Project Runway Season 9 Episode 5: Off the Track

Team Challenge: The designers must create three looks for Heidi's New Balance sneakers.
Team captains are chosen after a foot race. Cecilia quits the show as the race is about to begin.
Guest judge: Erin Wasson

Winner: Viktor, Joshua M.

Out: Danielle

Project Runway Season 9 Episode 4: All About Nina

The designers must create a design for Nina Garcia. 
Guest judges: Kerry Washington and Joanna Coles

WINNER: Kimberly

OUT: Julie

Project Runway Season 9 Episode 3--Go Big or Go Home

PR's first outdoor runway--presumably because the stilt models wouldn't fit inside.

The Challenge: STILTS?!?

Is it just me or is Heidi Klum better at walking a runway in stilts than actual stilt models? I was watching this week's episode of Project Runway with my beau (well, I was watching, he was using his exercise bike and couldn't control what was on TV--Ha!) and he wondered aloud if the whole challenge was based on the fact that Heidi secretly already knew how to walk in stilts. Hmmm. Maybe. I mean, she is pretty obsessed with Halloween and I've always suspected she has an inner weird girl inside a beautiful model's body. Maybe Heidi has a secret past as a circus nerd?

Or maybe Project Runway has simply run out of gimmicks.

CONFIRMED: Heidi Klum has experience with stilts. I totally forgot about this until now.

In general I'm not annoyed by the gimmicks. The female wrestlers, the recycling materials, the postal workers, the brides, the drag queens (LOVE LOVE LOVE THE DRAG QUEENS!!) but my favourite part of those challenges is seeing how the designers embrace the spirit of the weirdness. As in, does their design stay true to both themselves as designers and their clients as brides/drag queens/circus freaks? I loved when the designers had to make "superhero costumes" for the female wrestlers, for instance. The best looks were the ones that used colour, crazy prints, outrageous shapes. It would not have been as interesting if the designers had just made boring ready-to-wear American sportswear out of spandex and lycra and called it a day.

But lately (ever since PR switched networks perhaps?) it seems like the focus has been entirely on who can make the most commercial-looking, "classic American sportswear" ready-to-wear separates. In other words, Project Runway has become the search for the next Michael Kors.

From Michael Kors' Fall 2011 line. Because you can never have too much neutral. 

And yet they still have them doing gimmicky challenges and acting like it's okay to be outrageous, avante garde or downright crazy. "Think big," says Heidi while looking down at the designers from her massive stilts. "Reallly big." She tells them to create looks that are imaginative, eye-catching, "outside the box", and "truly larger than life." Oh Heidi, you say it but you don't mean it.

Tim told the designers to "think Paris couture week." This is a dress from Paris Couture Week 2011. Is this what he meant? It would have made a more interesting runway, but the judges would have had a hissy fit.

The designers will learn (too late for some of them) that the looks that make it to the top will be the ones that are not costume-y or "larger than life" but the ones that look the most like you could pick them up at a boutique at an upscale mall, cut off the bottom three feet of fabric, and walk out the door. This means that the matador costume from Josh and Julie, the gothic ballerina from Bryce and Fallene, and the Elizabethan/Victorian/Old Hollywood/Mae West concoction from Bert and Viktor are all in trouble. Anthony and Laura are VERY lucky that their "Alabama Plantation Girl" cage dress didn't work out.


The Workroom: Whip Em Out and Let's Measure!

One thing that was clear this week is that the designers are sizing each other up. They're starting to pick at each other (subtly, but I'm sure the all-out wars will come later) and assess who they think are "good" designers and who are not (Are they better than me? I hope they're not better than me. I'd better show them I'm better!). It seems like some of the designers are doing this by comparing who has the most knowledge or training and then using that as an excuse to be rude.

Some examples:

--Viktor spitballing ideas about a glamourous "Old Hollywood" look. Bert says, "Mae West?" and Viktor agrees, "Sure, like Mae West. We could make these great pants..." to which Bert feels the need to snap, "Mae West never wore pants in her life. No, she didn't. She wore skirts!" Um, Bert, did you miss the point? It's not about Mae West as a person, it's about Viktor struggling to come up with an idea that you can agree on. Later Viktor tries to describe a voluminous dress with a sexy bustier and collar piece, which he describes as Victorian. Cut to Bert saying, "Queen Victoria was in mourning for most of her life!" and lecturing Viktor, "That's Elizabethan, not Victorian. There's a difference!" Yeah, Bert, you're not wrong. What he was describing was Elizabethan, not Victorian. He misspoke. Now are you done being an asshole so you two can get back to talking about the dress??

--Danielle asking Cecilia if she was "comfortable with the fit" of her previous looks. Good for Cecilia for standing up to her! I love Cecilia's talking head interview, "Listen lady...!"

--Bryce obsessing about cutting on the grain then informing Fallene that it's all fresh in his mind because he's fresh out of school. "Did you ever go to school?" he asks her, pointedly.

--Julie asking Josh if a certain fabric could be pleated and him saying, as condescendingly as possible, "Oh Julie, anything in life can be pleated!" As if she's so silly for thinking otherwise. Except that he's completely wrong. Not every fabric pleats well. He's talking out of his ass and yet he's convinced himself that he is somehow the "authority" in this team.

--The refreshing exception to this kind of sniping seems to be the teams of Anya & Olivier and Anthony & Laura. Maybe it's because none of those people are insecure enough as designers to need to prove themselves this way. Anya didn't even seem scared that her partner had immunity this week. I like that girl.

The Runway: Awkward and weird, and yet boring too?

These stilt-walking models are weird. I mean, really weird. What the hell were they all doing with their arms? And their legs, for that matter? Was it the fault of the clothes or were these girls just strange? I didn't get it. Maybe they were just trying to add interest to clothes that were otherwise pretty boring, despite the fact that they were fifteen feet tall.

Not counting the unfortunate exception of last year's much-despised Gretchen, Project Runway has had one rule that is universally true: If you win the first challenge you won't win the season. You just won't. (Again, not counting the awful, awful Gretchen. In my mind Mondo won Season 8. Actually, in my mind Mondo won EVERY season.) But you might stick around way longer than you should thanks to the judges' favourable first impression of you.

Enter Bert.

He's clearly not going to win the season and he probably shouldn't even be here anymore. The producers seem to have sided with Viktor in the whole Bert-vs-Viktor drama because the footage that aired this week made Bert  look like an obstinate old drama queen (sure, it might just be the editing but it was hard to love Bert this week). Yet the judges took his side and Heidi even called Viktor "full of it." Really, Heidi? Is that your honest opinion or do you just have a soft spot for the old guy who won the first challenge? Either way, he can't possibly keep resting on his very thin laurels much longer and I'm sure he'll be sent home soon. Still, it's hard to see more interesting designers get the boot when there's someone whose time seems to be up already.

Poor Fallene.

It wasn't that I disagreed with the judges' decision to send her home, it's just...couldn't they have sent someone else first? If not Bert, then what about Bryce? He's kind of a dick. I know, that is not reason enough to send a good designer home, but...is he a good designer? No, I don't think so. He sniped, griped, lectured and gossiped about Fallene and her non-grain-following construction (FYI: Not every designer agrees that following the grain is the most important part of construction. There are plenty of clothiers who deliberately work against the grain in order to give clothes more give and sometimes even a better fit. But maybe if Bryce wasn't just "right out of school" he would know that.). He did everything but actually help her. What exactly was the reason that he couldn't do the bustier himself and give Fallene the pants? Oh yeah, he was too busy making a giant mesh tutu for ten minutes than gossiping about Fallene for eight hours. Bottom line is that his design sucked and he latched on to Fallene's lack of confidence and training as an excuse to take the lead and steamroll her. It's true that she shouldn't have let that happen and she probably deserved to go home just for that, but I still don't have to like Bryce.

Maybe next week will be a double elimination and he and Bert will both go home. A girl can dream.

So in the end, LAURA WINS and FALLENE IS OUT. Sad to see Fallene go, but she broke the cardinal rule: When the judges ask who should be gone, never say yourself. Good thing Julie & Josh's wasn't the bottom look or else it might have been Julie to go. On the upside, it was hilarious to see Laura talk about how great it was to work with such a gracious partner (Anthony Ryan recommended her for the win) and then immediately follow with "I nailed it! Immunity yeah! But now I'm going to win every challenge!" She learned so much about being gracious, clearly.

Next week: FINALLY! NINA GARCIA IS THE CLIENT!! With Fallene and Josh C. gone, I wonder who will cry?

Project Runway Season 9 Episode 2--My Pet Project

Let me start by saying, last week's preview was a major teaser for stuff that didn't even happen this week. Boo to that! There was no fighting and very little bitching this week. There were a few designers who have obviously been groomed in the art of the sound bite (actual quote from Laura Kathleen: "More classy than assy"). But it was still interesting to see which designers were able to step up to the audience-pleasing unconventional materials challenge. This year's creativity challenge? Materials found in a pet store. Sounds pretty straight forward. And it was, but still a great episode.

Before they began shopping, Tim gave all of the designers the standard warning: Avoid too much "fabric" in the Unconventional Materials Challenge. If you go to a grocery store and use garbage bags, if you go to a party store and use tablecloths, if you go to an auto salvage yard and use car seat covers, you might be in trouble. And, to add to that, if you go to a pet store and use doggie beds and umbrellas, you might have something to worry about. It's possible you can manipulate the hell out of the "fabric" and wow the judges, but you'd better be prepared to do just that if you plan to use the "easy" materials in these challenges.

Several designers break this cardinal rule, but Bert seems particular oblivious to it. ("If you abuse your immunity, the judges will get mad" warns one of his fellow designers while Bert ignores her and sings about his immunity while asking if anyone heard what Tim said in the instructions.) Good thing you have that immunity, Bert, but let's see how hard the judges are on you NEXT week.

Another designer who struggled with their choice of materials was Fallene. Despite bragging/complaining that "all of the other designers" thought this was her challenge because she's the artsy-crafty one, it seems like it's anything but. Or maybe that's just what she said later to cover her tracks. First we see her complain about picking out so many orange flowers from the pet store. "I never use orange," she says in the talking head interview. "I don't know what I was thinking!" She says this despite the fact that at the pet store she herself was wearing an orange blouse, orange shoes and orange earrings. 

Later she is quick to agree with the judges that her choice of using orange and black together in her design was a poor one, as it clearly looks too "Hallowe'en-y." This is a conclusion she must have reached after she got dressed that morning, as she herself is wearing another orange blouse, this time paired with what looks like black shorts. So, yeah. 

Then there's the battle of the puppy wee wee pads. This really separates the designers with innovation from those who have possibly never seen the show before. 

Viktor is able to transform these humble pee pads into something less urinary and more visionary (I'm sorry, that was terrible), while Bryce is...not. It's just awful from start to finish and, if anything, his "wee wee pad dress" only made Viktor's look all the stronger by comparison.

Luckily, most of the designers seemed to have gotten enough raw materials that they had the option to change course mid-stream if need be. Laura Kathleen spent a lot of time trying to make her "doggie neck cone skirt" work but when she realized there was no way she was going to be able to cover her model's kitty cone with her doggie cone skirt, she abandoned it for something else.

If only Joshua Christensen had had similar instincts about which parts of his design he should keep and which he should scrap. When Tim visited him in the workroom, he had a striking belt made out of a cat scratch post, probably the most interesting and innovative part of his whole look. Then when his model came down the runway, she was wearing a slap-dash, boring as hell version of the belt made with what looked like scrap fabric and a dog leash. What happened, Josh?

I can't help but wonder if Josh C's bizarre last-minute choices had something to do with his self-proclaimed best bud in the competition, Joshua McKinley. We did see Mr. More-Is-Better advising the Mormon Josh not to use a clutch or "any accessories" on his model as it would "take away from his look." Was that honest advice? It doesn't sound like advice Josh M. would take himself, so it does make me wonder how sincere it was (especially since Josh C went home this week for being too boring!). But sadly, Josh Christensen seems to have been born without guile. He cannot lie. He cannot detect lies. He cannot form opinions stronger than, "I hope they like it" and "Please let me be so-so today!" Even that goal was ultimately out of his reach. Oh well.

Other designers were completely IN LOVE with their choice of raw materials. If I had been in the workroom listening to Anthony Ryan brag about his flippin' bird seed and how he was SO unconventional because he did something NO ONE ELSE did, I probably would have punched him in his one remaining testicle (for further description of this, please see Laura Bennett's blog this week). At the end of the day he made a dress from muslin and embellished it with bird seeds. It was nice and, to be fair, probably my favourite look of the day, but it wasn't GENIUS on a level no one could have possibly DREAMED OF, like Anthony would have you believe.

For the most part I agreed with the judges' decisions in every aspect except possibly their reaction to Olivier's dress. I don't get Olivier. At all. I want to like him because he's young and pretty and has a sweet accent (which we learned this week is straight up FAKE since he was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and only moved to London when he was sixteen, before moving to Milan for college!). I want to like the fact that he has a muted colour palette and a subtle sense of style. After all, I'm a big fan of that Colonial British colour palette circa 1870-1920: the mix of whites, creams and neutrals matched with preppy but somewhat sporty tailoring. I loved everything they wore in Legends of the Fall or Out of Africa, for instance.







But Olivier doesn't come across that way to me. His clothes (including the ones he wears himself) just seem like he bought them at Good Will from the estate of some old lady with bad taste. They're frumpy, weird-fitting, and combine neutrals in a way that makes them look cheap instead of expensive. This week his dress was slightly more interesting because of the use of the unconventional materials, but it still made his model look about 10 dress sizes bigger and 10 years older than she is. But what do I know? Maybe his model is just a 38-year-old woman who wears a size 12. Good for her. She got a job as a runway model on a popular TV show. The future is now!

I think the most interesting part of these unconventional materials challenges is the way in which so many designers will bend, warp and manipulate the weird materials until they look like something exactly like what they sent down the runway the previous week.


Here are some examples:




Anthony's almost-winning birdseed dress. It's pretty great and it deserves to be praised. Luckily, I don't need to praise it because Anthony already did it for me every single time he opened his mouth. We get it, Anthony! You're very impressed with yourself. Well, at least he didn't talk about his genitals as much this week.



I'm a little worried about Anya because it looks like she just recreated her look from last week using different materials. Hopefully she has more to show than colourful, strappy halter tops with charcoal bottoms.



When I first saw Betsy Ross's design I thought it was pretty great, but that's probably just because it reminded me of a pride flag. I'm hoping she does more dresses that remind me of flags so I can keep calling her Betsy Ross.



Jesus, Bert, were you even TRYING? I think I made this exact dress for my Barbie when I was six. And I'm pretty sure mine was better.



When I saw Bryce's design come down the runway, I assumed he had chosen a large leather belt from the accessories wall. But now that I'm looking at it...is that the model's midriff?? If so, it is NOT flattering. If not, then, uh, why would he choose a big bulky belt that is EXACTLY THE SAME COLOUR AS THE MODEL'S SKIN? He should have gone home just for that!



Cecilia's dress is...wait, what the hell is that thing in the middle of it? Is it a belt? Is it just randomly placed zippers? I can't believe she made a dress out of DOG FOOD and still managed to make me focus only on the ugliness of her accessories. Is that good? As in, oh hey, the dog food isn't the ugliest part of the look, so that's something...



Sure, last week Danielle put her model in a weird, unflattering bronzy-brown top and ill-fitting, ugly bluish shorts, but this week it's TOTALLY different. This week it's a skirt.



Here Fallene shows off her hatred of the colour orange, despite the fact that it's all she seems to own. At least own your decisions, Fallene! If Gordon Ramsay were a judge on this show he'd have kicked you off for not defending this dress.



Joshua Christensen's model always looks so ANGRY. And poorly dressed.



Joshua McKinley's over use of accessories didn't bother me as much as it bothered the judges but I wasn't keen on the flounciness of the top, especially at that length. I was afraid we were going to see bottom boob at any minute.



Julie claimed her look was "military inspired"--if by "military" she means "boy scout uniform that had to be cut up and woven to make an emergency raft only to discover that they had an inflatable raft the whole time so you can just go ahead and put your uniform back on now."




Kimberly's look is...sorry, that's her name, right? Kimberly? I keep waiting for her to stop being forgettable but these runway looks of hers are NOT helping the cause.



Eh. It's okay. The styling's about as good as it could be, considering the dress is only okay. I kind of wish Laura Kathleen had found a way to make her doggie cone skirt work. She might have been in the bottom three but she definitely would not have gone home for being boring.



If "underwhelming" was a colour, it would be whatever colour Olivier and his model are wearing at any given moment.



I think Viktor should have been a more serious contender for the win. I think he had the best technique and the best styling. Maybe this dress didn't have as much "wow factor" as some of the others, but it also didn't have as much "ugly factor" as most of them either.



The judges didn't have any trouble deciding who was in the top and who was in the bottom this week, although they did argue quite a bit over which boring dress was the MOST boring. Also I thought Heidi and Nina were going to come to blows over the winning dress. Heidi preferred Anthony's bird seed dress but, as usual, Nina got her way and Olivier WON!


I think the contestants are lucky it wasn't a double (or triple) elimination this week, because all of the bottom three were in serious jeopardy. The best moment of the episode was when the guest judge reprimanded Fallene for her boring choices, saying a "ballgown covered in kitty toys" would have been better. "I could have done that," said Fallene, pretending she had considered it at all. "But I was pretty sure that would get me sent home." To which Michael Kors snapped, "And you think this is going well?" But in the end it was poor sweet (read: dumb) Joshua Christensen who was OUT, having proven himself too boring (and dumb) to continue on. I'm sure when someone explains to him what happened, he'll be devastated.  




NEXT WEEK: The group challenge FINALLY! Well, it's teams of two, but that might be even better. I want to see these people start to fight!!