epperson’s dress. It looked like something that you’d wear to a fancy funeral, if such a thing exists. I’m glad that Mitchell wasn’t sent home. His dress sucked because he was given improper model measurements, not because he’s unable to design well.

I think it was nice that the person who won the first challenge was a non-fashion school graduate, because the nonnies seemed really self-conscious about everybody else knowing stuff they didn’t. I just hope they don’t spend the rest of the season harping on their feelings of inadequacy, because that would not be interesting. Of course, the loser also didn’t go to fashion school (I think!), either, but I don’t think that’s why she had to go. Her outfit was insane, and she knew that, but I think she missed the part where somebody else had to be interested in it, too. I agreed that Ari should go. She definitely had a point of view, but I can’t imagine it ever lining up with the judges’ enough to do her good on this show. And it was nice to hear her say that she learned that one should take risks responsibly; it is wearying to hear rejected contestants go on about how they were misunderstood, without acknowledging that there might have been more to it than that.

Given the fact that this is the first season of Project Runway to be cast using the Bunim-Murray people (of Real World fame), I’m surprised that there were no fist-fights, drunken hookups, or attempts to bond in a conveniently located hot tub. Malvin’s hair kind of pissed me off when I first saw it, but he doesn’t seem obnoxious, so he and his coif have grown on me. I still have zero respect for the spelling of Qristyl’s name, but from here on in, I’ll only have to see it once an episode, so I think I can keep my rage at bay. Plus, she’s on thin ice already, so if she doesn’t straighten up and fly right, she may be going home soon, meaning that I’d have to see her names zero times an episode. This would also be acceptable. The closest I came to being annoyed was with Logan’s “I’m more of a guy’s guy” comment. What did that statement add to my life? Not a thing. Maybe that’s why I thought he was going to be a pain in the ass.

Countdown to Project Runway

After what seems like years of legal wrangling between Lifetime, The Weinstein Company, and NBC Universal , Project Runway’s first season on Lifetime starts tomorrow. I’m really excited, but aside from briefly looking at the photos and bios of the new contestants, I haven’t tried to find out anything about this season. I want to be surprised, and not to hate any of the contestants until the editors have provided me with a reason. I’m starting a new scarf, so I’ll have something else to focus on if the first episode is as underwhelming as PR season openers usually are.

Sew excited!

Yes, you’re right; I should be stoned for that horrible pun. Still, I can’t hide how happy I am that Project Runway will be coming back to the airwaves on August 20th. Today Lifetime put up their Project Runway web site and introduced this season’s contestants. I try not to put too much stock in the pre-airing bios and such, but a couple of people already seem like they’re going to be difficult. And not just difficult, but reality-tv difficult, which involves visible efforts and obvious attempts to coin a catchphrase. Below are my picks for the three people most likely to make me want to hurl footwear at the tv, based mostly on photos.

1) Malvin Vien – Look at that hair and those dead eyes and tell me that he’s not going to be a problem. Go ahead, I dare you.

2) Logan Neitzel – He just looks like he’s going to be a pain in the ass.

3) Qristyl Frazier – I refuse to believe that this is how her name was spelled at birth, and I am angry with her for doing this to my eyes.

And I just realized that my Project Runway category was mysteriously eaten in the move over from WordPress.com, so I guess I’ll spend my evening re-categorizing old posts.

It figures

I thought that something was missing from the news that Project Runway could go ahead on Bravo, but I didn’t know what. And then Heidi Klum and Seal announced that they were expecting their fourth child and I was like, oh yeah…

It’s just not a good season of Project Runway if Heidi isn’t sporting those insane maternity outfits and knee-high boots!

And now Project Runway’s disputed sixth season has a Lifetime premiere date of August 20. Can’t wait!

Auf wiedersehen, Bravo!

Finally, after months of legal wrangling between NBC Universal, The Weinstein Co., and Lifetime Network, the sixth season of Project Runway is clear to air this summer on Lifetime. The Weinstein Co. had to pay an unspecified amount of money to NBC Universal, but the case is now settled and we are free to watch the first Los Angeles-based season of the original fashion design reality show (what ever happened to that knockoff that Bravo was hoping to air??). I wonder how good it will be, knowing that it was taped to air almost 6 months ago, and the fashion week that it surrounds has been over for months.

We’ll see, I guess, but I hope that the move to the West Coast energized this show, or maybe just that they had a more talented, less unnecessarily-obnoxious people this time.

Burn!

(Why do we use extreme temperatures to illustrate that something that is really bad? At first, I almost called this post “That’s cold.”)

So it turns out that maybe the Weinsteins and Lifetime had a point, and NBC Universal/Bravo didn’t want to pick up the option on the new season of Project Runway. So why the delay, then? Um, maybe because Bravo has a Project Runway knockoff in the works and is using this injunction to get a leg up on their competition? Machiavellian. Bravo, indeed.

Project Runway Withdrawal

Despite the fact that Season 5 of Project Runway was not as compelling as earlier cycles, I miss the show. I miss ragging on Kenley, disdaining Suede’s overuse of the third person, oohing over Korto’s colors, and being completely blown away by Leanne’s visions. I am sad that there’s no more Top American Designer Michael Kors to make jokes about “Becky Home Ec-y” and whatnot, and Nina to be so unimpressed that she had no words. Now that the show is over for an undetermined amount of time, what’s going on in the PR universe?

• NBC Universal’s lawsuit against Lifetime TV has moved to federal court!!
• Entertainment Weekly does a Q&A with Leanne Marshall, Season 5 winner
• Chloe Dao (looking HOT), showed her new collection, seemingly to great approval

Showdown at Bryant Park

The Project Runway season 5 finale aired tonight, on the same night as the final presidential debate. I don’t know what to say, other than that whoever schedules the debates should be fired. You should not force the electorate to choose between two viable options. Thankfully, in this election, television is the only venue where this is currently an issue.

It seems that Kenley found the brattiness that she had APOLOGIZED for and toned down last week. Not that I thought she was being genuine then, but tonight she didn’t even bother to pretend. Cow. So anyway, she got on Leanne’s last nerve when they were picking models, and I can see how having Kenley’s delusional self trying to define your line for you and cast your fashion show might make you want to do her bodily harm. I just don’t get how Leanne restrained herself. Along with the wild overconfidence in her own designs came the other thing that she hid last week: her total contempt for Tim Gunn. Kenley was as rude and defensive as ever, and I can see that Tim washed his hands of her completely; he said his bit, realized that she was ignoring him, and walked away with an eye roll and a funny look at the camera. It it were either of the other two designers, I might have thought that that was the “Girls are weird” look, but since it was Kenley, I’m pretty sure it was more along the lines of “Bitch crazy.”

I liked Korto and Leanne’s more measured responses to Tim Gunn. She listened to him, and thought about what he said before commiting to a course of action. WHOA. Kenley actually did think about what Tim said, and changed something accordingly. It was never an issue of doing exactly what Tim said, but at least just listening to what he said.

And Korto decided to scrap two of her looks, which means that she had to design two new outfits during their work week. That is just nutty! During the prep parts of the episode, they kept showing her working on her new dresses. I feel like that should have been a better way to fix what she’d done, without creating two entirely new looks.

Now we’re off to the makeup part of the day. BORING! I like to wear makeup, but I don’t care about hearing the designers plan their models’ faces. It did crack me up, though, that Kenley wanted her models made up like pinup girls. This is my shocked face. Hair was also terribly uninspiring. I understand that designers have to think about every part of their models’ looks, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to find all of it interesting.

LOL. Kenley and Leanne interviewed about each others’ collections, and they both hated what the other had done.

Oh my goodness, there was a dog in the work room. I was wondering what would happen if the dog pooped or peed on a design, but thankfully she only did it on the floor. Which was bad enough, but then the model cleaned it up while wearing one of Leanne’s dresses! Nuts! I am impressed that Leanne didn’t have a nervous breakdown right there, because I know that I would have lost my mind that happened to me.

On the morning of the show, the designers got up super early (it was still dark out when they got to the tent), and they talked about their nerves and hopes. Plus, they were all stoked that their families were in attendance. I was actually excited for all of them! But Oh! No! One of Jerell’s uglyass tree headbands was growing right out of Kenley’s head! All three designers were given fashion students as assistants, and Kenley talked about how hers were not allowed to touch her hand-painted dress, because she was the only one who knew how to handle and iron it. So of course the next shot is of Kenley allowing the dress she was ironing to fall to the floor. Way to show ’em, Kenley! Then, when were done laughing at Kenley, there were shots of celebrities, like Michelle Trachtenberg, and former contestants, such as last season’s winner Christian Siriano and season 2’s Uncle Nick.

Uh oh. One of Leanne’s looks ended up being weirdly limp and big on her model, so she had to switch her into a different dress. And Kenley managed to make a huge production of fitting the gorgeous Topazio into a dress and basically implied that Topazio was a fat fat fatty. Jerk. Heidi looked amazing (AMAZING) when presenting the designers and welcoming the crowd.  Heidi revealed that Jennifer Lopez was supposed to be the guest judge, but had to bow out due to a “foot injury.”  I’m sorry to hear that the former Flyy Girl was injured, but thank goodness it did not prevent her from kicking butt two days later in the Miami triathlon. I’m glad to know that it’s more taxing on one’s foot to sit down and judge a fashion show than it is to complete a triathlon. Going on this logic, I’ve decided that I will go out and win the Ironman just as soon as I recover from uploading this post.

So I have no respect for Jennifer Lopez for backing out at the last minute with such a flimsy excuse, but I love how Tim Gunn ended up being the guest judge. The designers, as you might expect, were not happy to have someone so knowledable about what was NOT good about their collections be the fourth judge, but I had to rewind a few times because I loved it when Kenley said, “Are you kidding?! Okay, maybe I should have improved my attitude.” Kenley? Realizing that her poor attitude might have screwed her out of winning this competition? Priceless! Tim said that he wouldn’t hold anything that he already knew against the designers, but I wonder how well he’ll be able to distance his judging from what he already knew.

Kenley went first. I didn’t love her collection, but it was well made and I totally believe that those pieces were her dream wardobe. I think she did an excellent job of realizing her vision, even if I wouldn’t want any of those clothes. Okay, I take it back, I’d wear the hell out of the little black dress and that cream dress with the flower pattern crossing diagonally across the front.

Korto’s collection was second. I loved most of it. I’m not sure about the longer of the new dresses. I loved how into it Korto’s relatives were. I appreciate that every item is something that would look good against my skin tone (I know that I would not necessarily look good in a lot of that).

While I loved loved loved Korto’s collection, Leanne‘s was just a different level of awesome. Her stuff was just so interesting and flattering, it’s like she was in a different, more complex competition. It wasn’t even fair to poor Kenley and Korto. Leanne definitely got the largest applause.
After the runway shows, former contestants and judges weighed in on whose work they thought was best. Chris March and Rami liked Korto (which surprises me; I would have pegged Rami as a Leanne kind of guy), Uncle Nick thought that Leanne’s work was ready for Elle Magazine, and Daniel’s endorsement of Kenley’s work showed that his taste has in no way improved since he was auff’d. Fern Mallis congratulated Kenley, but I’m not convinced that Kenley is the only one who received congrats from Ms. Mallis. I think this was a case of judicious editing. Nice try, editors, but we know that nobody in their right mind would have preferred Kenley’s collection to the other two!

The judges were kind to Kenley, and complimented her hand-painting, although the only negative thing that they said was that one of her dresses resembled Balenciaga. Kenley conceded that she needed to learn what’s going on in fashion, so she doesn’t keep recreating the looks of other designers.

Korto’s collection got mostly high marks, and the judges complimented how she wove her heritage and point of viwe into what she did, although they thought that some of the pieces were still overworked.

Leanne’s collection was praised for the diversity of her looks, but they were concerned that she had too many petals, and that it was too one-note. True, but they were so beautiful. I can see why the judges were concerend about how that would translate to the 40-look collection.

It was great to listen to the judges decide who won. I’m really glad I didn’t watch this live, or else I might have puked from nerves. I don’t know how the designers stood that kind of pressure while waiting for the verdict.

Kenley was out first. This is what I expected. She did not take it well. I expected this, too. Yay! Leanne won! I really thought she must have when I saw the collections last month, but it’s good to have confirmation. I felt bad for Korto and (to a lesser extent) Kenley, and I really wish both of them awesome, fulfilling careers in fashion. How much do I love the fact that Leanne had to record a Saturn commercial pretty much immediately after winning? So so much! She’s super crunchy and from Oregon and you know she probably doesn’t even drive (non-drivers, represent)!

This wasn’t the most exciting season of Project Runway ever, but I did end up enjoying it and the way it concluded.

Jerell speaks

I know that several tv shows and web sites get interviews with outgoing Project Runway contestants once they’ve been auff’d, but I’ve never really sought out those print, web, or television appearances. I’m interested in the program itself, and not so much what happens outside of it. Today, though, I read an interview that Jerell did with Entertainment Weekly, and it made me think well of him. I give him credit for his incredibly charitable view of Kenley’s behavior and of his own ouster, and wish him all the success in the world! I am sure that I mentioned that Jerell’s designs really grew on me over the course of the competition; in the beginning, I was convinced that he was one of the weakest links, and by the time he was judged off the show, I was sure that he had been robbed! It was pretty classy of him not to pick a favorite New York Fashion Week collection done by the remaining designers; I don’t think anybody could have blamed him for having an opinion, and I think it’s sweet that he kept it to himself.