PR8EP3: Party Like It Cost $19.99

First off, I am loving the production team and their masterful use of editing.
I loved the idea of the show opening with Ivy congratulating Gretchen on her second win, and Gretchen announcing that she loves how the group is so caring and loving.
Cut to the boy's apartment and Mikey D saying, "I hate that bitch."
Back to Gretchen, who says she knows the others knew she would win , before she won, and were rooting for her.
Now cut to April: "Gretchen's winning is annoying." And Peach talking about the increase in girth of Gretchen's head from the first win to the second. We'll see more of that girth as the episode progresses.
CHALLENGE
Take a 100-bucks, and spend it at the Party Glitters store, creating an outfit out of unusual items. Tim gathers the designtestants in front of the store, and tells them this is their chance to go wild, to think outside the box, to be inventive.
Tim: "I want you to know that our judges don't respond well to materials that correspond as fabrics...table cloths, wrapping paper....."
The designers flood the store like club kids looking for a party. There are leis and paper plates, plastic cups and palm trees, ribbons and foam flowers. It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad world up in there.
Except for Casanova, who just doesn't get the challenge. Then he spies "plosh pubbies" and realizes he can use the animal, um, skins, as fabric, and off he goes to the table cloth aisle.
Two minutes earlier: Tim: "I want you to know that our judges don't respond well to materials that correspond as fabrics...table cloths, wrapping paper....."
As the plosh pubbies might say, Ruh roh!
AJ, naturally, thinks this is his challenge to win because this is what he does, you know, gluing cupcakes and dolls to tulle and calling it a dress. Gretchen, on the other hand, denounces the challenge as cheese, because she doesn't do cheese. Her aesthetic, and we'll hear her discuss her aesthetic ad nauseum--I know this because I literally threw up the next time she mentioned it--throughout the episode.
In the interests of openness and honesty, I must say that, during the first episode meet-and-greet, I liked Gretchen. I thought of her as the Portland Oregon Bohemian designer and liked her personality. Even when she won with that bland, er, black dress with the glitter-capped-sleeves, I thought, Well, okay. It's kinda good...[though not as good as Andy's].
But when she won the second week for that Olivia Newton-John Xanadu reject, I wondered who she was schtupping on the show. And now, this week, she goes from nice Urban Boho, to know-it-all bitch. I am so ready for her to go bottom three.
But I digress.
Let's rip....

Peach Cobbler
She told Tim she was thinking of doing something subtle, as she sat next to a table of hot pink napkins and zebra print plastic cups. Yeah, Peach, that says subtle.
As a trainwreck.
Worried that she's taking this all too seriously, Tim tells Peach she has a piece of coal up her ass, and to squeeze it into a diamond already and pop it out.
And then use it to create a hat for this subtle design.
That said, I do like the fun of the dress. It screams party, but not in a bad, well, AJ way.
Peach Cobbler gets a pass.

Mondo
Gollum, er, Mondo went all girly and pink and cotton candy last night. But he is opening up a bit to the other designers. I loved how he wanted to wear a fake mustache, hopefully to throw off the judges? But he likes this challenge because it caused his hands to finally stop trembling.
And his dress is so stiff up top, that it doesn't tremble either. But it gets a fun and flirty pink girl passage to safety.

Michael D
He had a whole bunch of glittery streamers, but they do not make an appearance on his dress. Too bad, it might have saved this mess from looking like a disco lamp shade. The top is kinda fun, but the bottom literally looks like the collar I got from the vet when one of the cats had ear surgery.

That's not a pretty look on a feline, and so what made him think it would work on a girl?

Still, this unbelievably is not the worst, so Michael D gets a pass to the Stew Room.

Michael C
This is, as he says, flamenco meets Beyonce meets Michael C.

And that really isn't good.

I mean, the color is nice, the design looks all right, but it just screams over-the-top plastic dinnerware gown. And it doesn't help that his model is channeling Morticia on the runway.

On the upside, this bitch, Michael not the model, is funny. His little asides to AJ's rambling and Gretchen's posturing are priceless.

If, well, when, he gets Auf'd, I want the producers to keep him around for snark-entery because he's just that good.

Kristin

I liked Kristin's look. It says 1960s Go-go dancer, and of course, it helped that the producers chose a 60's musical theme to accompany her dress down the runway.

Kristin does her own thing, and to hell with what the other designers say, especially Ivy, who gave us Reality Show Quip # 435: She doesn't belong here.

The upside? The exchange between Kristin and Tim over the use of balls on her dress. Just to hear Tim Gunn announce to the world that he likes Wooly Balls is enough to keep me watching for years.

Even after Runway moves to the WE channel. I mean, isn't that the order? Bravo to Lifetime to WE, and finally SyFy?

Ivy

Her dress was a salute to glue gun.

It was napkins and Mylar shapes, glued to a muslin dress.

Sidenote: What's all this talk about people in New York being angry about a Muslin Mosque near Ground Zero? Is New York suddenly anti-designer? I mean, It's Muslin after all and....what? Oh. Muslim? Well, that still doesn't make sense.

My name is Bob and I approved this message.

Back to Ivy.

Her dress looked pretty, but it screamed mother-of-the-bride to me. And this was after the mother-of-the-bride helped herself to the catering truck. It's heavy and big and too long.

She called it garden party.

I call it compost.

Christopher

I adore Christopher.

But I want him to win something and get more screen time. He is so sweet that every time he comes onscreen I need to check my insulin levels. But that's okay, because I like looking at him. And I like hearing his crazy little laugh, like he showed off when he asked his model if people wear anklets and she simply said, 2010.

Christopher made a dress of napkins that looks like a beautiful dress. This dress, Ivy, says garden party. This says chic. This say he can take offbeat items and make them into something beautiful and wearable.

I adore Christopher.

April

This is the rocker chick dress.

I see Joan Jett puttin' another dime in the jukebox in this dress.

It looks like black and silver icicles, and that's good.

That said, the bottom half of the dress looked a little like an afterthought. It was obviously plastic cups cut up into a skirt, but without the pizazz and razor sharp edginess of the top.

But the threat of April cutting the judges with the outfit, earned her a ticket to next week

AJ

If I had to hear one more time how this was AJ's challenge I was going to go Elvis on the TV set. And most of that was AJ, talking incessantly about himself. He loves cupcakes and dolls and horsies and pink and yellow and ribbon and....and....and.....blibbety-0blah-blay-blue....sew already.

But then he backtracks, because he knows his outfit looks like the Party Glitter store blew chunks on muslin, and he tries to explain that he usually has more time to create a mess, and how he's not used to showing these kinds of messes with other designers who have to show these kinds of messes.

I mean, the beaded crocth? Vajazzling on PR? No, honey. No.

Kors also thought the fringe crotch was a bad idea. Nina thought he took every thing he had and threw it at the dress. Guest judge Besty Johnson wanted more.

Best interchange to the night?

Nina: It looks like a hot mess.

AJ: Thank you.

Heidi: That wasn't a compliment.

In the end AJ is saved.

Casanova

He is a couturier. Don't forget it. Other designers like circus clothes but he is a couturier. And he cannot use glitter and crap to make a gown. He needs fabric to make a crappy dress. And he accomplished that feat with tablecoths and plosh pubbies.

But what he showed was a trainwreck coming at you and a bus crash walking away.

And at least two plosh pubbies lost their lives so this could hit the runway.

Get me PETA on the line. ASAP!

Casanova didn't get the point of the challenge and the judges didn't get the point of his dress.

Kors called it a transvestite flamenco dancer at a funeral. And that was being nice.

Besty liked the diversity of the front and the back, but agreed it was like a100 dresses in one, and not one of them worked or was in style.

This, like his slutty Dubai Pole Dancer of week one, got him a pass.

Sarah

Heidi called it sad.

Nina said it looked like a child's cut-out dress.

Michael Kors said it didn't look finished.

I say she was thrown under the bus by that bitch Gretchen. While critiquing Sarah's work, Gretchen told Sarah to scrap the troipcial palette that Gretchen seemed to like back at the store, and just do the teal.

Why oh why, Sarah, would you listen to some one-note beeyotch who is up two challeneges? Didn't you hear Tim tell you that your palette was lovely, and the palm trees would lokk fun on the runway? Then, why oh why, did you follow Gretchen's advice?

This was sad, and looked cut-out and unfisnished, but if Sarah had done what she wanted, it may not have won, but it wouldn't have gotten her Auf'd.

I blame Gretchen. For everything.

Gretchen.

Bitch.

Gretchen reminds us time and again that she is a force to be reckoned with. Yeah, well, so are hurricanes and tornadoes and I like them as much as I like you.

As the two-time-snooze-dress-fest winner, Gretchen takes it upon herself to work the workroom and critique the other designers, offering advice, such as telling Sarah which bus to throw herself under.

The capper, however, were her instructions to the other designers to make sure they clean up their work tables. Seriously? Gretchen, you are neither producer, host or mentor, for this show, and I will be praying to Prada from now til the end of the season that you don't win, so please, for the love of Gucci, SHUT.UP!

Note to Gretchen: The role of workroom critic is played by, has been played by, and will be played, by Tim Gunn. I adore Tim Gunn, and you, sir, are no Tim Gunn.

Still, rather than focus her own work, she tells us Andy is very student designer and doesn't manage his time well. She tells us Valerie will be in the Top Three with her.

On the runway, Gretchen tells the judges that she handcut the streamers into chevrons, and crummpled the black bags into "leather" and made the cuff out of ballons and plastic so it looks tribal.

Meh.

It was all right, but the boots were a bad bad choice. Heide likee, Nina Likee, Kors likee, Betsy says it looks Tina Turtner on the bottom and Mad Max Mel Gibson on top. I wait for the top to threaten to beat up the bottom.

Gretchen does not win, but she gets a pass. I'm sure she'll remind us next week that she was Top Two! Top Two.

I'm starting to throw up a little now.

Valrie

She used SIX HUNDRED napkins to make this dress, and it looks as heavy as SIX HUNDRED napokins. I mean, it's pretty, the shape is nice, and she says she was channeling the My Fair Lady scene at the Ascot races with her tribute to black and white.

It's nice.

But it looks like napkins. Valerie? Honey? I like you. You should have won last week, but, sweetheart, take a gander at Christopher's dress of napkins and tell us, honestly, which is better.

It's his.

SIX HUNDRED napkins. i imagine this morning your phone is ringing off the hook from caterers who want to buy your napkin dress and put it on an employee who can work the hors d'oeuvres table, and offer bits of the dress for people with cocktails.

Andy

After two weeks of thinking Andy should have won, he finally pulls it off with a dress made almost entirely of ribbon. Ribbon folded, Ribbon braided. Ribbon glued.

But it was fabulous and textural and fun and the winner.

Heidi vowed to duke it out with Rihanna over who gets to wear it, and Nina thought it wonderful. Kors dubbed it exciting, and Besty Johnson, in kind of a halfhearted bit of praise, called it beautiful, but said she wanted more fun out of the dress.

I thought it looked fun and gorgeous and not at all like ribbon.

I thought it should win, and it did.

And the capper, was the look on Gtretchen's face when design-school-and-poor-time-management bested her on the runway. In the Stew Rom she called it lovely, but most people asked her to stop talking.

Heed the advice Gretchen.

Shut up and sew.

Better yet, shut up and go.