Launch My Line: Eric's Collection

Let's send LML to bed by taking a final look at the collection that was all about winding up in bed.

Okay, this is going to be a fairly harsh review, but we want to say first that he seems like a pretty decent guy. There was no drama coming from him and we can't recall him ever saying a bad word about anyone else on the show. That's commendable. We also want to say that there's nothing wrong with a collection of sexariffic club wear in theory.

Okay, that was us being nice. It hurt. Let's move on.










Pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that the judges praised this I Dream of Hooker nightmare of a dress. This is a red carpet dress for the Adult Video Awards. All it needs are lucite heels and about 10 lbs of silicone.



This is a collection of one-button dresses. You know, the kind that fall to the floor after unhooking one strap or button, allowing you to step out of it and get on with business in your thong and fuck-me heels.

There's no greater criticism of the judges on this show than merely pointing out that this designer made it all the way to the end and even when they eliminated him, they gushed over his collection. Look, we hate to make unfair Project Runway comparisons, but Michael Kors would have been on the floor laughing his ass off at this collection and Nina would be off somewhere vomiting. Even Heidi would think some of these looks were a bit much.

Like we said, we have no problem with a collection that's all about sexy club wear. What we do have a problem with is how tacky and unimaginative all of it is. We don't exactly love, say, Baby Phat, but that's a design collection that plays in the same sandbox as this one and yet you can watch a Baby Phat runway show and not think the models are all walking petri dishes of venereal disease (Sorry, Amanda! We love you!). There's nothing fun about this kind of sexiness; nothing that starts from the point of the woman wearing the dress, instead of the man looking at the woman wearing the dress. That's why it's so easy to throw around words like "hooker" and "stripper" when talking about these looks. These aren't the dresses of women loving themselves and loving their bodies and having fun with their sexiness. These are the dresses of women who need attention from men when they go out, otherwise there's no point in going out.

[Photos: Trae Patton/BravoTV.com]


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Launch My Line: Merle's Collection

Time to check in with our girl Merle.

We said that we would have given the win to Merle and we almost talked ourselves out of that when we looked at Kathy's winning collection, but we're nothing if not fickle bitches and now we're swinging back around to the Merle side.

Not to be dismissive, but we've already talked about most of these looks, even if some of them have been altered. Rather than do a look by look rundown, let's just look at the collection as a whole.












Wow. Looking at it all together like this, we're struck by two things: how beautiful this collection is and how cohesive it is. There is only one look we don't like, the track suit, and even then we can admit that it's a pretty good design even if we don't like track suits.

Her color story is good, but she could have used some brighter or more saturated tones to offset all the overwhelming brown-ness. That orange and that pop of pink went a long way.

Here's the thing: judging by their commentary, it would appear that the biggest detriment to her winning the whole thing was her gimmick of making each outfit convertible in some way. We share that point of view with the judges. A gimmick, by its very nature, is going to cast the collection in a particularly down-scale light. Nothing wrong with putting a collection together of salable looks that the average woman could use to expand her wardrobe, but that's not what Merle and Thai did. They went for a particularly upscale aesthetic which forces the question: What woman out there is in the market for a red carpet gown that also converts into a cocktail dress? Answer: there's no such woman.

BUT.

She stated her gimmick with the first outfit and with every subsequent outfit. If the judges didn't think her gimmick was a good idea, they had a half-dozen chances to tell her that and they didn't. In a way, they kind of screwed her over because had the judges criticized her gimmick early, we have no doubt that Merle would have been smart enough to course-correct. She took every judge's criticism to heart and altered the offending garments accordingly. Had she known they didn't like the gimmick, she would have tossed it.

So now we're kind of back to saying that Merle should have won it. We didn't like the gimmick either, but every single one of these garments stands alone without it. That's a testament to both Merle and Thai. There may have been a gimmick involved, but they clearly put all their energy into making beautiful clothing first.

[Photos: Trae Patton/BravoTV.com]


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