PR8EP2: Why, I Do De-Marie-Claire!

Aaaah, another opening, another show. From Phillie, to Boston to Balti-mo........I loves a good showtune, but let's get down to brass tacks before Jason decides he needs brass tacks to keep his dress on his model.
Some of the gals are bemoaning the loss of McKell because, although her dress was really simple and not that good, they had each formed an everlasting friendship with her during the five hours they knew her.
Right.
Meanwhile, in the men's apartment, Michael C. is enthralled by Andy's make-up airbrushing system, and Andy is begging not to be judged. Sorry Andy. Wrong show, wrong blog. I mean, really, you airbrush makeup onto your face everyday? What's next? One of those tubes from the Jetsons that sends you flying down to Parsons and dresses you on the way? Yeah, I won't hold my breath, and I won't use an airbrush to apply my makeup. I use a trowel and a garden rake like everyone else.

THE CHALLENGE
The designtestants meet Heidi and Tim, and Marie Claire Editor-in-Chief, Miranda Priestly, er, Joanna Coles, in the obligatory up-on-the-roof-Project-Runway shot. But wait; there's no champagne this time? C'mon Lifetime, Bravo sprung for the bubbly. Maybe if you hadn't made the show ninety minutes we could have had a drink why we talked.
But I digress.
Jennifer Coles tells the designtestants that they will create a dress for the Maire Claire woman, and that the winning designer will have a real-live-professional photographer photograph their dress for a forty-foot tall billboard in Times Square, between Disney and GMA and MTV. Cute Sweet Obligatory Gay Guy, Christopher, is so overcome by the idea of a billboard: "It's just so operatic, I can't stand it."
And by that he means, long, boring, and in a language no one understands.
Coles then describes for them the ideal Marie Claire woman; she is, and please, remember these words as we move forward into the shredding of the designers and their designs, intelligent, practical, fashion forward, confident and sexy.
Let's rip:


AJ decided after listening to Coles describe the Marie Claire woman, to throw all that information out the window and go grungy and punk and Courtney Love. Really, AJ? Intelligent. Confident. Sexy. Yeah, that's shrieks Courtney.
Now, to be fair, his dress doesn't look so much Courtney Love as it looks Diana-Ross-Does-Lunch, so I am a bit surprised. It's a chic grunge, if there is such a thing.
But there is that weird puffiness in the front like maybe Diana had one too many California Rolls at the sushi place or something.
But, his raincoat-yellow-pseudo-grunge gets a pass.
What doesn't get a pass however, from me, is AJ's histrionics. I have already dubbed him this season's Drama Queen, but his near nervous breakdown after being given a pass was nothing short of operatic--to quote Christopher. It was like he was channeling Mimi in La Boheme and was going to literally die. Right there.
Save the histrionics, AJ. That is the second time I've warned you.

Andy. Love Andy. I can even forget the airbursh blush machine in his room.
I love his utterly complete looks. The blouse is sexy and flirty and the way the little sleeves can be pulled down is very cool.
And the pants say sexy and confident and fashion forward with the lavender stripe NOT DOWN THE SIDE, but down the back.
This is the second week in a row that I've thought Andy should have won and the second week in a row he is just safe.
I am not happy.

April's dress looked to me to be more of a companion piece to Andy's. The purply, fluffy top, and the gray bottoms. I smell plagiarist, April.
But I don't smell much more, because, except for your pronouncement that Peach Cobbler will play the role of your surrogate mother on the show, we didn't get to see you too much.
Middle-of-the-road is nice, but it don't get you on TV or to the tents.

Casanova went, as Tim said, "from prostitute to nunnery" with this bland concoction. I've seen it a thousand times and a thousand times better.
Plus, Casanova spends an awful lot of time trying to get the other designers to help him, critique him, translate for him. AJ nearly went hissy again when Casanova asked him about shoulders: "I will not sew your design for you." Gretchen, however, finds Casanova charming, which says volumes about her taste level.
And, Nicholas, the crier, thinks Casanova is playing the Ricky Ricardo card and is just pretending not to understand English, and I kind of agree. I think it's a bit of an act, and when the designers come to recognize it, one or more of them might take him from the balls.
Just sayin'.

Christopher is so cute and so sweet and so nice.
And so is his design. It's quaint and well-made but not fashion forward or sexy.
He may be able to play the sweet and nice designer for awhile but he needs to step up his game, and bring on the bitch, if he wants to stay.
One criticism: What is it with gay men, t-shirts and big scarves. Now, I've been a member longer than I care to remember, but I never got the Gay Agenda memo regarding big scarves and t-shirts. So, boys, unless it comes direct from the Homo Office, stop it.
Okay, two criticisms; More Chris. He's cute, Yes, even with the big scarf.
Consider those my Public Service Announcements.

Ivy.
Last week she got the "I am In It To Win It" bitch edit and this week she got the Nearly Invisible edit.
Of course, her boring design didn't help matters. She said she created something that was translucent and stiff. Yeah, I've seen translucent and stiff, and I ain't wearing it outta the house, Ivy.
Imagine that on a billboard forty feet tall. Doesn't it read Potato Sack? Or Laundry Bag? What it doesn't read is winner, or even Top Three. And speaking of reading, I am emailing the producers of PR to have someone else read Ivy's lines, to dub her, as they say, because her voice is quite fingernails-on-chalkboard.

Kristen, who admits she makes mistakes, apparently mistook this challenge for the Create A Dress From Garbage Challenge, because this mess isn't even a Hot Mess.
It's a Cold Cold Mess that's been sitting under the bed for so long that even the hottest iron won't get the wrinkles out. I do get it, however, that it's her aesthetic, this sort of deconstructed hodgepodge of odd shapes and uneven hems, and frayed edges, but confident sexy practical it is not.
What I didn't get was that she called her design "serious." As in seriously bad, I think, because I don't see a confident woman saying Let me jump into this heap of rags and off we'll go to the board meeting.
Plus, Kristin seems to be the know-it-all bitch, for now.

Michael C. The Funny One.
The Funny One with the Oh So Bad Taste.
He announces during his interview that he has this one "in the bag" and I'm thinking maybe it's the same bag Ivy found her dress.
But, what was great about this, was that his first attempt he thought was, hands down, the winning dress, until Tim showed up and called it Blanche Deveraux.
Honey, even Blanche wouldn't leave the house in the Disco-Wannabe.
But, Michael argues, it's fashion-forward. At which point Tim spins the dress form around an points to the ginormous bridesmaid bow on the back, and says "Fashion forward?"
SNAP!
Needless to say, Michael rethought, recut, resewed, rehemmed, and de-bowed the dress before it took the catwalk.

Michael D. doesn't sketch. He holds colored pencils and sweats and moans and then puts them away. Not a wise move.
See, when you don't sketch and you don't plan you end up with a dress with wings, and a dress you can see through, and a dress that causes even it's designer to sit stone-faced as it runs down the runway, so short that the model has to tug on it, hoping to avoid Nina's Death Glare.
Too short. Too see-thru. Too bad.
It still gets a pass.

Sarah's dress also fails to impress.
It reminds me of Christopher's a little, and since she isn't the Hot Gay Nerd I don't like it.
I also don't like the little bands of colored capped sleeves.
Epaulets? Sarah?
The last time epaulets were in fashion Michael Jackson was alive and carrying a live monkey down a red carpet somewhere.
Rethink that, hon, or it's to the Bottom Three for you.
And speaking of.......

BOTTOM THREE

Peach Cobbler--and really, with a name like Peach Cobbler, shouldn't she be making shoes?

We get it. You're the "old lady." But that doesn't mean you have to design old lady clothes. And then style your model like she's on the cover of a Sear's catalogue circa 1956. Seriously.

I mean you went looking for a "cotton tweedy houndstoothy" fabric and you came up with something you, yourself, dubbed Barbie's sofa. To me, it was more Barbie's shower curtain, and she ain't coming out from behind it until she has something decent to wear.

And you knew that because you created three different looks for this challenge, tossing each one in the garbage, to be picked up by Ivy and used later, I imagine. Stop it, old lady. You're funny; you're perky. I don't usually like perky, but on you, I do.

I just don't like this look.

The judges called it unsexy; Kors said it was an Amish cocktail dress; Joanna Coles said it looked like an animal was crawling down the back of it. But my best gal pal Nina summed it up best when she called it Desperate housewife.

But the fact that she works fast, and they liked the way it was sewn, earns Peach a save.

Jason. The straight guy, who reminded us again and again that he is a straight man in a gay man's world. Well, Jason, there are lots of straight men in fashion. Why Michael Kors is.........Oh.....Well, then what about Calvin Klein........Him, too?................Georgio Armani? Marc Jacobs? Badgley? Surely, Mischka? Really? Well, maybe Jason's right.
Anyway.
First off, thanks for losing the Clockwork Orange bowler. You look much hotter without it, gay or straight, and me thinks you might be more 'mo than hetero.
Jason wanted to make a Buzz Lightyear dress that went to infinity and beyond; or, he wanted to honor PR8 by making a dress with an 8 in it. Either way, it was eight times awful, or you could wear it forever and it would never be finished, or in style, or something a Marie Claire woman would make.
Plus, again, you didn't finish it. Two weeks in a row and you need safety pins, glue, spit, and, obviously, hair gel and eyebrow wax, to hold it together. And you didn't. The judges thought it ugly. Joanna Coles literally had to be retained by Nina to keep from coming on to the runway and beating your ass.
Plus, at the photo shoot you picked the picture with the head-on shot of the hole in the dress being held together with pins. I think Jason was a'scurred of all those homos and he sabotaged himself so he wouldn't feel the pressure to come out.
He was an odd, mean-spirited duck, who didn't even wait for Tim's bonne chance before running home to his straight life where no one understands him and he can't finish a garment in less than a month.
Yeah, he got the boot. A Joanna Coles boot.

Nicholas likes circles. So he took one from the Bottom Three last week to the Bottom Three this week.

Not smart.

But still, his love of all things circular caused him to make a cape out of a circle and put it on his model. Um, Nicholas, a cicle looks like a zero, and that's what you gave us. Zero. The skirt was stiff and tight and short in the front and long in the back, while the top was soft and flowy and missing the back.

Gretchen accused you of stealing her idea from last week wehn she did the backless thing. I guess Gretchen thinks she invented backless. You didn't, Gretch. What Nicholas did steal, was that little girl clap he gave as his dress paraded down the runway. That alone should have gotten him the boot, but then he foreshadowed his own doom, when he whispered, It's going to be hard for them to deide who's in the bottom.

Um, no, it isn't Nicholas. it's you, and cue the tears.

Nina tells him the dress is too much...seams...capes...asymetry, while Joanna Coles calls it utterly unsexy, which sounds utterly sexy when said with an English accent. Michael Kors dubbed the cape "unphotographable".

Nicholas got the shocking double elimination and began weeping on the runway, and then outright sobbing as he entered to designtestant waiting room. AJ, of the Histrionics, immediately ran to him and told him to calm down. AJ? Really?

And now....

TOP THREE

Mondo's fun and flirty dress gets a top spot.
Mondo who doesn't sketch but instead made a shopping list. Milk. Eggs. Personality.
Mondo got the Poor Me Edit, because he spends all his time by himself and wonders why no one talks to him. In the workroom, Nicholas marveled at the way Mondo just works and works and doesn't talk; you should have tried it Nicholas. You could have saved some tears for next weeks elimination.
Heidi liked it and, when Mondo mentioned that Mary Tyler Moore inspired the way he photographed the dress, Joanna Coles got all verklempt, well, as verklempt as the British can get, because MTM inspired her to move to America, to Minneapolis, where it's cold, and she figured she'd keep better. A Rhoda shout-out for those in the MTM know.
It was exuberant and confident and fun, but just enough for third place.
Gollum, er, Mondo, skulks back to the waiting room and disappears into the couch.

Valerie went red. Bold, confident, Marie Claire red. In fact, it was the exact same shade of red that Joanna Coles wore to the judging. Heidi said powerful women wear red, and Coles said, "I am powerful," and the she high-kicked Jason in the mouth for his infinitely bad dress.
Valerie's, however, was lovely. The collar, as Nina said, framed the face, and the dress was modern and fashion forward and sexy, yet conservative. The judges all agree that this dress is a cover dress and would looks fabulous on a billboard so Valerie gets the win!
Woo hoo!
What?
Second place? WTF?
Dear goddess, not Gretchen again.

Gretchen decided to make pants because she's never made pants without help. This is what's called the We're-Going-To-Trick-You-Into-Thinking-She'll-Blow-It-But-She-Won't reality show trick--though it could use a shorter name.
The judges raved about this and I sat there dumbfounded. Heidi called it cool and I thought it was cool if was still 1980. Kors said it was modern and fashion forward. Again, if it was 1980. Do me a favor, y'all, look at this hot mess. Got the picture? Now, add roller skates and sequined headband and you've got Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu. Fashion forward my hairy butt.
And this gets the win.
The second win in two weeks for Gretchen, who I thought was the cool kinda hippy girl from the Northwest, but when she walked into the waiting room and thanked the other designers for supporting her, I so wanted Joanna Coles to go all Queen Mother on her ass.
Valerie was robbed.

Andy was robbed of a Top Three finish.
If this turns into the Gretchen show, I'ma turn it off.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll keep it on and bitch and kvetch and moan like a straight guy named Jason.