ElectricTangerine

This week’s challenge was the first challenge of this season which absolutely thrilled me. I have to admit, I’ve gotten a bit bored with what I have come to call the “Rumplestiltskin” challenges. You know the ones where the designers are given a crap situation to work with and no budget at all and told “Here’s a room full of straw and a spinning wheel. You have until tomorrow morning to spin it into gold or a depraved pedophiliac gnome will come take your firstborn child. Make it work!”

I had high hopes for this challenge to be different from the moment Heidi announced that there would be a field trip involved….

Field trips are almost always the first sign of a good episode (which was why I was so disgruntled about the whole Tiki Barber episode) and this was no exception.

On the morning of the field trip, Tim Gunn shows up at the designers’ apartments at what looks to be O’GawdEarly O’clock and Kit claims to be traumatized by this, since Tim has now seen her in her pajamas, sans bra. Everyone gets up, gets dressed and they hit the street.

At this point the camera scanned across the excited crowd of designers and I screamed out loud.

Remember how I’ve mentioned that Jillian’s been “lost in the 80’s” and that her taste is questionable? I had to stop my TiVo cold to make sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Yes, there it is - our Jillian darling, wearing MORK FROM ORK rainbow suspenders. Outside. Where people could see her and pelt her with street vendor food.
The prosecution rests, your honor.

Moving on…

When Tim Gunn and the Designers arrived at the Hershey’s store in Times Square, I started to get excited about what the nature of the challenge could be. Would they have to design with chocolate? Would they have to design with candy? Or maybe recycling? Industrial waste? What?

I had to laugh when Christian dryly observed “Great. We just make sh** out of candy.”

Inside the store, the challenge was issued: Make something with anything you can grab in the Hershey’s gift shop. I was extremely happy to see that they weren’t restricting the designers to creating something with edible materials and there seemed to be a plethora of other items on the shelves to cannibalize for materials. I saw rows of big pillows, stuffed candy kisses (silver fabric!) and lots of candy colored teddy bears. The designers have five minutes and several big shopping bags to fill with whatever they can snatch up - Ready? Set? Go!

You’d think mayhem would ensue, but actually it was pretty orderly - as far as feeding frenzies go. Everyone seemed to have their own chosen area of interest and there were no hysterics or tugging matches over Skittles pillowcases.
Back at the workroom, you could immediately tell who had gone into the skirmish with a plan and who had just grabbed as much as they could and hoped it’d all even out later. The planners were clearly ahead of the “Supermarket Sweep” style contestants.

Jillian was the only designer who’d chosen to work with candy, and SUR-prise, she immediately began to have trouble constructing her outfit out of red licorice. Gee. Who’d have thunk it? Oh wait…everyone! I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again - the key to winning at Project Runway isn’t creativity or originality or excellent sartorial chops. It’s not sewing skills. It’s TIME MANAGEMENT. Rami said as much and yet again set himself apart to my mind as a future P.R. finalist if not outright winner.

As an aside, I’m sure I’m not the only one who was sitting at home watching this episode and wishing fervently that the good folks at Bravo could’ve worked the scheduling around so that the chocolate heavy episode was shown before all of us made resolutions to get back to our diets after the New Year. Watching everyone unwrapping candy and sticking Godzilla sized bars of Hershey’s chocolate in their purses, I was slavering like a Pavlovian dog throughout most of the episode. I needed a bib and a drool cup, but I suppose the same could be said of the episode with the male models too.

Enough about the creating, what about the creations themselves?

Rami wins! - And rightly so. I thought his outfit was absolutely brilliant, striking just the right balance between whimsy and kitsch. It had a futuristic, Japanese pop culture inspired look to it which I thought really worked with (not against, as some others did) the candy creation theme. It helped that the dress was beautifully executed and that Rami scooped up the lovely red-headed model with the ball bearing hips.

Chris - Chris was my second favorite dress and I thought his work with this piece was woefully overlooked. Chris has shown that he can scale back and give us a beautiful, elegant piece. Although again, I have to admit my biases, Chris had me at: “Pop Art look, inspired by Stephen Sprouse and Warhol.” I’ve been a huge Pop Art afficionado for years, so the fact that Chris not only knew enough about Pop to draw from it so deliberately, but executed that so well had my heart a’flutter. I felt like this piece just worked from head to toe, and again, was playful and whimsical without being over the top and veering into kitsch and costume. Really, he should’ve gotten more attention and positive strokes for this than he did.

Christian - I know that this is going to probably get me stoned to death by the other Fashionistas here, but I have to say it: I love Christian. I’ve liked the little shit from the get go, but as time goes on, I find myself cheering for him and consistently looking forward to his catty asides, witty takes on the goings on and impressive and original designs. Is he annoying at times? Yeah, he is. He’s still an uptalker, is sometimes sulky and a little whiny, a drama queen with a diva-like attitude - but he’s also got the skills to back all that attitude up and the leavening sense of humor which makes what should be insufferable, endearing. But then again, I’ve always loved high maintenance, pissy queens with a biting sense of humor. *blows kisses at Jeremy*

Anyway. Enough about him, what about his clothes? Again, I thought Christian’s dress deserved to get more attention than it did. He made an entire dress out of Reese’s peanut butter cups liners. The end result was a rich, textured and elegant dress which reminded me a bit (especially texturally) of Issey Miyake. I loved it and the fact that he finished it early enough to be a royal pain in the ass to all the other designers made it that much more impressive.
That being said, I worry for Christian because his hubris level is starting to become a real problem. Let’s hope that our young Icarus can keep his head and not end up letting his pride pitch him headlong into the Auf’d bin.

Jillian - It could’ve been a nightmare, it was definitely a risk, but she did pull it off at the last minute. Her red licorice bustier with the fringed skirt didn’t fall apart as it was walked down the runway and I actually liked the upper half of the ensemble somewhat. Not as much as the judges seemed to, though. It was a bit Gaultier circa 1987, but hey, stick with what you know Jillian. Nano-nano.

Kevin - *yawn* Yeah, yeah. Wearable. Cute. Good color choices with the rich chocolate brown and silver, but criminy! We’ve seen this a thousand times before. Whip me, kiss me, make me write bad checks, but do not BORE me. That’s a cardinal, unforgivable sin in my world and Kevin’s been guilty of doing it far too often. Also, can we stop with the “Kevin’s the only eye candy we have left” gratuitous shirtless clips? Thanks.

Kit - I thought Kit overlooked a major chance to put a cheeky and humorous spin on her design by cutting the “Kat” out of her labels. Maybe she just didn’t have enough of them to do it, but I thought “If my name was Kit and I was working with Kit Kat wrappers, I wouldn’t be able to pass up the chance to create a Kit, Kit, Kit, Kit, Kit..outfit.” I’ll bet the judges would’ve liked it as well. In any sort of creative industry, the longer you can hold the audience’s fickle attention, the better off you are.
Kit’s piece this week was another variation on her punky, urban design aesthetic. I have to give Kit major props for having and keeping in touch with her personal stylistic vision, without becoming slaved to it. She’s taking risks and keeping it fresh and vital. Nicely done!

Ricky - A nice departure from Ricky’s normal “Fredricks of Hollywood” style sensibilities. I thought the way he referenced the shape of the Hershey’s Kiss without making the piece costumey was very cleverly done.

And now, for the trainwrecks:

Victorya - Is it me, or did Victorya have an expression like a cat’s ass throughout this episode? She looked downright pissed off at the Hershey’s store (who can look like that in a store devoted to candy?) and then marched through what should’ve been a playful and light challenge with a stone faced, grim, tight lipped determination. And it showed. Does Victorya know what “fun” means really? It’s almost like this week’s entry was Victorya saying “This is what fun looks like, to me, from the outside. I have no time for this ‘fun’ so I wouldn’t know. I’m a serious designer designing serious things.” Her dress was a mess. It looked like a frou-frou milkmaid’s costume. Ugly, joyless, dismal, ponderous, creatively constipated. As Santino would sing: “Lighten up, it’s just faaaaashion!”

Sweet P - Whoa. See Sweet P. See Sweet P hit the wall with a resounding “Splat!” It was hard to watch Sweet P stripping gears in the workroom. I knew she was toast when I saw her cutting up those little blue plush teddy bears and sure enough - she was. And then when she was breaking up big chunks of ceramic to stick on top of that mess? Oh no, no, no. This will not end well. This week’s Runway entry was a total, 11th hour, desperation play. She knew she would definitely be done for if she didn’t have something complete to send down the runway (Anyone remember Carmen?) so she threw together a toilet-paper and metallic cocktail dress. It was ugly. It was boring. It was a damn good thing Elisa’s dress was so bad or Sweet P would be history.
Next week - If Sweets can’t pull her P together, she’s outta there.

Auf’d: Elisa - We all knew it was just a matter of time, but to be honest, I was hoping Elisa would go out in a blaze of over-the-top horrific glory - not this somewhat mousey brown bit of utterly banal mediocrity. The only touches of the wacky Elisa-level crazy we’ve come to expect were the Jiffy Pop container, silver metallic bubbles the model wore on her arms and the strange “I stuff my bra with candy wrappers” bodice top of her dress. Those were fun and all, but c’mon…Elisa’s exit certainly didn’t fulfill the promise her Pooping a Parachute first project tantalized us with. Pooh. How very anticlimactic.

I don’t want to end on an anticlimactic note, myself. Instead, I think I’ll bring up our long lost, Flamey, unrequited love: Jack Mackenroth for a moment. Everyone wants to know how Jack is doing, so I thought I’d mention that Jack is doing Fine. And by “doing Fine” I mean doing and being done by the Very Fine Top Chef- Dale Levitski.

Jack talks about it in his blog: http://blog.jackmackenroth.com/2007/12/06/me-and-dale/

And the Defamer carries a piece about it here.

I don’t know about you, but that news fills me with a warm, happy feeling. Among other delighted, vaguely tingly feelings. Dear God, let there be video. Uh oh, did I say that in my “outside” voice?