All-Star Santino

It's Labor Day! No one's reading blogs! What better time to finally get to this attention whore?

As you may or may not know, the day after the All-Star special aired, we mentioned in passing that Santino's "performance" was lame and embarassing. This led to quite the little hissy fit on his twitter feed and he said, among other things, that we "don't get it and we never will," a phrase more appropriate for a 4th grade schoolyard taunt.

The thing is, we DO get it. We're not talking Joyce's Ulysses here. We're talking about reality television and the types of personalities that are drawn to it time and time again. Santino's just one in a long line of hundreds of people who do these shows because they think it will lead to something bigger down the line. He spends more time appearing on television than he does actually producing anything in the way of fashion so we don't think we're going out on a limb here when we say he acted like a jackass deliberately. He couldn't have cared less about the prize money. The whole thing was an audition for him.

And to be honest, we have no problem with that. Play the game if you wanna. Believe it or not, we enjoyed the hell out of Santino in season 2. Sure, he was obnoxious, but he was also incredibly entertaining. The problem this time? It was like watching The Monkees reunite for a world tour in 1989. The time has passed and what we're left with is someone trying WAY too hard to recapture the past by recycling their old hits. It was, as we said, embarrassing.

Okay, we got that off our chests. Now let's look at the clothes.

We like it.

Honestly, we do. It's not exactly groundbreaking but we can see a Hollywood starlet wearing this out for a night on the town and posing for paparazzi.

We could do without the fringe and there was (no surprise) some technical issues, but it's not a bad look overall.

Awful.

There wasn't just a taste issue here. This goes beyond simple taste issues. DVF nailed it when she said it was "vulgar."

Again, we could see some starlet wearing this but we can also see it showing up on a million Worst Dressed lists within a week. A shame, because the bust is actually kind of interesting. But the tightness in the crotch along with the tacky fabric choice ruined whatever it had going for it.

Believe it or not, we REALLY like this look, which he made from the restaurant materials.

It's unique and yet still trendy and it looks expensive, which is odd, because Santino rarely makes things that look expensive.

It's very much in that Hollywood starlet mode that he does well. If he paid more attention to his fashion and less on landing a television show, he could really build himself a healthy clientele.

See, this is why it's so obvious that he wasn't there to win anything. It's like there was no thought whatsoever put into this look.

Except for a little interest around the bust, it's as basic as basic gets. It looks like something Ginger Grant would have packed along with the thousand other dresses she took on that three-hour tour.

And it was rendered in that same cheap and tacky looking fabric.

There. We're done. Good luck on your television career, Santino. We'll watch Ru Paul's Drag Race no matter who's on the judging panel but we've got to say, if you ever get your own show, and if you're anything like the attention-starved child you were on THIS show, we'll probably tune out. You were more fun when you weren't trying so hard.



[Photo: David Russell/myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]



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All-Star Mychael

Jesus Christ! Are we EVER going to be done with these All-Star posts?

Mychael, though he's a sweetheart, kind of illustrated perfectly why the All-Star concept is a bit of a bust, in our opinion. It's because all of the participants go into it as veterans of reality television and subsequently most of them were boring to watch on camera. You have one of two options when you're acutely aware of how these things are edited: you can either shut up and just do the work or you can run around like a jackass trying to get as much camera time as you can. Neither option makes for particularly entertaining television.

Anyway, let's look at some dresses.





This was pretty cute, actually. We like the color and we really like the origami-like construction. The only real problem with the look is that it's not flawlessly executed.



This was a big no. Uli and Korto made dresses out of the restaurant materials that looked like real clothes; Chris and Sweet P made dresses that look like costumes. This? This just looks like a very basic dress with a lot of trash stapled to the front of it. Unfabulous.


Y'know, originally we hated this but we're coming around on it. We love the colors he chose.

And the skirt is again, interesting because of its origami folds.

The problem is with the proportions. There's too much skirt to too little top. And overall there's still an execution issue. That top's not fitted very well.

This was a really cute look.

Again, we really like the color pairing here. In fact, he managed to establish a color story with only 4 pieces. We love the little shrug and we even like the structured shoulders but it's a shame you can see the padding underneath.

And the back is kind of sexy.

In the end, it was not a contender for the win by any stretch, but there were some good designs here. Unfortunately, he was too rusty to do the "make it work" thing in such a short time frame. Because of the execution issues and the poor design for the restaurant challenge, he didn't have a chance of making it to the top four. Still, all of these pieces felt very much like a continuation of his better work from when he was on the show.

[Photo: David Russell/myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]



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All-Star Sweet P

Alright poodles, we're rolling up our sleeves and getting back into it.

This is the part where we talk about her personality on the show and blahblahblah. Nothing against her, but except for a minor and highly edited storyline about a rivalry with Uli, there's nothing to talk about, so let's jump in.


Let's start off by admitting one thing: Sweet P has an aesthetic; a sort of shabby romanticism of faded flowers and hippy chick girliness coupled with an ever-so-slight L.A. edge to it. It's not our thing at all but it's a perfectly commendable aesthetic and you can do a lot of interesting things with it. We're going to try and bear that in mind in our critiques. It's only fair to admit upfront when something's just not your thing.

This was a pretty nice dress. Somewhat plain, and we don't like the color, but cute nonetheless.

Our main criticism is the fit on this garment. Generally speaking, Sweet P shies away from fitted garments. That's fine, but this is clearly a dress that's meant to fit the wearer a little better than this. Admit it, if your girlfriend came out of the dressing room looking like this, you'd say, "Let's go down a size and see how that looks."

Still, a good first entry and one that made us and the judges sit up a little bit because it was different from what we'd expected.

Okay, here's what we're talking about. That faded, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, rocker chick thing she does. Definitely not our thing but if you're going for that, this is a very good design.

Again, it's very away from the body and floaty, but with this dress, it makes sense because she clearly wasn't going for a fitted or tailored look like the previous dress.

It's also not a color that we particularly like but if you like that sort of thing, if you're one of those airy, poetry-writing, flowers-in-your-hair, boyfriend-rides-a-motorcycle types, then this is the dress for you.

A pretty dress, no doubt. Main criticism: technical. Look at that side seam. You can hide that kind of sewing with a lot of frayed ruffles but you can't hide it in a basic seam.

We should add that we DO like those frayed ruffles as well as the frayed and ripped fabric roses. A nice touch.

This look got a lot of criticism in the comments section but honestly? We have no problem with it.

Except for the fact that it doesn't hide that it was made from unconventional materials and therefore could never "pass" as "real" clothing, it's still a kind of cute, kind of witty design for her.

A costume? Sure. But a cute, well-made one. There were certainly entries a lot worse than this one in this category, including the one from the winning designer.

The silhouette, the colors and the flowers all tied it in nicely to the rest of the collection.

If you read our previous posts on the show, then you know we felt this collection received higher scores than we felt it merited. The three previous looks deserved whatever praise the judges wanted to heap on them, but we were totally befuddled when the judges all praised this look.

It's not awful, mind you (at least this part of the dress isn't); it's just so incredibly basic and style-less. Plain Jane. And regular readers know how little we like big floppy bows as embellishments for grown women.

It's a pretty fabric, even if we don't like the color (again), but it doesn't remotely look like a red carpet dress, which, at the very least is supposed to look expensive.

This, at its best, looks like a home-sewn bridesmaid dress. Put her in a big floppy hat and she'd be right at home in a 1978 wedding party.

The absolute worst part of it is that awful dust ruffle on the bottom. Unfortunately, there aren't any good shots of it, so if you can't see it or remember it, trust us. It's bad.

It's really not a bad collection at all. As we said, it showed some growth and expansion on her part (as well as some improvement) while remaining totally within her aesthetic and identifiable as her work. We have no doubt that she has or could have a decent sized customer base to build a line on. We just think the judges over-praised and over-rated it. In our imaginary judging, she would have rated a solid 5th place, possibly 4th, but definitely not ahead of Uli's.

Which, come to think of it, is probably why the editors worked so hard to create an Uli/Sweet P rivalry.

[Photo: David Russell/myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]



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T Lo Interviews Uli, Uli, Uli

So flabbergasted were we at Uli's fate in the All-Star challenge that we did what we do best: used our connections to score an interview. See, we haven't actually spoken to Uli face to face since the time we shared a limo with her, Laura and Peter (and the hot Russian driver we still haven't forgotten) on the way to the opening of Malan's store. So we called up Laura the day after the All-Star challenge aired and we were all, "Get us Uli, bitch!" And she was all, "Yow! You homos are scary! Let me give her a call. She's on a shoot but I'll have her call you tonight! Just please, don't hurt my children!" And thus it came to pass.


Hi Uli, it's so nice to talk to you again, it’s been ages. What have you been doing since Season 3?
First of all, I was hiding for two years, I couldn’t take all the attention, I was pretty shy back then, and then a year ago I started coming out of my hole doing some appearances. I started doing a TV show called It’s Very Uli and it’s been running on Plum TV. Plus, if I wasn’t on a photo shoot working for other people as a stylist, I was making clothes basically every day.

So you've been working as a stylist?
Yes, that’s part of my income. I’ve been doing this for over ten years, you know, I like it a lot. I have no husband, no boyfriend, no nothing and my family is all in Germany. So that’s basically my family, the photographers, the models, it’s always the same group of people you work with shooting at different locations. So that’s it, I do styling and the rest of the time I design and I’m pretty happy with it.

You always told us you love your life in Miami.
I do love my life in Miami but people don’t take you very seriously if you are a designer out of Miami and I have a hard time to get things going in Miami. Things are much slower, you have to kick your ass every morning to get out of bed and do things.

Most people I know are very rich and they don’t have to work or they work at night at nightclubs and stuff. When you’re in New York you have such a different energy and I kind of miss that a little. I’m still thinking of moving to New York. I actually got a place there but it was during winter and I never really made it up there.

You’ve been selling your dresses in a couple of stores, right [Check "where to buy" on her site]?
Yes, mostly in Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego and also Dubai. Mostly places with high-end clients in a warm climate. You know, I make a lot of party, summer dresses, a lot of resort wear, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three years.

How did you get to sell your clothes in Dubai?
My best friend moved to Dubai and I went there to visit her and I checked a couple of stores, including a store called Etoile, and that's where I sell my clothes. I thought since it is always hot in Dubai my clothes would fit perfectly in and there’s a lot of people with money to spend. See, when you do a small collection, you have to make it expensive, you need money to make an inexpensive collection and I don’t have money to go to China and have it produced. I don’t have the back-up you need for that.

You need money to make money.
Exactly, and people sometimes complain that things are expensive, but I make my clothes in Miami and in New York and I pay the people very well, I don’t buy fabrics in bulk from China, I always use great-quality fabrics usually from Europe. It usually costs me $200 just to make the piece, I sell it for $400 and the stores, of course, sell it from $900-1,200. It’s not like I’m getting rich selling these dresses. It ends up being expensive at the store, but that’s the way it is right now, I can’t help it.

Moving to the All-stars Challenge, were you excited when they contacted you and invited you to be part of the challenge?
I was very excited, but I almost couldn’t do it because of a styling job I had already scheduled and that’s pretty much what has happened in the last three years. The reason why you haven’t seen my face anywhere is because I’ve been busy working as a stylist, I could never attend anything or Fashion Week or anything. So, I was really happy that I could do this, show my face again.

How was shooting the All-Star Challenge? Was it fun?
The whole thing was so much fun and it comes across as if we don’t like each other, which is total BS, we all had so much fun with each other. There was really no bullying going on, they just made it look like there was.

They put comments in certain places where nobody had made that comment. We knew when the challenge was set that no one was going to get eliminated. OK, yes, one person was going to win, but we all got to show our pieces. That stress level wasn’t there, there was really no fighting. I mean, I was laughing my ass off the whole day with Santino. And I love Sweet P, there was really nothing going on between us, they just tried to instigate things. It looked like we didn’t have fun, but we had a blast.

We noticed that you wearing beautiful necklaces throughout the challenge and one of them looked like a piece from Korto's collection.
Yes, the purple one was Korto's, the other ones were mine. I'm also designing jewelry like the ones you saw me wearing on the show.

Were you surprised when they added the restaurant twist?
I was shocked because sometimes I tend to be an airhead. I kind of forgot they do things like that, but yeah, I was shocked. I was happily shocked because I wasn’t quite done with my look and I was hoping for something unconventional. In the back of my head I was always thinking "OK, what are they going to come up with this time?" There’s always the car challenge, the grocery store…you know, make clothes out of something you wouldn’t normally do.

Your collection was gorgeous. It was nice to see a different side of Uli with no use of prints. What made you decide to drop prints altogether?
When I went back, I felt that if was going to have a chance of winning, I could not do something with prints again. Well, turned out I didn’t win anyway, they didn’t really say anything negative about my collection, as a matter of fact, they said nothing about what I actually made, they only talked about what I didn’t make, but I swear, I’m so sure that if I had made anything with prints I would have been ripped apart.

Three years later I have evolved, yes, I still use prints, but now I use a lot of solid fabrics for my designs, more sophisticated things, stuff that you can wear for a longer period of time, you get more use out of it.

Everything was really beautiful. We love all the details in every piece. We felt it showed growth from your part.
Thank you. You know, before, I have to admit I made the same freaking dress over and over again, you know, shorter, longer, but it was always the same dress in a different print and that made it look different and I was shocked that I made it until the end. The prints made all the impact. I made so many different things in the last three years and I wanted to show them all that; what I can make, what I’m actually into. Right now, I’m not even into prints that much. Right now, I’ve been making more sophisticated, detailed clothes.

First they tell you to get away from print and now they miss your prints.
When that came out of Heidi’s mouth I couldn’t not believe it, I said to myself, “Are you serious?” Actually you didn’t see it, but they all said the same thing, “Oh, we miss your prints, we love your prints,” “Where’s your Miami spirit?” I was like, “Are you guys kidding me? That’s what made me lose the prize the first time!"

They always mentioned my overuse of prints, and you know what, they were right. I watched the season again and they were right, I used too many prints, but that’s because at the time I was afraid to do something else. I also feel that I showed them at Bryant Park that I can do something else. Yes, most of my customers love my prints, but I do other things too. No, I was like on the floor when they basically told me I was at the bottom. I was devastated. I was like, ‘OK, maybe I lost all sense of fashion.” Yeah, I was floored. I didn’t want to stand there saying, “Oh, I’m so great.” But I really didn’t expect that. I thought that I’d be definitely at the top for sure.

Our favorite piece was the restaurant one. What did you use for that?
I used a fabric that was kind of like a net that was the curtain in a nude color and I used that as my base and then I cut hundreds of strips of stuff that I found, like the placemats, that silver fabric, double duct tape and I wove all these different thing through the net to create basically a fabric. It looks like one fabric, but that’s a combination of probably eight different things. At the bottom, I added a fringe that was hanging in the restaurant. Plus some of the fabric I had originally purchased at the store.

We thought for sure that you were going to be top four. We had no doubt. We could not believe when they sent you back in.
Thank you. I was really shocked. You know, first they make you and then they break you. I hope that doesn’t affect my sales [laughs]. A lot of people go by what the judges say. I don’t want to go out on the street and have someone stop me and say, “You should’ve used some print.” I don’t want to hear that [laughs].

So, what’s next for the German bombshell?
I’m going to continue doing my styling, I love it. Right now I’m on a beautiful lake in New Hampshire, with beautiful models. It’s something I do really well and really enjoy. When it comes to my designs, you know, I can’t really do it by myself. I gave up styling once to just focus on designing and it didn’t work.

I really need somebody to come and finance my collections because I’m a crappy business person, I have no business sense and until that happens I’m just going to keep it small and exclusive. I just got an offer to make Olympic ice-skating costumes, you know, stuff like that comes in every now and then and I do that and it’s exciting. I’m happy, I’m not rich, but I do what I love to do every day.


[Photos: Getty Images/myLifetime.com/Uli's Facebook Page]


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