Friday, December 14, 2012

PR All-St★rs 2, EP 7: Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas

Oh that Project Runway! They know when the episode is gonna air and bring out the seasonal guns.
It's Christmas, y'all; or at least it is on Lifetime in New York, where the trees are still green and the skies are a beautiful clear blue.
We start off at the South Street Seaport because nothing screams Yule like big boats and longshoremen .... wait, I may ask Santa for a longshoreman! Thanks Lifetime.
Anyway, Not Heidi, AKA Carolyn Murphy meets up with our designtestants and introduces them to someone called Fawaz Gruosi--who must be huge because everyone oohs and aahs at the sound of his name. Turns out he's president of something called de Grisogono, and makes watches so the winner gets a watch.
I'm not sure how the watch and the sea port have anything to do with Christmas, but this I Lifetime, the same people who thought Lohan could be Liz Taylor, so thinking is not an every day occurrence over there.
To win the beautiful watch, the designers must perform the one challenge they hate most--no, not  a team challenge--and the audience loves best: the Unconventional Challenge. Oh, so the sea port, and the docks. Nautical themes; anchors and sails and ropes and .... Christmas!
Continuity police!
Anyway, they are tasked with creating a look from material found at a Christmas store…but the look can't appear as if it came from a Christmas store! Santa say what? And then the designers are off, meeting Santa at the Christmas store in their tanks and tees because, well, it's Summer in the City!
Let's rip.......
EMILIO
Emilio was in a panic because in his season he sent down and macrame and nuts-and-bolts bra and panties that almost sent him home. But then, he 's a costume designer, so I kept thinking Turn it into a costume. I mean you can get dinged too badly for making a costume out of Christmas store butterflies and ribbon.
Can you?
I liked his dress while he was making it; I loves the butterflies and dragonflies around the neck, but knew he might run into trouble trying to make a dress out of Christmas tree ribbon. Luckily for Emilio, there were about fifty glue guns in the workroom that day because he went through them all and, apparently broke them all.
But when his look hit the runway, the butterflies and dragonflies had flown the coop and all that we were left with was a dress made of ribbon kind of latticed together.
It looked less dress than Fire Island Disco Lawn Chair.
But it was safe.
BOTTOM THREE
JOSHUA
Joshua has no taste. i still have nightmares about his final collection from his season where his models had long, neon colored Tampon strings hanging from their crotches, so this week I was 'ascurred.
He doesn't seem to know when to stop, and doesn't seem to know he has no taste.
The top was cool. Unconventional? Check! Christmas store? Check.
But it was a bra, made of trains. It was a Training Bra. And it took him so long to deconstruct the locomotives that he scarcely had time to cut and glue ribbons into a short so diaper short his poor models ladybits were showing.
Isaac was not amused.
I was not amused.
Joshua is not amusing. I think the only thing that saved him this week was the top, which was very cool, but this whole look shows us what Joshua would show again if he gets to The Tents.
IVY
Once again the other designers get annoyed because Ivy, still being Zen, and Casanova help each other all the time. Uli worried what would happen when one of them goes home, and this was our week to find out.
I give her props for picking a single color palette to work with, although it's the same color palette she used last week; I guess she still thinks her model is a star and so she must dress in the colors of the sun.
Her look was good, in pieces. I liked the fun flirty fringe made from garland around the bottom. And I loved the sheer along the top and down the sleeves--although, seriously, Ivy, Enough.With.The.Sheer. And I liked the top, though it puckered--and you know Georgina Chapman went ape-shit over that--and seemed kind of old.
But put all three of those pieces together and it's just a mish mash matronly, I wanna be younger so I chose fringe get up.
She could have gone home if not for .....
CASANOVA
I knew it wasn't going to be good when he said he couldn't make a dress out of bullsh*t.
But then it turned funny when he said all that silver and gold could be a piñata. Sidenote: every time Carlos sees a celebrity on a Red Carpet in some hideous creation he calls her a piñata.
Carlos and Casanova. Who knew?
Well, I knew this would be a disaster when he had so much Christmas-y crap; branches and twigs and red garland and gold fabric. I knew it would be a disaster when he made not one, not two, but three dresses, all of them just a nightmare. And I knew he'd be going home when he basically panhandled scraps of fabric from the other designers to make this scrappy, er, crappy mess.
It was nice, but nice doesn't get to The Tents. The rope breast plates are too high and pushed to the sides, while the center panel looks like a Vagina Runway and the side pieces are a patchwork of crazy.
Sorry, Casanova, this is so unconventional that it's out.
TOP THREE
LAURA
I try hard to be objective when I think of Laura because I really don't like her. But when she acts like she has this in the bag, or gift box, I get annoyed. 
Hey! Laura! You won one challenge! You are NOT the one to beat!
Now, on to her dress. It was simple, and pretty, with a lot of beads in silver and clear, but then she seemed to have thrown a bunch of blue beads at the dress during the last few minutes because they were all so haphazardly placed that it looked odd.
Plus, as Isaac said, it made the model look fat.
I keep looking at the picture of this dress while writing this post, and I keep thinking that it looks like buckshot in her gut. Like a cartoon Elmer Fudd thought she was a wascally wabbit and shot her.
It was better than the others I've mentioned but it really doesn't belong in the Top Three.
ANTHONY RYAN 
As soon as Anthony Ryan heard that Kylie Minogue was the guest judge he went all gay boy, or teenage girl, crazy, and decided he would make a stage piece fit for a Diva.
And his was a winner--though the other designers, even Zen Ivy, thought he was riffing on an Uli embellishment piece--because it didn't look like ornaments. I loves how he used the mirrored tiles along the top and at the hem, although at first I thought they were blue mirrors until I realized it was a reflection of the set.
It definitely looked like something a Diva might wear on stage.
And the judges loved the length. Not Heidi kept marveling at the hemline and I kept thinking, There is no new hemline, why are they gushing about the hemline.
I thought he might win this one, but, if you're gonna do a challenge with ornaments and glitter and tinsel, who better to win than ....
ULI
Her dress also didn't look like ti came from the Christmas Store, and because she used silver and gold, it seemed more subtle than Anthony Ryan's, though not any less embellished.
I wasn't a fan of the Joan Crawford/Star Trek shoulders, but she was really able to all that Christmas crap and use it in a way that created a very cool pattern down the front and back.
Isaac dogged her because the hem was longer in the back, but I kinda liked that look. Georgina dogged her for putting seams down the middle of the sheer side panels, and, well, Georgina, the beautiful Georgina Chapman, can do no wrong.
So, Uli finally gets a win, and maybe a new direction for her designs. She's really stepped back from Old-Flowy-Miami-Beach-St.-Tropez-Uli and embraced the throw everything at it including the kitchen sink Uli.
I'm now hoping she gets to The Tents because I'd love to see what she does.
MY TAKE
Kylie Minogue is a great judge because she gets it; critique but have fun. La La Anthony ... um ..... I have no idea who she is but I was annoyed that she kept dogging Anthony Ryan for the bits of snowflakes on his dress and then saying she wanted to wear it.
I feel like instead of getting better each week, Emilio keeps declining. His dress looks straight out of an episode of The Jetsons. Step it up, man! You're much better than that!
And, while Joshua's shorts were a nightmare, his model's legs were ah-mazing. She had gams for days; pins forever; pins that never ended.
Now, I don't buy Zen Ivy; I think it's kind of an act. I don't think she's the bitch she was her season when she was Gretchen's lapdog, but this Buddhist Ivy seems kind of like a put on.
Laura.Must.Go. I'll keep saying it until she's gone.
I'll miss Casanova, and if the show had a Most Improved Designer award, he should win it. He's really improved since his season; he doesn't do Grandma Whore any more!
And I'm loving Uli of late. She's not yo mama's Uli.
Next week is the head to head challenge and bitches be going down.
What did YOU think?

5 comments:

  1. Personally, I think the arts-and-crafts challenges are straight up stupid. AR, however, can make a dress out of whatever blows against a fence in a windstorm. He has talent and should have won last night.

    This episode was what I call "filler" and didn't do much of anything except kill time.

    I like Joanna (does she not have a mirror and a hairbrush) but I think Not Heidi is there just to make Heidi look good. Bless her heart.

    Great recap! Thanks!

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  2. The inside back of Emilio's dress was tragic.
    Ivy - judges you can not complain about seams when you are asking the designers to use Christmas tree skirts or garland!
    Yup, Casanova was doomed from the start. Just not his kind of challenge.
    I think if Laura has clustered the big mirrors around the hem she might of won it.

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  3. Anonymous6:32 PM

    I like these challenges. From L'Oreal's perspective, I'm sure they want to throw $100k or more at a designer who is creative, not some one-note designer who specializes in pleats and 3-D flowers.

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  4. I agree with you about everything especially Josh. Do you remember the neon biker shorts that he sent down the runway in the finals? Arghhhh. Gonna miss Cassanova though. He made me laugh and I loved his whimsey.

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  5. When my son heard Josh was an All Star, his first words were "Oh no! Not Green Shorts!" Those hotpants are seared into our consciousness forever, apparently.

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