Pop Vultures

Project Runway, S05 E03: Bright Lights/Big City

Last week on Project Runway, Wesley’s discovery that short + tight + shiny = cheap earned him a ticket home, while Suede’s insistence on talking about himself in the third person did not automatically disqualify him from winning the challenge. This week, the designers find inspiration in New York City. Also, the judges might be smoking crack.

We start, as always, with a sad contestant interviewing about how much he misses the aufed designer. Considering that, in this case, it’s Daniel, who is now on record as dating Wesley, he might actually be sincere. Apparently, they “were connecting well.” And there’s our euphemism for the day.

On the runway, model swap is as uneventful as it usually is, as “Suede loves Tia and he could never change, so Suede is going to keep Tia.” I don’t actually need to point out that Suede himself is talking, do I? Heidi tells the designers that they’ve been working hard and Tim is going to take them out for a night on the town. The fools actually applaud and start debating where he’s going to take them, having never apparently seen this show in which everything leads to a challenge and where Heidi is the queen of the fakeout.

Tim arrives, wearing a stylish raincoat, and tells everyone to get dressed for the rain. The producers, bless their sadistic hearts, have all the designers forgo umbrellas or anything that might be remotely attractive, instead dressing them in rain ponchos and boots. It’s all about how you work it, baby.

They reach the destination of their challenge, which is:

I think Suede speaks for everyone when he says, “A double decker bus. WHAT?”

It turns out that their challenge is to design an outfit of their choice for a night out on the town, inspired by New York at night. It’s the same as the challenge from seasons 1 & 3, except it’s dark. Actually, the city does look stunning in the rain at night. The bus makes four stops, and at each stop one group gets off and has an hour to take photographs. They are dropped at Columbus Circle, Times Square, New York Public Library and Greenwich Village. The landmarks don’t really matter, as they all take photos of random things on the ground. Keith starts explaining something about being gay and growing up in a Mormon family in Utah, and I’m sure it’s very touching, but my recording cuts out for a minute and when it comes back, it’s the next day and everyone’s at Parsons. It doesn’t appear that I missed anything important.

After everyone picks their photo, it’s off to Mood. Remarkably, this is the first time this season they’ve been able to pick their own fabric. In fact, this is a fairly generous challenge, in that it gives them a lot of room to work and show their creativity, without having to make a cocktail dress from discarded engine parts.

They have till one that night. Everyone gets to work. Leanne is afraid she’s going to be “too creative” again and end up in the bottom two. I don’t know when creative became a synonym for lack of artistic judgment, but okay.

And then, there’s Blayne, who would rather terrorize the viewers than make an attractive dress. This one’s for the narcoleptics among you. Print out this photo, carry it with you at all times, and you may never sleep again.

It’s subtitled because his voice, apparently, was not recognizably human, let alone clearly in English.

Despite the fact that they only have one day to produce a winning garment, they still manage to find plenty of time to be catty in interviews. Joe thinks Kenley’s fabric looks like Fort Lauderdale. Stella wonders who would ever wear Keith’s dress. Kenley thinks Emily’s dress is not well made, and it’s old and clichéd. Sadly, she’s only scratching the surface of all the things wrong with the dress.

Stella happily pounds grommets into her leathah outfit and is slowly driving everyone else insane. Her helpful advice?

That’s right, Stella. If the constant hammering is bothering them, they should just leave the only available workroom and therefore quit the show. You get the feeling Stella is someone you would never, ever want for a roommate?

During Tim’s walkthrough, he is worried about Jennifer’s time management when really he should be worried about how dull her dress is. He thinks Keith’s needs more shape and Kenley’s is potentially costume. He also seems dubious about Terri’s open back dress, but she assures us that her “diversity of creativity” will lead her to victory. I love the way everyone on this show constantly reinterprets the English language.

Tim loves Leanne’s skirt, which he should. She’s done her best not to be “too creative” this time, and restraint looks good on her. He tries to convince Emily that she has made a “black dress with a great big oversized corsage,” and tells her to take it further. She agrees, then immediately interviews that Tim gave her a “mixed review,” (apparently, being told you are “disappointing” can now be interpreted as ambiguous) but she has her “own sense of style.” She’s happy with the outfit and does not want to change it. Sadly, she does not seem to realize that her own sense of style is really crappy.

Before Tim is allowed to leave, Blayne tells him to “Holla at ya boy.” Tim is utterly perplexed by this command. Terri take pity on him and tells him to just say, “Holla,” and helps him out by spelling it. For all that Jennifer claims to be a surrealist designer, the most surreal moment, perhaps for the entire season, comes from hearing Tim Gunn calmly say, “Make it work. Carry on. Holla at your boy!” as he leaves.

At the end of the day, everyone is still worried about how much they still have to do and how little time they have. Since this happens every freaking episode, just assume this is the case in all future recaps and save me from having to write it, okay?

Runway day, and everyone is nervous. See above paragraph, please. Keith’s model dropped out, and he has to switch, which would be a lot more interesting if we had any reason to care about the models, ever.

Runway time! The guest judge this week is “New York nightlife aficionado” Sandra Bernhard.

Keith’s dress has problems, but I actually kind of like it. It reminds me of a flapper dress for the new millennium, all movement and bounce. If I wore this, I’d be doing the Charleston all over town. It’s a bit over the top, but it captures his inspiration.

I hate Blayne’s. Hate it. It’s rather comforting to see that last week’s design was an anomaly and, if left to choose his own fabric, he will produce something that looks like a Vegas magician’s assistant vomited the prop scarf all over a black dress. It is, quite simply, butt ugly.

Joe continues to be reliable, if not particularly inspiring. He’s going to be in the competition until they’re able to weed out all the more erratic designers. He may be predictable, but at least he doesn’t make my eyes bleed.

Emily proves the first rule of PR: Always listen to Tim Gunn. Yes, the dress does evoke the photograph, but that doesn’t mean it looks good. The ruffle seems randomly placed on the dress and doesn’t add any structure or produce any interesting lines. It’s just there, and I want to rip it off, wrap it around a balloon and make a piñata out of it.

Leanne gets the most improved award this week. How she went from last week’s over-designed monstrosity to this week’s interesting and sleek outfit may be the most pronounced turn-around we’ve seen on this show. If she can continue to rein in her creative impulses, she may actually stick around beyond the fifth week, which is far more than I would have predicted in the first episode.

This is what Audrey Hepburn might have worn if she’d ever been the mother of the bride. And forgotten to wear her glasses while shopping. It’s almost interesting. Almost. In the end, it’s not unusual enough to stand out and not sleek enough to be stylish. She keeps saying that she’s a surreal designer, but until there’s a melting clock somewhere on the bodice, I’m not buying it.

There are enough people that suck worse than Jerell that he’ll keep sneaking by, but I’m beginning to think that, as Nina Garcia would say, he has issues with his taste level. Biased ruffles – with a train! – for a night out? This is a bridesmaid dress for a wedding where the bride secretly resents her wedding party. Also, the connection to the photo is questionable, at the very least.

It’s messy, it’s over the top, and it’s totally hot, in a 1980s Cher sort of way. I’m starting to find myself on Team Kelli. Twice now she has produced designs that surprise me and make me wish I could study the outfits more closely in order to see the details she used. Plus, this dress manages to be just the right side of trashy, which I kind of love.

Is gold lamé making a comeback? Do I need to dig out my old prom dress? The style is fine, though the skirt looks a bit off. It does capture his photo well, too. However, anything that causes me to flash back to my senior prom is likely not a dress that should be held up as an example of high fashion.

Who would wear this? Would you? Would your teenaged sister? Would anyone actually choose to cover their body in this print, with its tulle cutout, and sashay into the night with shoulders so high that Joan Collins would struggle to pull it off? I wish the fabric looked more like the photo than like some tropical acid trip.

It’s a shirt dress. Yes, it is. It is a pretty color. Um, it doesn’t suck? I can’t think of anything interesting to say about this one. It inspires no reaction in me whatsoever, although I do have a sudden and unexpected desire to heat up my iron.

It’s time for Stella to go. She just bores me. She made a leather corset vest and pants with a lace-up crotch. You’re rock and roll, we get it. When forced to step out of her comfort zone, as she did last week, she can find a way to match her design sensibility to the challenge, but left on her own, she produces garments you could see on any 1986 MTV special. She’s just not that original.

Korto has made yet another stylish, flowing piece with clean lines and absolutely nothing that doesn’t belong on the outfit. However, it is a jumpsuit, and I refuse to praise any outfit that requires women to spend five pained minutes unzipping and unbuckling just to have a pee. She also didn’t really connect to the photo.

Terri better never swap her model, because she worked this. On her, it was stylish and powerful. On most women, the print dress over trousers outfit will look like a university hippie. Sure, she’s fun, and she’ll take you dancing before smoking you out in her dorm room, but she’s not exactly high fashion. It’s pretty, and it does have a few edgier touches, but I’m not convinced.

Keith, Kenley, Emily, Terri, Jennifer and Leanne are left on the stage, and everyone else is safe. The fact that Blayne is not in the bottom three means that I’m already calling shenanigans on this week’s judging. This is only compounded when they love Kenley’s dress. Leanne’s and Terri’s also get their approval, while they think Keith’s reminds them of toilet paper and are as perplexed by the ruffle on Emily’s as the rest of us. Jennifer’s gets the kiss of death of being called matronly. The poor matrons of the world, they never get any respect.

After the judges chat, Terri is in, and Kenley is the winner. I am…confused. Obviously, this week I don’t know a thing about fashion. Perhaps I should have changed out of my pajamas before starting this recap. Leanne is in. Keith is in. Jennifer is in. Emily is out. I’m a little sad, because I liked her portfolio and was hoping to see some of that on the show, but he three outfits so far have ranged from forgettable to atrocious. The fact that, in her exit interview, she insists that her dress was “beautiful, it was finished, it showed personality,” does help to lessen some of the goodwill I’m feeling toward her. There’s nothing like a bit of reality show delusion to see you through the day. With the third kiss-auf of the season, Emily is gone.

Next week: field trip, with bonus fabric stealing drama AND machine rethreading drama. The excitement never stops here on Project Runway.