PR 12 Ep 4: Meltdowns and Marriage Proposals

This week starts where the show normally ends, with the designers in the backstage waiting room. But this week, we witness a Battle Royale between Helen and Sandro and Ken and Sandro, which ends with Sandro storming out, ripping down curtains, upending mannequins, slapping cameras and disappearing into traffic.

I wonder if he’ll be back ….

But first, this week’s challenge. Tim Gunn introduces Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who with his fiancé — now husband, Justin Mikita — founded the menswear-inspired marriage equality organization, Tie The Knot. However, this is not menswear because, as avid viewers know, menswear challenges are D-I-sasters.

Instead, the designtestants will create looks inspired by the ties that JTF has provided, and they must incorporate at least one tie into their creation. In addition to the ties, there is a trip to Mood and a suggested Go Card™ budget of $200.

A message Sue apparently missed, but let’s rip ….

THE SAFES [from left to right]

KAREN My first thought was that the model was pregnant. That and the lack of screen time lead me to believe Karen will be leaving us soon.

KEN A simple leather dress with a man’s color, it was neither here nor there. I don’t see him at The Tents.

ALEXANDER A basic black pant-suit with a Bow-Tie Clown collar; this is why people hate clowns. I think Alexander’s Broadway costumer experience is showing and this might be part of the road show of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat-and-Tie.

JUSTIN I liked this; fun and flirty, and he used the ties as seaming, creating a bowtie-slash-hourglass silhouette.

ALEXANDRIA Asymmetrical color-blocking with bowtie trim work doesn’t get one to The Tents.

THE SAFE, BUT SHOULD HAVE GONE BOTTOM THREE EXCEPT FOR IMMUNITY

HELEN

She decides that since she’s safe, she’ll take a risk; turns out to be a bad choice, but she struggles after Tim’s crit — because she can’t handle criticism … good job going on the PR because they don’t criticize anything there — and she rethinks and over-thinks her design.

I liked that she was doing a bowtie shape on the front of the dress, but I thought her color palette was sad. And then when she tossed in the baby blue bowtie harness, well, I’ll let Nina explain:

“I’m wondering if the reason you won last week was because of Kate's influence.”

Then she and Heidi told Helen that she’d better bring it next week.

THE BOTTOM THREE

SUE

At Mood, with the suggestion that the designtestants spend $200, Sue spent twice that amount; $400 for some black jersey and some red jersey. I wonder if she didn’t score a dime-bag in the backroom because her money was not well-spent.

Not when you consider she made a black dress — oh, and she made the same horror in red, too — and then sewed ties together to create a kind of exoskeleton. I instantly thought, Spiderwoman and not in a good way.

Heidi was shocked to learn that Sue had made that — remember, the runway show is anonymous this season — and called it, among other things, a mess, and crazy, amateurish and a What was she thinking moment.  The Adorable Zac Posen™ reminded Sue to Keep It Simple Stupid, and dubbed it ‘Octopussy.’ Nina saw that and raised it a ‘Sigourney Weaver in Alien covered in tentacles. She called it bizarre and arts-and-crafts, with no discernible effort; a disappointment. JTF likened it to a women emerging from the sea, covered in kelp.

UP CLOSE

Heidi wondered what she spent $400 and The Adorable Zac Posen™ muttered, ‘Cut jersey?’ Nina said there was no thought to the dress, and Heidi finished up by saying it was a flea-market find.

But, because of Sandro, Sue is safe.

JEREMY

We start off the episode learning that Jeremy’s grandmother had passed the night before, so he’s a little verklempt this week; not too verklempt, however, to constantly mention that his gran had died and that his design was an homage to her, the way she looks in the 1930s and 40s. M’kay …..

So, he wants to update a tuxedo look, with a bright orange lace jacket; right there I became verklempt, too. With wide-legged brown pants; I became verklempt again. Tim asks that he rethink the lace jacket, and he kind of does, but he rethinks it worse.

It looks old; the pants don’t fit. I love listening to Jeremy speak in those dulcet English tones, but this look was loud and obnoxious.

Heidi hated that he took a gorgeous model and aged her forty years; she was madam, not modern. There was no cool, no sexy, no hip. The Adorable Zac Posen™ liked that it was well-made — I think Jeremy’s saving grace this week is that he can construct — but he called it lackluster. He also hated the peek-a-boo belly button, which, after he said it, I couldn’t stop seeing. Nina also appreciated the work that went into the look, but said it was too serious [read: old]. JTF summed it up by saying it looked like something a sixty-eight-year-old actress would wear when she accepts her Kennedy Center Honor.

Ouch.

UP CLOSE

Heidi reiterated the fact that the look aged the model while The Adorable Zac Posen™ and Nina praised the tailoring.

Jeremy was safe because of Sandro ….

MIRANDA

For me, she falls into that category that I’ll call WTF is she doing here?

Every week she seems to make the same suit-y, midriff-y, pencil skirt-y looking mother-effer, and this week she drizzled it in hound’s-tooth.

Hounds-freaking-tooth!

And she wants to put a fluffy, flouncy, Jeremy’s Gran-type tie on it, until Tim tells her to sex it up. And she takes that to mean an emerald green silk top that she then crops off into, wait for it, another midriff baring top.

Poor Miranda One Note.

Tacky, I said. Go home, I said.

Heidi said, “Where’s the bowtie?’ Miranda pointed to one strip of fabric. Heidi said it wasn’t clever, and very 80s looking, but not like the cool 80s, you know, parachute pants and shiz. The Adorable Zac Posen™ said the top was a killer, and called her out on yet another pencil skirt; she’d better do something different next week, because, as we’ll see with Sandro, The Adorable Zac Posen™ takes no prisoners. Nina simply uttered that it wasn’t modern, while JTF said it didn’t turn out well.

UP CLOSE

Heidi hates the top, hates the no-tie-bow-tie, while Nina says there are too many problems with the look. JTF said there was no taste, and The Adorable Zac Posen™ once again shouted form the catwalk, No more pencil skirts EVER!!

But, because of Sandro, Miranda dodged a fashion Bullet.

THE SAFE BUT HE AUF’D HIMSELF

SANDRO

I had been saying for weeks that the recently Auf’d and scarcely missed, Timothy, was using the show to show the world just how weird and wild and wonderful he was; it didn’t work.

But Sandro was using the show to show the world that he’s a lunatic. Loud, brash, argumentative, testy, misogynistic, rude, did I say Loud?

And he wants feedback, dammit! He wants a Sew Off with The Adorable Zac Posen™. Really? Sandro, you couldn’t thread the needle of The Adorable Zac Posen™; you couldn’t do whatever it is people do to a bobbin to The Adorable Zac Posen™; you couldn’t cut a pattern for The Adorable Zac Posen™. M’kay?

As Tim critiques his look, a Pretty in Pink number, Sandro asks what the judges want of him, and Tim tells him to be himself; sound advice, were it not for the fact that Sandro is crazy. But he wants to do what the judges tell him to do because he thinks it’ll get him to The Tents when all it really will do is get him a room next to Amanda Bynes on a 5150 hold.

His look is, again, a mess. It’s strapless; it’s a mini; it’s a drapery panel sewn to a model’s hip; it’s bowties as straps. It’s also safe, which displeases Sandro no end; he demands some criticism from the judges.

The Adorable Zac Posen™ praises Sandro's garment construction but notes, one more, that the taste level is bad; he asks Heidi if she’d wear it and she actually slapped him and shouted, “NO! Nein! Nyet!”

Sandro is not happy: “What you think?”

The Adorable Zac Posen™ says, “It looks like someone went home with a man in an evening gown and came back with a tie attached to it and her dress ripped. It looked like the walk of shame after an awards show.”

Sandro said, “I had eleven hour.”

The Adorable Zac Posen™ said, “I admire that but you need to focus on the taste level.”

Sandro says, "I’m student…I’m learning."

The Adorable Zac Posen™ says, "This is not 'Project Runway': The Student Edition!"

Ouch.

I think that set Sandro on edge, and, while he was safe, he was not in a safe place. He began fighting with all the other designers, shouting at them not to shout at him; pointing at them and telling them not to point at him. It ended with Sandro storming out, ripping down curtains, upending mannequins, slapping cameras and disappearing into traffic. And with Tim saying he won’t be back.

THE TOP THREE

KATE

Again, I loathe Kate; she seems a little self-entitled since she was voted back to the island — and I wanna know who voted her back because they have some ‘splaining to do.

During the crit she calls her look sexy huntress, or something, but then she’s making a tuxedo pant. How many times have I gone a’hunting in my tuxedo pants I cannot even begin to say.

And she does a literal silhouette of the bowtie shape in leather down the pant leg, reminding us all, and the judges later, that this is only the second time in her whole life that she’s made a pant.

Color me unimpressed.

I found it a Meh. The top wasn’t all that flattering, and didn’t seem to jibe with the pants.

The Adorable Zac Posen™ said it was ‘too clever cookie’ and, for once, I wanted to strike him. Heidi called it sexy — which I didn’t see — and modern —which I looked for in vain — and hot —which went missing on my TV screen. Nina admired that she made pants, because Nina lives for a good pant; she even called them ‘sick,’ but in a good way. 

At this point Kate called herself a tough princess, and I wished Sandro had stormed through and pushed her off the runway.

UP CLOSE

The Adorable Zac Posen™ loved that she pushed herself, while Heidi loved the sexy back—which caused me to wonder what happened to the Boobie Obsessed Klum, but this was not breast-a-riffic at all. JTF called the pants amazing; The Adorable Zac Posen™ again said she was growing as a designer.

She gets Third Place.

DOM

Or, as I am apt to see her, The Quiet Storm.

She’s in the workroom, all right, but she barely gets more screen time than Karen, but she’s good; and inventive; and different.

As Tim critiques her look — a black-and-white striped dress with colorful striped bowties that remind Dom of the equal sign—his only remark is too make sure the stripes match up perfectly.

And they did. It was a simple silhouette, but that was all that was simple about it. All the stripes and the chevrons, and the patterns and nothing seemed jarring or out of place.

Nina says it’s adorable and happy and celebratory, while The Adorable Zac Posen™ is once again amazed by her talent at design and styling; he says it’s a lot of stripes, but it works. JTF loved that Dom thought about equality, and the equal sign, when she created the look.

UP CLOSE

Heidi said, ‘She did it again’ in reference to last week’s fun creation. She noted that it was good and playful, and a showstopper. It was also so-not-simple. The Adorable Zac Posen™ loved the texture of the layered bowties.

Dom, The Quiet Storm, gets Second Place.

BRADON

By far my favorite designer this season because he’s good, and adorable, and, thus far, drama free.

Plus we learn all about Bradon and Josh, his partner/husband of eighteen-plus years—which is longer than any number of JLo and Britney marriages, I might remind you.

But, back at the fashion, Bradon was the only designer to use the bowties creatively—take note Alexander—by creating a beautiful top using a technique not-so-ironically called ‘faggoting’ — an openwork decoration of fabric in which thread is drawn in crisscross stitches across an open seam. It’s the perfect word for this challenge, I think.

The top is the showstopper, beneath a tweed jacket and atop a pair of tweed shorts. It was sexy and fun and well-made. Bradon kept saying he needed to make a jacket and it appeared he made the jacket in the two hours of hair and make-up on show day. Props for that, too.

Heidi called it fabulous and added that if she’d had Bradon’s model’s body she’d wear that look every day. Nina loved his use of mixed fabrics and of bowties, and called it cool. The Adorable Zac Posen™ once again scraped by nerves by his brazen use of the word mélange: “The colors and the mélange of textures.”

Someone’s been thumbing their Thesaurus!

He also called it modern and antique, and JTF dubbed it brave and fantastic.

UP CLOSE

JTF said it was his favorite, while Heidi loved all the work that went into it. The Adorable Zac Posen™ finished up with called it a ‘labored labor of love without looking labored.

Bradon gets a much deserved win.

And a much deserved shot at camera time when, inspired by the Tie The Knot organization, he proposed to his partner from the runway. It couldn’t have been cuter, and Heidi will be a perfect groomsmaid while The Adorable Zac Posen™ is the perfect ring bearer. Couldn’t have been sweeter except ….

At the end of the show, Bradon got some Skype time with Josh who told him that the Supreme Court had Auf’d Prop H8 and so Josh asked Bradon marry him. He didn’t even know Bradon had done it from the runway.

:::sniff sniff:::

MY TAKE

Karen?

Ken is sassy and funny but he’s too middle-of-the-road.

Sue? I weans see her stick around a while because you just know she’ll run out of money and be making a dress of toilet pair and bits of her own hair.

Justin. He’s good, but he’s adrift in a sea on so-so. I hope he steps it up. Had his dress been an eye-popping color he might have gone Top Three.

Kate. You aren’t all that.

The Adorable Zac Posen™? I forgive you. Mélange.

What did YOU think?