PR All-St★rs 2, EP 1: It's A ♪♫Disco Inferno♫♪

This week’s challenge is a retro one; it’s all about the night life, it’s all about the boogie. It’s all about Nine West shoes, and creating an updated, disco-inspired dress to go with Nine West shoes and the winner gets their look in a Nine West ad.

Nine West, anyone?

Let's rip ....

ALTHEA

She’s still a bit MIA this season. I know she’s there. I see her in the background in the workroom, and she spears on the runway, but other than that it’s like, “Who?”

She does get the Guffaw Of The Night Award, for saying, “I’m more interested in being in the mix with the real designers like Emilio and Uli … they’re deigning on my level.”

Her dress didn’t really read disco, because disco is dancing, and no girl could dance in that too-tight, strapped, things hanging off it mess.

It didn’t say 70s as much as it said WTF?

And safe.

JOSHUA

Joshua is also a bit MIA this season, though he was sick in the stomach for Wendy’s look and giving high praise for Anthony Ryan’s talent.

But, other than that, and being the first on the break-room dance floor—like a good queen should … we’re always first on and last off—we didn’t get a lot of Joshua this week.

And maybe that’s because his look was moore. Mary Tyler Moore. I mean, didn’t MTM wear this to work one day? It’s unbelievably bland and safe and so totally not disco.

Toot toot! Beep beep! Back up the garbage truck the trash is ready!

He’s gonna have to ratchet things up a bit or he could be singing “Last Dance.”

EMILIO

Okay, so Emilio is a good designer, I’ll give him that. And he was nominated for a Tony Award for costume design for Porgy and Bess. So, he has the ability, and he knows how to create looks for a different era, but….

Call me crazy, this isn’t disco.

This is high-falutin’ ball gown.

I mean, it was gorgeous and it moved like the wind machine that moves Beyonce's hair. But disco?

Emilio? Honey? If you’re a ‘mo, and I think you are, you should have nailed this one.

That said: Michelle Obama at the 2012 Inauguration Ball? I can see that!

LAURA

Laura was lamenting the fact that she as almost picked last to pick a shoe, but then said she thought it was because everyone’s afraid of her talent.

Um, that would be a no, Laura.

While you did capture the essence of disco in the jumpsuit—and who didn’t see Donna Summer in that thing?—you took it a step too far with the silvery-gold jacket. That took it to disco, to updated disco, to 70s bad TV sitcom disco.

Even Joanna Cole tried to talk you out of the blazer, but I’m sure all you heard was blah blah blah disco blah blah blah they're all afraid of my talent.

You had me at jumpsuit, but lost me at jacket.

SUEDE

What the hell was this?

Uli called it a gold refrigerator box, but I got batter dipped disco. And worn backwards at that. It didn’t look disco, it looked like the top was worn the right way, but the bottom was put on, as Miss Ross might sing, Upside down.

I’m’a say it: I don’t like Suede. I don’t think he’s a good designer, I think he just wants to be on TV, and I think all his talking about himself in the third person is his way of separating himself from all things Suede.

His last line, as Wendy got the book, about being Blue Suede, nearly sent me looking for a handgun and shooting out my TV.

ANTHONY RYAN

I’ve always liked him. I’ve always thought he was the most adorable thing that I just wanted to scoop him and carry him arou8nd in a handbag all day and listen to him talk.

But he really missed the mark on disco.

It was a cocktail dress; a color-blocked-cocktail dress. Well made, but not well done.

I hope he steps it up and goes all out. Sometimes I think these designers just play safe in order to get to The Tents but then when they get there. They’re all so safe it isn’t a show.

Step it up, ARA. Or I may have to leave my handbag by the side of the road.

THE GOOD

IVY

Ivy wants to win at all costs. She even tells Joanna that her look is about making the shoe “the leading lady” when the challenge is about the dress. But she wants to win.

She also wanted to go jumpsuit and ended up bridesmaid.

Her look is not flattering; the shorts, the sheer, the flouncy top; the gold shoulders. It’s so much, and so bad, that Ivy needs the help of Casanova to finish. {Sidenote: You know that Casanova works as Ivy’s assistant in real life and is just trying to keep his job.

He should have taken a page from Anthony Ryan’s book and just said ‘No’. I mean, what’s better? Winning All-Stars or working as Ivy’s indentured servant?

Uh-huh.

I found her dress drab, though Not Heidi said it was beautiful; this from a woman with side boob? Really?  The shoe guy, Rafe thought it was too short, but loved the emerald and gold. Too short? Had it been a foot shorter it might have looked like something a girl might wear to a club; as it was it looked like something a girl might wear down the aisle as she cusses out the bride for putting her in it.

Isaac liked the embellishment on the top, but thought that not embellishing the back made it look cheap; or cheaper, I would say. Georgina, my Georgiana, actually loved it, from the shoes to the gold and back again.

So, for Ivy, gold doesn’t win, but it does go Bronze.

CASANOVA

It’s disco so it can be slutty, no? Well, maybe, but he calls it sleek and short and with spider webs.

Um, Casanova, I know it’s Halloween season, but this is a shoe challenge.

But he soldiers on, and when Joanna Coles stops by he says he wanted to make something fun and comfortable, he wins JC’s heart because she just loves some comfort. I imagine it was easier to pass out in a bathroom stall at 54 in a comfortable dress.

And his dress was one of the few that read “disco” to me; even updates. It was a great color, a party color, and looked good moving. Plus it was short and sexy, and with the straps in back it gave us a little extra something.

Carolyn also loved the back, and Isaac said it was sexy but not dangerous. Georgina—and how much do I love Georgina Chapman?—loved the color and said it really evoked the seventies. She did, however, say she’d have liked to see it a bit longer, and it would have been more Chic.

I really thought Casanova should have won, because this really was disco, but, alas, he grabs the second slot.

ULI

Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, her idea of disco—I mean she said Studio 64, er, 54—is quite different than the others. So, she reminds us again that she is New Uli—though last week’s dress somehow felt Old Uli—and is making a white dress.

White, she says, will make hers stand apart from the others and that could be good or bad. And Joanna Coles thinks it leans toward bad, saying the look doesn’t look 70s.

Now, I will give her that it’s New Uli, or Nuli, because it isn’t long and flowy and a halter top with a neck-piece. But I distinctly got a Half-breed vibe, though had Cher worn this there would have been about 6 yards less fabric, and about 6 pounds more sequins.

It didn’t scream disco to me, because disco is sexy and wild and barely there, and this wasn’t.

But guest judge, some bigwig from Nine West, Rafe Totengco said Uli’s girl was the kind of girl he’d want to go to a disco with, and all I could think was that he’d be holding her bag while she danced with her boyfriend.

she is the kind of girl he wants to go dancing with. Isaac said he wants more on the back. Georgina said the dress feels modern, and that Uli was smart, with the short amount of time given, to pick a simple silhouette and “fringe it up.”

Of course, as we Gays think alike, Isaac got a “futuristic kind of Cherokee moment like an American Indian kind of futuristic Cher.” He also wanted a little more skin showing.

In the end, Nuli Half-breed, Iron Curtain gets the win.

THE BAD

KAYNE

“I immediately gravitated toward the orange cork heel.”

There is so much I could do with that line, but sometimes it’s best to just let it speak for itself.

Orange.Cork.Heel.

And, so, naturally he goes for some bling and some sequins, which is kinda good, because those things can blind you on the dance floor. But then he decides to make a chevron striped pant, knowing full well that Georgina Chapman has been known to have the head chopped off a designer who doesn’t match up their pattern.

Even Joanna tells Kayne that he needs to line up the lines. Razor blade ‘em on a mirror she says, though I wasn’t entirely sure she was talking fashion.

Oddly enough, Not Heidi didn’t like the top, and I wondered why until Isaac said it looked like JLo; and it did! JLo doesn’t say disco as much as she says marry me quick and divorce me quicker. Still, I liked the pants, because they did look 70s, and Georgina stayed in her seat because the patterns all lined up.

I think, in the end, that’s what saved him.

That and the fact that Wendy and Andrae are still here.

ANDRAE

He still wants to go big on the top, which means he learned nothing about last week’s critique. He made the exact same big organza criss-cross mess of a coat this week, and then put it over something that was not fashion, but seemed more Target.

Plus, as always, Andrae s running around with too much to do and no time to do it. This I don’t get; he was already on one season of the PR. Doesn’t he remember the challenges of making a garment in twelve minutes? Why take on so much? Why remake the same god awful jacket that almost got you booted last week?

I so wanted to reach into my TV and thump his melon, and ask, “Anybody home?”

Or, “Anybody going home?”

Isaac echoed my sentiments because he loathed the jacket. Georgina said it needed to go—and probably should have taken Andrae with it, though she gave him props for styling—which is probably what saved him though this isn’t project Styling.

Rafe, the shoe gut, had the best critique, though: “When I first saw the model coming down the runway, I thought take the coat off – take it off quickly.”

I think Andrae should have gone, not only for trying to make the same coat two weeks in a row, but because what was under the coat last week was unwearable, and what was under the coat this week was drab.

But I guess drab beats Chiquita from Spanish Harlem.

WENDY

“If there’s any challenge I want to win it’s the disco challenge.”

Cue ominous drumming.

Plus, add a little Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine Latin rhythms when she reveals that her new BFF is Suede and the music gets real dark.

And when you figure that she’s going leather and wild print and chains, well, it’s like a dungeon up in heah. A Latino quinceañera kinda dungeon.

Joanna comes by—and calls the 70s the decade that fashion forgot…score one for Joanna—and tells Wendy her, um, outfit looks a little Halloween. Joshua agrees, because it makes him wanna puke like he’d just finished a ten-pound bag of Peanut Butter Cups.

But Wendy has this! Wendy lived in the 70s!

Maybe Wendy should have done less drugs in the 70s. ALLEGEDLY,

She tells the judges she was thinking Tuxedo pant, and, well, I made my cat Tuxedo leave the room lest he saw what Wendy thought was Tuxedo; because it wasn’t.

A weird leather print with bell-bottoms even Meryl Streep wouldn’t have worn in Mama Mia, with a hoochie red print on top, a cheap ass chain attachment and  driving gloves.

Driving! Gloves!

Gentlemen. Start your engines, Wendy needs a ride home.

Not Heidi, AKA Carolyn Murphy, was “not crazy” for Wendy’s crazy, calling it a little too Spanish Harlem, while Rafe said the outfit had everything but the kitchen sink …. Which may have helped. Isaac called it a theme park, and probably one that’s been shut down for years and the weeds are all grown up in it. Georgina was also confused about the tuxedo remark, but applauded Wendy for use of a print. Not-so-high praise.

Too much.

Gets you sent home.

MYTAKE

The disco party was a time filler, AKA time waster. 

And that special message from Karl Lagerfeld, who you just know was saying, “What’s an all star? Where am I”, was kinda pathetic; though mostly because of Suede wiping away a fake tear as he watched.

I’m still waiting for some Wow. I mean, they’re all stars, they’ve been here before, and they need to step it up. There was nothing on this runway that was really really good.

Maybe they should have let no one win this week and strike the fear of Mizrahi in the designers.

What did YOU think?