PR 11 Ep 14: The Finale .... The Lone Wolf Kills It

Top Three! Top Three! But it ain’t over. Michelle has to glam up her styling and ditch some of the bits’n’pieces—compasses, purses, saddle bags, messenger bags—from her looks, while Stanley has to sew, sex it up, sew, sex it up, sew, and Patricia needs to make her collection look like a collection and not a thrift store rack—albeit with some cool and funky clothes on it.

I think the producers, maybe hoping it would be more of a photo finish, once again decided to offer up another trip to Mood and another $500—because, apparently, the original $10,000 to create 12 looks wasn’t enough. Patricia got leather, Michelle got some more fabric, and Stanley tried to find four finished dresses among the swatches, but couldn’t, so he settled for trims and zippers. M’kay.

Back to 1407, their design assistants—Layana the Complainer, Amanda the Helper, Richard the Why-Is-He-Here—scramble to make it work; well, most of them. We don’t get a lot of photographic evidence that Richard is doing anything except eating and talking about the collections.

That said, let’s rip …..

Stanley

He’s still stinging from being Bottom Two last week, and knows that he needs to sex his collection, cut his collection ... sew his collection. Seriously. He needs to make four more looks for his collection. How did he get here? Stanley seems out of it; I cannot understand how he let himself get to Fashion Week without 12 looks. I mean, he knew he’d have to tweak some things, and fit some things, but to actually have to create some things? Craziness.

I know instantly Stanley will not win. And Tim, Michelle and Patricia are also worried he won't finish—with good reason, because he doesn’t—but he does keep plugging along. As Tim studies his re-imagined looks, Stanley says he took the judges advice and changed a lot. I didn’t see it; and Tim says it looks like a shopping spree at a Vintage Store. Stanley tells Tim he took Nina’s advice and shortened one skirt, but Tim reminds him that Nina never said that; in fact, what Nina said was to pair the skirt with a top that wasn’t a match, and put the top with a pair of pants. Stanley must have been in dreamland while Nina spoke last week. Never a good idea. Never.

I think Stanley, who’s been at this, with a modicum of success, for a long time, doesn’t like being told what to do, so he begrudgingly does some of what the judges suggested, but leaves the rest alone. Of course, maybe he didn’t have the time to sexify his looks because he still had :::gasp::: four looks to make and about two hours in which to do it. At the end of the day he still wasn’t finished, so the next morning, before the show, his dressers, whose job it is to help the models dress, coordinate the looks, perhaps steam out the last few wrinkles, are actually sewing dresses onto the models.

At.New.York.Fashion.Week.

Stanley called his collection "Urban Opulence" but I didn’t get urban—unless it’s Upper East Side Ladies Who Lunch Urban—and there really wasn’t Opulence, unless you viewed his collection from the 1960s.

The dress he showed last week, that he cut off into a peplum this week, and put atop a pencil skirt, looked a little Carol Burnett Show sketch to me. His blouse and skirt pieces looked nice, but the length suggested Barbara Walters interviewing George Bush in the White House; too long, too staid. When the blond in the gold coat walked, I turned to Carlos and said, “Grace Kelly is alive??” Which shows you just how old looking the collection is. His closing gown, well, I did like, although when Michael Kors—welcome back to The Korange—called it ‘Betty White on Dancing With The Stars, I knew it was not a winner.

When Stanley told the judges he designed for the ‘working woman, and the woman who shops’ Michael Kors—I missed his special brand of snark—almost fell out of his chair. He said it didn’t look at all like a working woman, that it was too dressy. He did love the Grace Kelly Coat and the strapless bubble dress, and the white beaded number, but called the closing gown old—and Betty White—and Holly Hobby. He also dubbed the ring Stanley added—possibly to sexify the dress—an appetite suppressant because the woman couldn’t lift a fork to her mouth it was so heavy. He called it a good-looking collection; not so very high praise.

The Adorable Zac Posen™ didn’t like that Stanley farmed out the beading, and called the collection the dreaded ‘Nice’. He also called it dated, though he did mention that some of the bling was done well.  But he pointed out that Stanley was stubborn to some of their critiques from last week, keeping many of the same dress lengths.

Heidi—and this is where I question her taste level—loved the cut-down dirndl dress but also mentioned what looked like last minute sewing and uneven hems and such. She also loathed the gown, and said it looked like something from a catalogue, which caused Kors to say it looked like a mother of the bride dress left behind at the motel. Have I mentioned that I missed Kors sarcasm? Korsarcasm?

Nina, making it a sweep, hated the gown, too, and wished Stanley had listened to her when she said to mix up some of the sequined tops with some of the pants; it would have done wonders in the younger vision, sexy vision department. It wasn’t modern.

Stanley was out. I thought he’d win, but he didn’t listen to the judges and thought he knew best. Plus, and I’ll say it again, how do you arrive at Fashion Week a few days in advance and still have as many as four looks to make?

Cute Stanley. Stubborn Stanley. Bad Time Management Stanley.

Patricia

While Stanley worked to create something Patricia needed to tie all her looks together. Her collection is all over the place—don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but it didn’t seem to be one collection—and she’s all over the place, with boxes of fabrics and missing scarves and losing Stanley’s leather glue. I mean, look at her workspace and you can see why her collection was such a mish-mash—again, though, I liked much of it.

I also liked that we had less snark from Layana this week, though I think it was there, but was edited out. And I hope they lost that footage so that we could get Patricia and her kids doing their Happy Dance in the workroom. Amid all that stress and mess, Patricia still found time to dance with her kids and I liked that.

Meanwhile, back at her collection, she has made a pair of leather pants for one look, but the leather has two holes in it. There is talk of patching, there is talk of gluing, there is talk of scrapping the pants; but then Patricia, in a bold move, decides that she’ll make the holes a feature, and so she cuts more holes in the pants to make it look like an ‘on purpose’ and not an ‘oops’. Gotta love that!

What I didn’t love was the collection. I loved pieces, like the blue number with the Smurf hat; it looked fun. And the red mini was cool, too. But how did those looks jibe with ponchos and horsehair and hippie dresses? When the models made their last pass on the runway, you could see some great fun clothes, but you didn’t see a collection. And that was Patricia’s downfall.

Patricia makes great fabrics—hell she makes her own sequins and fabric dyes—and she has some good ideas, but I think she really needed to stand back from all those looks and see that they weren’t part of the same group.

Michael Kors declared her collection fabulous, spectacular, though he mentioned that when the show started he got “The art teacher’s on an acid trip” vibe. But he loved her craft, and her technique, and that some of her clothes looked urban. He was less impressed with the Woodstock-wear, though he admitted he loved a good hippie dress. He said her use of horsehair was so insane that he loved it. Heidi liked the oddity of Patricia’s looks, and noted that the crowd instantly fell in love with Patricia’s quirky collection; it was joyful and different, and she wanted the long dress of the handmade fabric, though she’s lose the shirt beneath it.

The Adorable Zac Posen™ called it ‘techno pow-wow’ and loved her handmade textiles and sequins. He did feel that some of the fabrics seemed to look older—you know, older is bad in fashion—and wished they could have been more abstract. Nina, not a fan, really, said she loved Patricia’s talent, and called her technique unique; she said there were some strong pieces, but there was a disconnect with some of the silhouettes. Clean it up,” she commanded.

Who knew, when the season started, that artsy-fartsy Patricia would get to The Tents and come in Second Place? I loved her looks, loved her artistry, but I can see that her looks are for a very limited customer. I do hope that her customer finds her, because I’d like to see some Patria, AKA Water Lily, on a red carpet.

Michelle

She’s mostly about hair and make-up this week, and taking the compasses and extra bags off her girls. She does create one new look, with a pop of color and a tie-in to her closing gown, but mostly she’s just tweaking and fitting her models and talking with Amanda. Lucky.

At Tim’s final critique he tells her he loves her looks, calling the collection "innovative" though he takes issue with her sweater that has an actual bleeding heart on it, and I was right there with him. When Michelle said she was going to leave it in, I thought, Dear lord, what will Nina say? How wrong I was, eh?

Her collection was the most cohesive of all; it was also the most modern.  There was toughness there, with the leather shoulder pads that looked almost like metal to me, and the same silhouette in many of the looks. There was some sex in those tight skirts and shorty short shorts, and my favorite was the one with the layers of chiffon and neoprene with the quilted harness. I did beat Michael Kors to the punch with the Robin Hood comment, because those cute hats were cute, but didn’t seem to fit the collection.

Heidi loved Michelle’s ‘story’ of the Lone Wolf, and how Fashion Week was the ‘kill’ that Michelle needed. She also thought Michelle’s was the most cohesive collection, though, oddly enough for Heidi The Sexy, she thought some of the silhouettes were too form-fitting. Nina loved the first look, loved the silhouettes, loved that there were a lot of pieces to sell, and, well, she begged to have Michelle send her the Bleeding Heart sweater.

Kors also praised the first look, but thought the felt—or whatever the fabric was—on the closing gown was too stiff; he also noted that the gown didn’t fit into the collection, and mentioned that she didn’t have to do a gown to close her show. The Adorable Zac Posen™ thought her clothes were beautifully made, but took issue with the chiffon scarves tied like a man’s tie; he found them cartoonish, while Kors found them costume-y.

Boy, she did play this like a Lone Wolf. She was on losing team after losing team, and could have been sent home, or could have decided to just get out. But she stuck to it and she killed it. I liked her collection because it was a collection, and it was modern and urban and cool, and quirky.

Congrats Michelle.

MY TAKE

The right one won. I had wanted Stanley because, well, shallow, he’s cute, but because he made beautiful clothes. But he couldn’t bring them up to date.

I loved Michelle’s quirky side, with the compass and all the extra baggage. It is a distinct POV. I can see her going far.

I love Patricia’s story and her talent and her viewpoint, but she needs to clean up her workspace and her message a little bit.

I loved The Adorable Zac Posen™. He’s just so adorable. But I missed me some Kors snark and was glad he was back for the finale.

Next week, the reunion, and Michelle’s Wolf Claws come out, but first ….

What did YOU think?