PR9EP6: Avant-awful

Well, I missed a week, so before we jump on last night's train, and before last night's train wreck, let's bullet-point PR9EP5: One Day You're In, One Day You're Out, One Day Your Saved, One Day you Quit:

• Cecelia, who should have been Auf'd last week, decides to Auf herself and Heidi basically says, Byeeeeee.
• Josh C comes back and is still a giggly high-pitched schoolgirl of some indeterminate sexual orientation--or so he says, or doesn't say.
• Olivier literally takes a mighty tumble...a precursor for this week? And his dress was a Little House On The Sad Prairie.
• Josh M went all bitchy young queen and made Becky cry and made Bert snap, but he was declared a co-winner for helping with Anya's dress. Huh? What? Huh?
• Bert was a bitchy old queen, which always trumps a bitchy young queen. Sewing room. 'Nuff said.
• Viktor won with a motorcycle jacket and was actually nice this week.
• Becky is so not dowdy! She has a blue streak in her hair!
• Anya makes the award-winning design and the award goes to Josh M.
• Bryce showed up and actually was not in the Bottom.
• Kim made a pair of boxy ugly shorts.
• Laura missed the glam boat and made an outfit that looked like someone worked in the engine room of the glam boat.
• Anthony Ryan should have gone home because his outfit was the worst EVER! But he sparked a Nina/Heidi Battle, with Heidi declaring he should go because, after all, One day you're IN, one day you're OUT!
• But Danielle was sent packing for another, yes, another, green chiffon blouse. Damn. If only the show was called Project Green Chiffon Blouse we could end the season now.

On to this weeks challenge: to work with an art student from the Harlem School of the Arts and create a painting to inspire an avant-garde look. Now, that's a mouthful, which probably explains why most of the designers missed to avant-garde bus.

Becky
Her art student created some sort of outer space view of planets and shooting stars. Becky took this to mean make an asymmetrical dress out of denim....OUT OF MOTHER EFFIN' DENIM....and make some squares to hang on it.
Well, of course, that screams outer space and avant-garde. Denim and Squares. Sounds more like a country dance club.Y'all come on down to Denim and Squares for a rootin' tootin' good time! Yee! Haw!
But I digress.
Becky spent a lot of time in the work room critiquing Laura's dress, calling it a bad prom dress and something to hide a toilet paper roll. Um, Becky, honey? Eyes on your own work. Seriously,. Had you taken as much time to critique your own design you might have come up with something that kept you in the middle and forgettable.
In the end, her weird floppy hem didn't look avant-garde or earthy or spacey. Well, it did look spacey, but that don't get you to the tents.
Oh.My.God.Becky.
To the tents. I think the only tent in Becky's future ins the medical tent at the next Lilith Fair.

KIMBERLY
She got the bird. But in a good way. Her art student painted a sort of phoenix, rising from the ashes. And Kimberly could have gone all literal--lord knows she bought enough feathers and was all set to make a literal wing, until good sense, AKA art student and Tim Gunn, stepped in.
But she pulled it off. The sleeve that is. Pulled it off and tossed it away. But kept the pleathah--cuz she cain't afford leathah--and create a very strong interpretation of the bird painting without going overboard. Or over feathered.
Her dress ended up looking powerful and strong. I'd thought she was going Top Three because hers was one of the few that i thought of as avant-garde, but she went Middle of the Road.
But, she gets points for not making a pant. Pant; Nina taught me well.

BRYCE
As I said, Bryce showed up last week, and received all sorts of props for his dress. And this week, his artwork was of The Sad Girl. In orange and blue. Bryce is afraid of orange, but he stuffs away his fear like he used to stuff away his homosexuality, and went orange. And blue.
it might have been a little safe. a simple orange top with a poofy blue skirt, but then he turned the top into a straitjacket of sorts, and the dress suddenly became The Sad Girl.
in an asylum.
On the runway he worried about the orange and blue but he ended up being safe--something Josh M thinks Bryce needs to stop doing. I have a few words about Josh M later.
All in all, I liked it. 
Top Three? It could have taken Josh M's slot. it wasn't a winner--that should have been Kimberly--but it wasn't a loser. Safe!

VIKTOR
His art student should have been on the show this season, even if she doesn't exactly know what a bustier is; she has more fashion sense in her perky little smile than half that workroom.
Together, Viktor and Skye created an airy, flowy work of art, and Viktor decided to run with it, but to give it an edge. I think he missed the edge; he came close, but he didn't go over. He designed a beautiful, flowy, watery, ethereal gown  that was draped and tied and shredded.
It worked.
But what also worked [my nerves] was the old Viktor resurfacing to bag on every other designer in the room. He ripped Kimberly's fabric and Anya's feathers and Josh C's fur and Becky's denim and Olivier's slowness and steadiness. The only one he didn't bag on was Bert; he liked Bert's.
He should have gone home for that alone.
All I got from his this week was fluttery and bitchy.
Not enough to win, Vik!

ANYA
Fire trees. 
That was her artwork. 
Though I guess it's better than firecrotch, eh Lohan?
So, again, fire trees. And Anya gets feathers and drapery fabric. The feathers don't say fire tree and neither does a big balloon skirt made of heavy fabric. That says, I have a fat ass and I'm going to hide in the window.
Seriously. look at that picture. It looks like a torpedo with an Afro head on it. But at least we didn't get any I can't believe she's still here because she can't sew moments. I'm over those.
Still, that's all I have from Anya. It's neither here nor there; it's neither top or bottom.
All I get from her is that accent, which I love. And which reminds me of how much I hate Olivier's phony Asian-British thing he's got going on.
YOU'RE FROM OHIO!!!!!!


TOP THREE

LAURA
Her painting was of a flower and some thorns, which describes Laura to a tee. She's pretty like a flower, but she's got some thorns, and they are aimed right at Becky, though I don't know why.
She starts to go all ruffly and I'm thinking it's gonna look a little bed skirt-y, but then she pulls out this idea of making a corset striated with a dark green that would mimic the thorns. And she burns the edges of her fabric to create the wilted edge of the flower.
Now, that sounds literal, but it wasn't. It didn't looks like flowers and thorns at all. It looked, well, like a fairy made of non-constructed ruffles. Which I gather is a good thing since she made Top Three.
Guest judge Zanna Roberts Rassi--taking the spot of my beloved Nina Garcia--didn't see the correlation between the art and the dress until Laura explained the thorns and the boning. Then Zanna liked it. Fellow guest judge, and a personal hottie of mine, Kenneth Cole, loved the fabric and the boning, as did Michael Kors. Heidi loved the softness and the hardness of the dress.
it was pretty, hell, it was beautiful, but was it avant-garde? Laura explained that Lady Gaga wears avant-garde clothes but I couldn't see Gaga in this, unless it was made of real thorns.
That would be avant-garde. And hard to get near!

Josh M
His piece of art was a tree, dead from the ground up and alive beneath the earth. He didn't get it. Even he said he doesn't do earthy he does fake...like his hair tan teeth voice and personality.
I'm a little over this princess, can you tell?
He buys neoprene fabric and paints it to look like bark. Um, that's avant-garde? Or is that costume? Because the last time I saw a tree costume it was smacking an apple out of Dorthy's hand on the road to Oz. And that was in 1939. Yeah. Not so avant-garde in 2011, Joshy.
Then he slinks over to Becky to tell her that he loves her design, after which he tells us that her new improved creativity is solely because of the beat-down he gave her last week. Well Joshy, if you want to take credit for Denim and Squares, have at it.
Seriously, I'm over him.
However, I loved the top. The color and the volume were lovely, and looked like a tree on fire--Wait! Didn't Anya have fire trees and Josh have dead tree? Me thinks someone is pilfering a little Anya again.
I hated the skirt. Even the addition of his initials, his mother's initials, and a little heart--like it was carved into the bark of the tree skirt--couldn't save it for me. Cos-tume.
Still, those wacky judges loved it. Heidi liked the painted skirt, as did Kenneth Cole. Kors thought it was spectacular, top to bottom, er, flora to trunk, and Zanna loved the skirt.
Okay, so three of four complimented just the skirt and he gets Top Three? For half a good outfit.
Oh honey. No. This win will go to his head as we see from promos for next week when Josh melts down.

ANTHONY RYAN
After the debacle of last week, when Nina Garcia had to promise one of her kidneys to Heidi in case she needed to it, to keep Anthony on the show, he needed to step up.
And he did.
His collaborative artwork was a self-portrait of himself and his art student. And Anthony was inspired by the colors--this from the colorblind one--and the brush strokes. So, he opted for a sheer fabric embellished with thicker fabric strokes.
And, after collaborating with the artist on her painting, he worked with her on his design. When she said the orange must go, he ripped it off--and apparently gave it to Bryce?
His look on the runway was literal without looking literal. It looked like the painting in that the colors were similar, and the fabric brush strokes truly mimicked the actual brush strokes. But it wasn't literal. It was fashion.
It wasn't, sadly, avant-garde, but then so few were.
Heidi loved it, saying it was sexy, modern, simple and powerful. Kors liked the dimension of the fabric strokes and the sheer fabric, while Zanna also liked the brush strokes. Kenneth Cole thought the execution lacked refinement; the hem was undone, but was that intentional or not?
Must not have been because it got Anthony Ryan his first win of the season.


BOTTOM THREE

OLIVIER
Seriously. That accent must be stopped. But first, let me apologize in advance for making fun of it. See, sometimes it sounds Asian, sometimes it sounds British, sometimes it sounds like a bastard child of Chinese and British. It never sounds like it's from O-H-I-O.
Instead of I'd like sausages and potatoes please, it becomes I'd like some bangers and mash, please, or it becomes I like banger mash please. It has to stop.
And, while we're stopping that, stop with the sad sack routine, too. Oh, you listen to depressing music. Oh, you like muted colors. Oh, you like simple design. Snap out of it! Quick, someone call Cher and have her smack some sense into him.
We get it. Your palette is muted, your taste is simple, you can't manage your time. And you cannot grasp what Tim is telling you when he tells you to step up. Your artwork was bright and colorful, and you picked gray and blue. Pay.Attention.
And lose the accent!!
You glued the dress to your model? WTF! Luckily that was caught on camera and Tim Gunn  sprinted--well, as much as one can sprint in a suit--into the workroom for the scolding. No glue EVER!!!!
The other designers call him "slow and steady" but this ain't no fairy tale, no matter how many fairies are on the show. Slow and steady don't win this race, Ollie.
His dress was sad, like his music and his voice and his color palette. It was also cut way too high. Had the model taken bolder strides there might have been some good china on display.
Heidi absolutely hated it; in Olivier speak that's HeidiHate. Zanna liked half the top, but hated the other half and the entire bottom and the color. In Olivier-speak, that's ZannaHate. Kors liked the bodice, but warned that Olivier needs to explode. That's Olivier-speak for OllieGoBoom or OllieGoBackOhio. Kenneth Cole also liked half the top but thought there were too many details and hemlines and shapes. Olivier-speak for KnockFuckOff.
Olivier should have gone home for this mess, but he got saved.
OllieHappy.

BERT
His student was a cubist and since Bert is a bit of a square, this should have been a match made in heaven.
Yeah, not so much.
Bert hopped on board the Literal Train and rode it to Literal Mood and bought Literal Fabric and made a Literal Outfit. Literally.
He made oven mitts in all shapes and sizes and then attached them to a pair of old man pants; you know, the kind that buckle just under the chin? But these old man pants were also balloons and made his model look like an Oompa-Loompa after a month on Jenny Craig.
Bert had decided avant-garde didn't need to be exaggerated and then he literally exaggerated it.
Zanna decided that the artwork and the fashion weren't harmonious. Um, Zanna? Get me Nina. The art and the fashion were the exact same freaking thing! Kors said avant-garde could be beautiful, just oddly beautiful, but this didn't look modern. He told Bert to get ugly. Obviously, Kors hasn't been watching the workroom feed from last week. Kenneth Cole thought it was too outside the box, when, in fact, it was a box, and a circle and a triangle, stuffed with sponges and appliqued to big-ass pants.
Heidi was obviously having a  stroke because she liked it, and she alone saved Bert from an Auf'ing he deserved.

JOSH C
So, his first solo challenge after being Auf'd, resurrected and put on Team Olivier and Viktor last week.
And he gets the best artwork possible. A wolf. A wolf whose ribcage is open to show its heart. I mean, you could go all sorts of ways with this, and Josh C did.
Sadly, he went all those ways and then came back with nothing. Except that nervous girl giggle that says, I wanna come out, I do!
At Mood, his first trip ever--where he's given $300 and spends $170--he goes for leather or pleather and faux fur. Now, the other designers derided the fur and told him so, but the outift needed fur. Not a lot, mind you, but enough that would create the softness in the painting--a wolf with a heart.
And Josh C put a bejeweled heart on the model, which was a nice touch, and then he took it off. He designed a long skirt, very full, and ruffled, and then chopped it off into a leather-pleather mini.
He lost his whole design because he was second-guessing himself and listening to the other designers. Kors said it was neither avant-garde nor fashion, but more Victorian cocktail waitress in Vegas. Heidi called it Halloween Whore, or Halloween Horrible. Zanna thought it trashy and not beautiful, while Kenneth Cole thought the proportions were off.
it didn't read wolf. It didn't read heart of wolf.
it read Auf'.
Again.
I was going to post Josh's picture from the website, but I deleted it from my computer the last time he was Auf'd and it really isn't worth the three seconds it would take to find it again.
And, I hate to be rude--that's funny cuz it's sooooo not true--but, Josh? Don't come back.