PR 15 Ep 11: Fasten Your Seat Belts ....

We kick off this episode with Cornelius crowing about his win last week, playing Miss Congeniality over his BF Nathalia’s Auf’ing, and responding to the double Auf’ing of Dexter with ... “I feel bad Nathalia’s gone, but Dexter, on the other hand, hell no. Hell. No.”

And Mah-Jing becomes the first designtestant to cry Top Six! Top Six! And say that Fashion Week is so close he can almost put his hands on it. Get some tongs, Mah-Jing, you may need them for the stretch.

Erin takes about a nanosecond to say she’s sad that Dexter is gone, and then turns right around toward glowing about being on top again, after weeks in the Bottom Three; Erin’s in it to win it, y’all, and BFFs be damned!

Anyway, after a few clues about “buckling up”: from Heidi the designtestants head off to a warehouse to hook-up with Tim Gunn and General Manager of Product and Consumer Marketing from Lexus USA, Brian Bolain. There are two cars in the warehouse—don’t get excited, no one is getting a Lexus ... yet—and tables filled with unconventional items.

Unconventional, again? Nope, this will be a two-day challenge using bits of metal and machinery and fabrics from Mood to create an avant-garde look. It’s conventionally, unconventional avant-garde.

The designtestants will rummage through the bins for unconventional stuff—in a five minute race that Laurence saunters through ... the girl does not run—and then head off with $150 Mood dollars.

Let’s rip ...

LAURENCE

She says she loves to work with metal and, well, we know she loves to work with leather ... something we did not know ... I kid.

She is also making The Laurence Shoulder™ ... she’s done it so often that it deserves a trademark, but then she’s done it so often it’s really just a shoulder.

But she is going out on a limb by using some mesh to create a “stairway” dress but even Tim notices that it seems much like everything she’s done this season.

Laurence does listen, she knows that Tim is right, and then she continues on doing what she’d planned the whole time. I’m worried ...

WHAT SHE SAID

I was able to create something I’m proud of.

WHAT I SAID

Good. Safe. An LBD with a stair detail and repetitive shoulder does not say avant-garde.

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

Laurence gives her spiel and when Heidi asks why she hates to talk about her work, Laurence says she thinks about it in French. Heidi asks her to explain it in French and the show will translate it, and Laurence explains it the exact same way. M’kay?

Heidi likes it, but points out that the shoulder is the shoulder; she also doesn’t like that it’s in black, and says a color might have had more impact.  She finishes by saying it lacks the “surprise”. Guest judge, actress Shiri Appleby also wonders how much better it might have been in a color or a print, even, and perhaps a tad longer. Zac Posen loves it, calls it chic, loves the texture and the “tire” look of the skirt but also wants Laurence to take a risk. Nina wants Risky Laurence; she says Laurence is so strict and she needs to see something bold.

CORNELIUS

He does not do industrial, though I think he’s confusing the materials with industrial work. It’s avant-garde, Corny; do it. He decides to use metal air ducting to create a butterfly-effect on the back of his look, and the front will be, well, boring ... black with some colored insets.

Sadly, the colored inset in the front screamed Insert Baby Bump Here to Tim, who also says the look tells two stories and neither one is worth the ink is printed in; so Cornelius switches it from butterfly to parasite.

I know! He takes the tubing and attaches it to the midsection of the front, then to the lung area; he has one tube running from the front shoulder to the back, and then two tubes running out of the model’s ass. Uh huh.

WHAT HE SAID

I really love my look. I think it’s really avant-garde.

WHAT I SAID

It’s a too big, too boring dress with air ducts placed kinda willy-nilly on it. Plus the cowl neck makes it look like it’s on backwards.

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

Nina says the idea of the tubes is a cliché and finds the one coming out of the model’s uterus to be disturbing. When Cornelius says that was his idea, Nina laughed and said he accomplished that goal. Zac isn’t fond of the dress and the cowl neck that Cornelius has done before. Shiri likes the shoulder tube, but not the others. Heidi suggested that the tubes looked like worms eating the model and, yeah, not a selling point.

ROBERI

He picks sheets of metal and copper because he wants to go literal with an automotive idea, with movement suggested by the bending of the metal.

He lays it over a tweed fabric and, well, it’s kind of Miss Robot to me, especially at the shoulder—what is it with shoulders this episode?

Tim calls it edgy but is worried when Roberi suggests some sort of removable mask until he is told the mask will come off.

WHAT HE SAID

It looks amazing.

WHAT I SAID

I love the play of the metal with the fabric but it looks like a fender bender.

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

Heidi loves the use of the unconventional materials and the conventional fabrics; she also loved the veil and called the whole look sculptural and sexy. To Zac it’s reminiscent of cubist artist Georges Braque—I had to Google that because Zac is just so esoteric—and loved that Roberi played up the automobile aesthetic.  Shiri also loved the molded pieces but wanted more, while Nina wanted less at the shoulder because it was going a little RoboCop; she did, though, love the way he integrated the metal with the fabric.

RIK

While the other designers had stories and plans, Rik did not; he also worried that he didn’t grad enough big pieces of metal—he got some tiling, some dog tags, some spikes, and some pieces of curtain rods.

This could be bad. He also has no plan of what he’ll create, but when Tim comes by Rik has used the tiles on one part of the top, and created a pattern on the bottom using the bits of curtains; Tim likes it, but hates the cheapness of the use of safety-pins and says the back—with nuts and bolts on string—doesn’t match with the front. He suggests more tiles ...

WHAT HE SAID

I think she looks strong, powerful, amazing.

WHAT I SAID

It’s deceptively simple, but uses the most of the materials ... spike on the skirt?

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID 

Zac loves the different textures and the tiling and called it solid work. Shiri wishes Rik had gone further, though, later, she suggested she might wear it one day. Nina also said it wasn’t so avant-garde but said it was the most integrated between conventional and unconventional and the most polished. Heidi disagreed, saying avant-garde could be beautiful and wearable, and she loved the curves of the tiles on the model’s body.

MAH-JING

As with others, he’s sticking to what he knows: denim and strapless. But, as he tells the room, he wants it “to be like a fairy, a galaxy queen, mermaid-ish.”

Laurence—business as usual—says, “You’re just making a dress, man.”

A dress with a copper coral reef detail; Tim suggests the attachments of mesh and tubes are heavy but Mah-Jing isn’t worried ... at least not enough to take a minute and sew some straps on the dress.

And when Tim suggests the look is kind of a costume, Mah-Jing wonders if all the looks are costumes and isn’t that the idea. He should have paid attention earlier in the episode when, I believe it was Erin who said, avant-garde is like wearable art.

WHAT HE SAID

I live the silhouette. I wish I could have added straps.

WHAT I SAID

It’s a jean prom dress with a copper mesh apron and the model has to hold it up while she walks.

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

Shiri likes the copper but, again, wants more; Mah-Jing then explains how heavy the copper made the dress and Zac nods, though he doesn’t see how the copper and mesh are incorporated into the look ... they’re just attachments. Nina called them decorations, pretty but not seamlessly integrated into the look. Heidi also agrees that the sculpture looks “stuck on” and the dress is too heavy. And everyone agrees that the construction of the denim dress is not good.

ERIN

Erin alone realizes that you can rifle through baskets of unconventional items with an idea toward what you will make; you pick things and let them tell you what to do. Plus, she is the only designer to go for color, choosing a brilliant chicken yellow to use with her mesh “paper doll” look. Rik made me laugh by pointing out the chicken wire, chicken yellow clucket-iness of it all.

She is also doing her embellishment thing, creating small flower appliqués with leather and chain. As she’s gluing them together, Mah-Jing warns her that the glue will take longer to dry than she expects and it will “foam up” when it does. Erin ignores him, but the next morning, her little flowers are looking a little rabid dog.

Tim once again warns her about being too ambitious and worries that she might be charged with Model Abuse when the model walks in the chicken wire—Erin solves that problem by running a bead of glue on the sharp edges so the Model Authorities were never called.

WHAT SHE SAID

I think it’s really different.

WHAT I SAID

I like the cartoony quality of the pockets but it does look like it hurts to wear it.

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID 

Shiri loved that it was a color, and loved that it was also pants; it felt different from all the others. Heidi loved the sexy, sheer, coolness, while Zac called it futuristic and Ziegfeld Follies. He also loved the color but wishes Erin had paid attention to the underside of the mesh where you could see the glue holding the pockets on. For Nina it was editorial and photographable and that’s all that matters.

I thought it would go Rik, but, yeah, it wasn’t that avant-garde and so Erin once again rises to the top of the podium.

I also thought Cornelius’s looks was less than tubular, but the judges felt that Mah-Jing’s decoration and bad construction were worthy of being Auf’d.

At Mood, Swatch is yipping and barking and looking under the fabric stands until Tim asks what he wants. Tim gets down on all fours ... let that sink in ... and can’t see what’s gotten Swatch so riled, but he does say ...

“You just wanted to see me in this position!”

I love Tim Gunn!

And I loved it when Roberi’s model tells Laurence that she speaks Spanish and Roberi goes insane:

“You speak Spanish? This whole time? God! These models!”

High-larious.

Now, I would have been happy with either Mah-Jing or Cornelius going this week because I never thought either one had the ‘it’ thing for The Tents. I also wanted Corny gone because, since he beat his nemesis Dexter last week, he turned back into catty, bitchy, I’m-so-good Cornelius and dogged nearly everyone else’s work.

So, it seems quite clear now, barring either a miracle or a disaster that The Tents will show with Erin, Rik, Roberi and Laurence if ...

Laurence steps it up.

Rik doesn’t stumble.

Roberi can bring his ideas to life.

Erin doesn't fall of her high horse.

Then maybe Cornelius will be in the show.

What did YOU think?