Althea

Oh, right. THIS one.

So Lo says to T this morning, "T," he says, "We still have another dress to do!"
"Are you sure, Lo?" says T. "I can't even remember. Who's left?"
"Althea!" said Lo in his excitable Lo way. "We forgot to do ALTHEA!!!"
"Oh," said T. "THAT one."
Look, nothing against the girl. She's done her share of solid work all season and she certainly got the judges' attention. We're not arguing that she doesn't deserve to be in Bryant Park. We're still stinging over the bizarre judging that rewarded a dress the judges called a "mess fest" and sent home the designer the judges said made a "beautiful" dress.

Which, if we can take a second to return to Gordana, seems to have been misunderstood by some of our readers when they saw our ranting on her "Auf Wiedersehen" post. It's not that WE think Gordana should have gone to Bryant Park; it's that THE JUDGES completely overruled their own assessments to justify not sending her. It's not about whether WE thought her dress was beautiful; it's about the fact that THEY did. And the flipside of that, what made it doubly frustrating, was that the judges clearly hated Althea's look.

Anyway, architectural inspiration, blah, blah, blah. Not a bad idea, but hard to pull off the technical details.

Model: Tanisha Harper

Like the judges, we'll give her a lot of credit for the effort. Unlike the judges, we didn't let that blind us to the obvious problems.

The actual design of the skirt is great. The choice to use that particular fabric? Not great. The fact that the design of the skirt was so obviously time consuming that it left her just barely enough time to stamp out a formless tank top with no design interest to it at all? HUGE mistake.

And the fact that the skirt itself isn't even completed to what Nina would normally consider her satisfaction? FATAL mistake.

Or it would have been if the judging didn't have the sweet smell of crack hanging all over it.

That is an unfinished mess topped of by a tank top so barely made it's practically imaginary. She should have changed course early on when it became obvious she wasn't going to do the design justice in the time allotted. That's what other designers have done when the chips were down.

But for whatever reason, all of this was overlooked. Actually, that's not true. It was all addressed and critiqued by the judges, who then promptly forgot about it when it came time to send people home. We still don't get it.

Extended Judging:


Tim Gunn's Workroom Critique:




[Photos: Mike Yarish/myLifetime.com - Videos: myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]



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Irina

Dun Dun DUN!!!! VILLAINY!!!!

So the villain of the piece chose as her inspiration the painting Mischief and Repose, by John William Godward. Not pointing it out for any reason other than it goes with this screencap.

Because, did you know? Irina is the VILLAIN. Such is the extent of her villainy that when it's combined with the sheer blandness of the rest of this season, it turns out she's not much of a villain. She's apparently the best they could rustle up.

She's just a smack-talking girl who thinks she can smack talk because the judges like her. Fine. Okay. We think the judges have surrendered themselves to the sweet embrace of crack, but it's not like they didn't give her reason to think that her shit does not, in fact, stink.

Just one question.

Model: Kalyn Hemphill

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

What is this "Fiddler on the Roof of Studio 54" bullshit?

UGLY. OLD FASHIONED. STYLE-LESS.

Seriously, we think the worst you could say about most of Irina's stuff is that it's good basic yeoman's work when it comes to dress-making. We thought she could at least always fall back on the "sense of style" defense of her work. But this? It looks old.

And WHAT IS GOING ON with Kalyn's drag queen makeup and Leontyne Price styling?

We'll give her some tiny credit for the back. It's at least a little interesting (in a Stevie Nicks kind of way). But those shoes?

And that headband! And that frigging half-assed sash she puts on everything?

It's all so tired looking. She sure was talking a good game to the cameras because any other designer sending this out on the runway would have at least had the presence of mind to say, "I think I'm really screwed here." At least Tim talked her out of draping the dead animals all over her.

Then again, the judges only gave her the mildest rebuke, it seemed to us. Not that they didn't criticize it extensively, but we'd bet a donut that if certain other designers had ever sent this out on the runway, they would have been barbecued for it.

Extended Judging:


Tim Gunn's Workroom Critique:



[Photos: Mike Yarish/myLifetime.com - Videos: myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Dr. Whitfield's Bed

Moving on from the auf'ings...

Dr. Whitfield does solid work once again. In a season that, by destiny or design, wound up with a parade of blandness on the runway, she's nonetheless been a notably solid performer.

Model: Lisa Blades

We really only have one criticism of this dress, which we'll get to in a minute. It's pretty, no doubt about it.

It fits her well and we even like the twisted straps, which is weird for us because we rarely like twisted fabric.

Our problem with it is that, though it's fitted well, it's not particularly sewn well.

Pucker City.

Plus, it only barely touches on the piece that supposedly inspired it.

Okay, that's two criticisms.

We get why the judges praised it. It really is a classically pretty design. It's just that it's not particularly wedded to its supposed inspiration, and once again we're looking at technical issues that in past seasons would have had Nina foaming at the mouth.

Extended Judging:


Tim Gunn's Workroom Critique:



[Photos: Mike Yarish/myLifetime.com - Videos: myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Auf Wiedersehen 2

No WTFery this time, kittens.

Poor guy. He really is very likeable and it was endearing how appreciative he was to still be there this late in the game, but let's face it: the writing was on the wall a long time ago.

We give him credit for choosing an inspiration way off the beaten path, but it kind of reinforced the idea in our heads that he doesn't have great instincts and he's amazingly unself-aware as a designer.

He's at his best when he's doing romantic, conventionally beautiful clothing. He's not, so far as we can tell, a conceptual designer. He was standing in front of one of the world's finest art collections. He could have picked almost any artwork in that museum and it would have been a good fit for his aesthetic. Instead, he picked the most challenging and least-like-himself inspiration he could find. Not that we're arguing he should have played it safe, but he really should have played to his strengths.

Model: Katie Sticksel

When this first came out, we momentarily thought, "No volume. Good for him." We were ready to applaud him for trying out a new silhouette.

But then we saw how the bottom half moved and we realized why he does voluminous skirts so much: because he doesn't really know how to do otherwise. A skirt with a slimmer silhouette requires a sense of flow and movement and this heavy thing just hung on her as she walked down the runway.

The top is very cute but he's done the exact same top several times this season. It was just more of the same. The corset waist just looked incongruous to us. It didn't really add any thing to the look.

And we have to say, while the execution wasn't bad exactly, it wasn't "set the world on fire" good either. Anyone who's ever watched the show knows that the final challenge is basically an audition for Bryant Park and it's the one moment where all the stops really needed to be pulled out.

Even if all the elements came together and worked perfectly, it's still not a terribly ambitious design.

Nor is it a particularly pretty dress. That skirt fabric, besides being too heavy, was just plain ugly.

In season 2, Andrae famously made a dress inspired by dirty gutter water. What made that dress so memorable is that he took something ugly and turned it into something beautiful. The fountain wasn't exactly ugly, but it did pose roughly the same challenge. This needed to be a uniquely beautiful dress and it just wasn't. It was kind of sad and stiff and depressing.

We really do think he's a sweetheart and we hope he's learned a lot from this experience. There's definitely a lot of potential there, but in our opinion, he either needs to go to school or he needs to intern for a design house to learn some of the basics. It was cute in the beginning when he admitted he didn't know what smocking is, but after weeks of demonstrating that he doesn't know how to edit or interpret, he's proven to us that he needs guidance in order to move on.

Extended Judging:


Tim Gunn's Workroom Critique:


Exit Interview:




[Photos: Mike Yarish/myLifetime.com - Videos: myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Auf Wiedersehen 1

WTF?!?

WTF, WTF, WTF?!?!?!

Blah blah blah. Final challenge, blah blah, inspiration, blah, Getty Museum, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, only five left, blah, blah.

Blah, Monet, blah.


*sob*

It's hard not to write "FUCK YOU, BUNIM/MURRAY!!!!!"

Oh, wait. We just did.

Model: Matar Cohen

Seriously, when the show pulls out crack-smokery like this, it's always difficult the next morning to come up with a cogent, reasoned response. And why should we, you ask? Well, because "FUCK YOU!!!!" responses are not exactly hard to find on the internet and we try to be a little better than that.

Better than a "FUCK YOU!!!" response. Which is why we rarely ever write it.

"FUCK YOU!!!" That is.

To Bunim/Murray. So it would read like this:

"FUCK YOU, BUNIM/MURRAY!!!!"

As you can see, we're better than that.

Christ, what are we supposed to say here? We saw the final collections back in February. Once the designers established their aesthetics, it wasn't hard to figure out who was in the final three. For us, it was all about waiting to see how they got to that point.

So when this beautiful dress came out and blew all the other dresses out of the water, and then when all the judges admitted that it was a beautiful dress and the only one that truly looked inspired by the inspiration, we thought, "Were we wrong? Is Gordana in the final three?" Because even jaded, cynical long-time PR commenters like us couldn't figure out how she could be auf'd if the judges loved her dress.

We STILL can't figure it out. And while we don't want to take any of the deserved blame away from the judges - especially Nina with her "I don't know who she is" crap. NEWSFLASH, CHICA: YOU DON'T KNOW WHO SHE IS BECAUSE YOU WERE FLYING ALL OVER THE WORLD WHEN YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN SITTING IN THAT JUDGES SEAT - the fact of the matter is, this has producer manipulation written all over it.

After all, they found themselves in this predicament before. In season 3, they couldn't decide who to send home after judges' pet Michael made a crappy dress and judge's punching bag Uli made a beautiful dress, so they sent all 4 of them to Bryant Park. In season 4, they couldn't make up their minds so they sent all 5 designers to Bryant Park.

We realize that the lawsuit was hanging over this production the whole time and no one involved in the show was really on their game, but why couldn't they do as the Magical Elves did and just give the woman her damn due? She clearly NAILED the challenge. Send her to Bryant Park, for Christ's sake. Would it have killed them to have someone not young and perky in the finale?

As for the dress, well, it's not that we love it all that much, but we love the thought behind it and we really love the technical skill she brought to it.

But frankly, those judges should be ashamed of themselves. They certainly looked it. That was the most sheepish judging session we've ever seen. Why not just have the producers standing behind them and whispering everything in their ears on camera? It wouldn't have been any less obvious.

Extended Judging:


Tim Gunn's Workroom Critique


Exit Interview:




[Photos: Mike Yarish/myLifetime.com - Videos: myLifetime.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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