PR7EP9: Where The Streets Have No Style

This week the designtestants were unleashed on an unsuspecting planet, travelling to far-off locales like Chinatown, and Harlem, the Upper East Side, the East Village. Worse than being set free in the wilds of New York was the edict that the designtestants work in :::gasp::: pairs! Cue the sinister music and the Emilio snark: Anybody but Mila....anybody but Mila.
The fashion gods, Dolce and Gabbana granted Emilio's wish. He was named a team captain and picked SethAaaron; Anthony picked the Mila-clone Maya; Amy picked wack-a-hair Jonathan--seriously, bed hair in the middle of the day; JayNicholas was left with a few fabric scraps I like to call Mila. And she promptly colorblocked the scraps into an award-winning design!
I jest.
Off they go: Emilio and SethAaron to Harlem, which is, according to Emilio, chicken, church, and liquor. And, apparently a lot of tight tight denim.
Anthony and Maya limo down to Chinatown where the streets are narrow and dead geese line the windows. Anthony has a minor gay conniption fit.
Amy and Jonathan head up to the Upper East Side, which must be New Yawk-ese for Ghost Town because there isn't a lot of activity. There is, however, a lot of brick and wrought iron, which just screams fashion. To Amy and Jonathan. i might have gone clean lines and elegant, but what do I know?
JayNicholas and Mila head to the East Side, where is rough and tough and graffiti'd, and where JayNicholas keeps saying I wanna do this......I wanna do that...and Mila wants to scream. But, if a designer screams in the East Village does anybody really hear them?
Exactly. Let's rip:

Here we have Amy and Jonathan doing their best Upper East Side. They took their inspiration from the bricks and wrought iron.

On the left we have Amy, who declared that it was the brick color and texture that moved her to create a shirt dress to represent the UES. Um, Amy? Sweetie? I don't get "brick", and , well, it's not a shirtdress, it's a shirt, and I don't think some swanky boutique-going UES lady would wear that anywhere outside her own home, where she'd keep it in a closet and take it out only when it was time to beat the help. Personally, I think Amy hit herself in the head with a brick and dreamed this mess. Heidi summed it up nicely, or not nicely, when she called it ugly.

Jonathan, on the right, was inspired by the wrought iron railings and used that to do his patented [not] technique of cut-outs. He spent mots of the day cutting out what he thought were wrought iron shapes and sewing them onto a dress. In the end, he was so over-wrought that he added to hip panels to the dress that, well,as Nina said, cheapened it. I thought it chappened it....it made her look like she was wearing chaps.

Jonathan gets the save.

Amy gets Auf'd.

Team JayNicholas and Mila went walking through the East Village. JayNichaolas with a sketch pad and Mila with a loaded gun in her purse and one eye over her shoulder. The graffiti got them and they decided to go for a rough, graffiti rocker look.

Misfire.

JayNicholas, on the left, thought ill-fitting summed up the East Side, with a pair of pants that were baggy at the hips and tight at the ankles, and wrinkled in-between. The tank-top....A tank-top, Jay? Really? The only thing easier than a tank-top is a bolt of fabric belted at the waist. Heidi said it made her boobs go all over the place. I say it made her designer look like a boob.

On your right, we have Mila. I don't know how she did it, but, even with JayNicholas as the team leader, even with him having to sign off on her design, she managed to do yet another black-and-white-and-color-clocked-all-over design. It says Mila! The two designs, like the designers, didn't mesh. Mila kept saying she would make certain to tell the judges what she did, and I kept thinking, Isn't that the idea? JayNicholas was sure she'd throw him under the Project Runaway Bus. Didn't happen.

Mila and Jay, though bottom of the heap, are safe.

Anthony and Maya, Team Chinatown, or as I like to think of them, Team Queen'n'Clone, were inspired by the dragons and lanterns in Chinatown, but chose not to go too literal with a lot of red and gold, and firebreathing and stuff.

Maya, on the left, was inspired by the architecture of the Chinatown, chutes and ladders, and used that to create this day look. The skirt had hints of red, an homage to that dragon--the absentee Michael Korange [thanks DD]--and everyone but me loved the pagoda shape. Nina especially liked it because it wasn't literal. Yes, it was so not literal that I couldn't even see it at all!

To the right, Anthony's evening look was inspired by the crepe dragons, and the diamond shapes used to make the beast. Again, there is no literal translation of color, but the dragon idea is so obvious...not like that pagoda...why can't I see the pagoda? I liked it, but, well, no one mentioned it, we've seen this kind of asymmetrical-architectural design from Big Gay Anthony before. In fact, on one commercial break, they advertised the issue of Marie Claire where Heidi wears Anthony's design, and it's asymmetrical-architectural. Only in blue.

Still, the Queen'n'Clone get Top Two!

And that leaves us with those Angels of Harlem, those Harlem MoodTrotting boys, the fabulous, Emilio and SethAaron. It was all about color, and denim, and Billie Holiday.

Emilio's dress, on the left, was an homage to the Cotton Club and Billie Holiday, with a zippered twist up the front and a golden interior. it was simple, and classic, and totally Emilio, but I still cannot scrape the Twine'n'Bolt-kini off my eyes. I mean, this is nice; this is pretty; this is, well, safe. The only thing not safe is the Emilio-edit that portrays him as the bitchy snarky one. That I'm loving.

To the right, SethAaron, went all denim on his model's ass. He created yet another wicked boat with a mad high collar and all sorts of gold buttons and thread. The thing about SethAaron is that you know instantly which design is his. He's very urban and current...except, for that Good-Times-Jimmie-JJ-Walker hat. I thought the model might stop at the end of the runway and shout, Dyn-O-Mite!

In a PR first, there are two winners: Emilio and SethAaron.

I wasn't so impressed by this episode.

Jonathan does cut-outs.

Anthony does asymmetric architecture.

SethAaron does coats.

Mila colorblocks.

Emilio does simple and classic...most of the time.

Only Maya seems to be doing something different.

Maybe it's true, maybe the streets have no style, at least in the hands of the PR7 crew.

Fashion Assassin, out.