I'm Not Getting Paid Enough For This BS

Worst season ever? No question in my head. Even though the talent level at the top (Bradon, Dom, Kate, Alexandria and Justin) is reasonably good, there is some absolute garbage at the bottom (Sandro, Ken, Alexander, Timothy and Karen) and it took three challenges for them to send one of those hideous designers home. And as for the challenges? They've had three, announced two more, and they are all variants on a classic challenge. That's to be expected and even applauded in the...fourteenth season including all-stars seasons. But they are, in order: unconventional materials, the Philip Treacy hat challenge from season 8, unconventional materials, Philip Treacy and unconventional materials. What the hell? Last season they did an entire season based on a challenge designers hate: teams. Why not just do an unconventional materials season? It would suck, there'd be no sense of the designers' "signature" and they'd get bitchy way too fast, but then that's basically all true of this season. There is no way I'm doing 38 outfits when most of them are mediocre at best, so I'll just do the ones I loved and hated. This won't be a top 3 and bottom 3. This is likely, thinking about them before judging, to be less than 3 I liked and way more I hated.

Challenge 1
The Good
Miranda-Yeah, I did, I loved Korean War Barbie's first look. The colours, the proportions, the little strip of skin and the little details were all great, and it looked like a contemporary, modern dress. The only problems I really had were the lipstick colour, and.....well I'll get to it the next time she made the same damn dress. Even although she used too much of the black supplementary fabric, this probably ought to have won.

Justin- I absolutely loved the trim and the neckline. Other than that it was just an OK dress, but yeah I did like it enough to give it some praise.

Alexandria-Modern, easy and chic, Even without knowing this was hers I got the slight Scandinavian vibe without it being a cliche. I loved the pockets. I could've done with better execution, especially around the neck, where if the little black bars had been straight I would have loved it way more. But nice job. Side note: Given the nature of Stockholm syndrome did anyone else find it ironic that she instantly clashed with Sandro? No? Me neither.


The Bad

Helen-Dull. Horrible idea. Unforgivable execution. And if Miranda was put on the bottom from the top with a pretty great dress rendered in the supplementary fabric, since Helen used the white supplementary fabric to make something so ugly once it became clear the challenge called for such major deductions for "cheating" she should have been called back out and sent home. Dom and Jeremy both used the white fabric to great effect to make cute t-shirts, but this was all kinds of wrong. Believe it or not, that doesn't come close to the worst.

Ken-That may be the single worst executed piece I've ever seen on Project Runway. I'm thinking back over ill-fitting menswear, kimonos stapled on backwards, jumpsuits with arms falling off, bikinis made out of washers and whatever the hell Helen did this episode. I genuinely think this ranks above most of them. The dress was horribly puckery and fit the model terribly. But the ruffles? What happened. They look like giant stiff red dust ruffles arranged haphazardly over an ugly dress, and the only other design element he chose is the colours, which look OK together but don't work with the dress. This was a catastrophe, but I'm still digging to find the bottom on this challenge.

Strap in folks, we're getting to the bottom two, and it's gonna be long and mean.

Timothy- Ok, you're getting a bit of bonus information about me here, because it lets me mount my high horse. When I was at college majoring in Chemistry, I minored in Environmental Science. That gives me a pretty good base of knowledge in sustainability. I thought on a basic level sustainability was about protecting, conserving and salvaging natural resources and attempting to slow down the inevitable death of all life on earth, including people. My lecturer never mentioned unicorns. I mean, for f**k's sake. Was anyone else hearing "You gotta get a gimmick" from Gypsy the entire time he was talking about sustainability? Because he is clearly so full of crap he could make biofuel. And THAT is sustainability. In fact I'm a little annoyed that Zac picked up on how very far from sustainable it is to burn synthetic fabrics, because that was my first thought. I'm assuming this is polyester. For my studies in Chem I had to burn some polyester to see what happened, and the fumes are pretty toxic. And distracting to have in the air. One of the things you can get, if you're not careful, from burning plastics is carbon monoxide. Yeah, THAT carbon monoxide. He clearly chose to say sustainability was his thing and did a bit of research into it but not enough to know the whole story. Anyway, the texture he got from burning the plastic was really pretty, but everything else was wrong. I mean, this guy is such a weird contradiction. He supports sustainability to save the unicorns, then goes for Hiroshima as his inspiration. Where did that come from? That said, if he'd managed to take that fabric and that jumping-off point and make something beautiful I'd probably have loved it. I don't know how he'd do that, but that's why I wouldn't pick a dress inspired by a nuclear disaster. What's next, Nagasockies? Anyway, he seems to have gone for making her look like a burn victim, and....I'm not even gonna go there. The fact that at no point did he step back from telling his model how to dance down the runway and say "This is ugly and disturbing" doesn't speak well to his taste or instincts at all.

Sandro- Ew. That is all. Oh, whatever. he does NOT deserve a full breakdown, so instead I'm just going to list the elements I hated: The colours, the ruffle top, the strings, the construction, the styling, the shape of the back, the hardware on the back (Who designs a jacket to look like it's chained to you? Actually I like that idea but this is BUTT UGLY,) the breast cups, the straps, the colour-blocked hips, the styling(so much styling I hated it twice) and of course the length. Zulema went down in history in season 2 for exposing a large part of her model's butt. What happens when your first look exposes her lady-area?  And THIS stayed while something I thought showed some promise went home. Also, he said he liked fashion that evoked some story. The Aviator's joining the mile-high club, right? Catastrophe.


Challenge 2

The Good

Bradon-This was stunning. Slinky, sexy, modern, unique and expensive looking. He had a set of jewellery which was very different to most of the others in that it was almost white rather than gold, silver or jewel tones, and to go with a metallic in the dress, punctuated perfectly with the black, was a very clever choice. This was below Sandro's in the scoring? No freakin' way, this was almost perfect. To not see it win, whatever, because only 2 people have won two early challenges and they're Santino and Gretchen, but for him to not even get a nod for a gorgeous look is stupid.

Dom- Cute, perfect fabric to tie in with the necklace in a non-literal way and I liked the sheer trim, at least in theory. Taking this to a poolside place was interesting, and a good idea because it does say expensive and there are people out there who'll wear $2 million worth of diamonds and emeralds to a luxury pool complex and sit sipping cocktails, but with the headscarf it was too beach/casual, and it slightly hurt it. The heels don't go either, in colour or style. Sandals and no headscarf would have been better styling choices. It was a good bit below Bradon's, but a lot better than most of the rest.

Kate-Far less to say. Slutty Marie Antoinette. It turns out that is possible in a good way and this was it. I liked the deconstructed corset vibe and thought it was modern, sexy and classy. I'm liking it more every time I see it in fact. It's still not the winner.

The Bad

Miranda- That is the EXACT same silhouette she put out last week, this time in a bad fabric, poorly made and badly styled. By poorly made, I mean really really poorly made. There were bigger construction flaws on quite a lot of the dresses the previous week, but on this challenge even Helen (who was spared from my lowest scores by a hair's breadth) didn't have as much of a problem as Miranda did, especially with the fit. To paraphrase Nina: "Where is this girl going, in a cheap day dress and million-dollar jewels?" And it still had the same flaw I said I'd return to: the placing of the cutout. If it had been lower it would have been pretty and flattering, but where it was, around the middle of her abdominals, it made the model look at least 2 sizes bigger than she is around the stomach. Ironically, the one thing that she changed was the thing I loved the most. The neckline was really pretty and framed the necklace very nicely, but again it was poorly constructed. Had I been the judges, I would have given her the win for challenge 1, and done what they did to Bert in the second episode of season 9: not let her leave the runway without hearing why the look sucked and how lucky she was to be immune. If I see anything like this dress again from her I will be calling for her head on a plate.

Timothy- Oh please! He suddenly threw in the hemp towel of sustainability when he got a chance to buy that blue velvet fabric. That was still saleable as-was and just wasn't sustainable. I don't object to that but I do to eschewing (word of the day, anyone?) hairspray for his models and then using that fabric. He had blue velvet in his head in the initial sketching, which wasn't a bad idea, but he bought it and then pretended it was sustainable. Whatever, the dress was a lot better than the last one. The white fabric at the bottom was odd in every way as was the...racer front(?) but I liked the straps, the fabric and the silhouette. Just...too much design.

Sue- Oh Sue, what happened? I thought before and indeed after the first challenge that you were talented, and you were just out of my challenge 1 favourites, but this sucked! How the hell did you get execution so much better from parachutes than from the black fabric you bought? And, and she really really really ought to have learned this even if she's self-taught, those techniques she loves to use so much on the fabric (which can be really pretty) don't come across at all on black fabric. When I say the techniques (because I don't have the fashion vocab to know exactly what to call what she does) can be pretty, here they weren't. I could cope with the pleating coming down from her shoulders and converging, but they converged in the worst possible way, making those shapes around her lady area (sorry to say that's far from the last reference to female genitalia in this post.) And the vertical pleating where it was made it look like her vagina was swallowing the dress. The bustline was totally wonky, and while that may be part of her design philosophy it's odd, and I don't really like it. The shape could actually be kinda pretty, the asymmetrical curved V shape, but in this case it just looks poorly finished, messy and ugly. This was the wrong choice of jewellery for her, because she clearly loves to play with fabric, and this called for simple elegance, probably with a low neckline. All I can think is that Alexandria's dress would look perfect here.

Alexander- Who remembers Ping Wu from season 7? Asian lady, crazy, forgot to wear shoes, cried a lot. Well she became well known for, in quite a broad first challenge, choosing to make her model look like she had fabric draped around her. This placed her third for the challenge, behind eventual first and second place Seth-Aaron and Emilio. Many people, myself included, felt she should have been on the bottom for a look that was odd and unflattering. This look reminds me of that, except for a few things, all of which put Ping's look in a favourable light. First, he draped no fewer than four fabrics around his model's arms, none of which worked together. Secondly, all of the fabrics were ugly, drab and depressing, although lively-looking fabrics would have pushed this further to the back of a drag-queen's closet. Thirdly,  I don't get the point of inspiration for all this draped fabric. In fact, it makes me think of drag even more because the only reason I could come up with was disguising a guy's physique, especially in all the fabric around her upper arms. And if you were to ask me what the last design element I would ever add to the top part of this dress would be , it would be a slit, especially one as high as this. I've never seen a gown split to above the waist before, and it doesn't work, least of all with the ugly little shorts. However, it was very well-made and the styling was good. This was horrendous, and I'm horrified at finding something worse.

Sandro- Ew. That is not all. Continuing on the theme of dresses telling stories, this is hooker-done-well, yes? She's still on the game, but now she does it wearing millions of dollars worth of jewellery. If you wanted to tell a story, this is the perfect jewellery to do it with, because to me it's saying Victorian vintage, and slightly mysterious. Ironically he calls combining red and green a "faux-pas" in his interview with Mylifetime, and deep green would have looked stunning here. To continue the grand irony, the other ideal inspiration for this particular challenge would have been Russian billionairess. I don't think his style is about clothes telling stories, I just think "slutty clothes for slutty girls" would make a terrible soundbite. Onto why it was so wrong: the sheer amount of skin  tells you everything. I mean, come on, she's showing boob, calf, stomach, all of her arms and the entirety of the sides of her legs. The length is fine, as is the sleevelessness and the neck's not entirely too low (although I'd have raised it) but the sheer is various kinds of wrong, and this is not the time to show her navel, although he made the same mistake as Miranda with the placement anyway. The one key criterion for this challenge, and I don't see how anyone missed it, was "expensive." And even although this time her vagina was not on show, there is no way he gets credit for an outfit that covers her vagina. If he gets a client in, and makes her a dress that exposes her vagina, he won't get any forgiveness from anyone for saying "that's not what she asked for." Covering the vagina is not an extra, in fact I'd say it's the main thing any woman subconsciously looks for in any outfit. Anyway, her panties were on show through the sheer. Between the leg on show, the lace, the colour, the styling and the fishtail hem (which I forgot to mention how much I hated) it just looked so cheap, tacky and like I said the only inspiration I could find was that she traded those expensive jewels for sexual favours. Not only did this not get him auf'd, the judges actually praised this hideous outfit.

Challenge 3

The Good

Helen and Kate- Again, this had a very high score with me. This works as virtually everything you'd want for an unconventional materials team challenge.  From the team challenge it looks like a combination and an extension of both girls' aesthetics, bringing them together to a point that looks pleasing. The dress had Kate's sense of structure, and Helen's flirty romanticism. , but rendering it in those colours was the best way of making them work together.  From an unconventional materials point of view, it had a sense of fun, joy and the "spirit" of the carnival, and it looked "high fashion." And the materials did present a significant creative and technical challenge to make a dress from and although the execution wasn't especially good (3 in a row, Helen. Work on it.) the dress was gorgeous.

Dom and Alexandria- Cute as hell, fun, clever, wearable, joyful , interesting and innovative. This was a big-time candidate for the win in my head. I loved the shape, loved the fabrics, loved the fun detailing, and it wasn't that they made a face, it was the way they made the face. It was styled to perfection, too, and the more I think about it the more this really ought to have won. Judges, STOP passing over Alexandria.I'm starting to have concerns that what I said in my initial post is coming true: the judges don't get her.

Jeremy and Ken- Now, do you remember Jay from season 7? The hardware challenge when he took plastic trash bags and made them look like leather for pants? Well, Jeremy and Ken didn't quite manage that. Instead they turned cheap plastic into cheap plastic pants. So why are they on the top, you ask. Because damned if that's not one of the finest construction jobs I've ever seen on Project Runway. The plastic was just too shiny. Could they have painted them black? I don't know. I think the pants were Jeremy, because he made tailored pants in challenge 1, and the top half looks more like Ken's work. The jacket is great looking and I think loads of girls would love to wear it, but he lost me with the top, which looks cheap and shows too much skin. I mean, the entire outfit is made of great pieces put together horribly. Even the top would work as the bodice of a dress, or with high-waisted jeans. But there's too much skin on the top half when the bottom half is such tight pants. Credit where it's due though, they both did well, but the girls rocked this challenge.

The Bad

Sandro and Sue- Quite a nice silhouette. But it's so clearly a plastic dress, with no creativity, no thought and it doesn't seem tasteful, although for Sandro I call this level of tasteless a huge win. The belt is awful, and it's not as well-made as the dress. This was all kinds of ugly, and it showed no willingness to embrace the challenge. Also, the make up was awful. Sue rolled over, when she should have grabbed Sandro by his Russian balls and said "I'm in charge, bitch!" But it was far from the worst thing on the runway.

Alexander and Justin- This was. This may have been the worst thing ever on the runway. I mean, there are many to choose from, and plastic dresses are almost always ugly as sin (even Austin Scarlet couldn't make it work on All Stars,) but this was almost inconceivably bad. I liked the shoes. Here ends the "things I liked" portion of this critique. Other than that I pretty well hated everything, from the material choice (that was the worst by far of the 5 looks using plastic. I've just noticed the only two that didn't use plastic were the top 2) to the colours to the construction to the makeup, to the unflattering cutouts to the neckline to the ugly bolero to the silhouette to the fit, to the weird hemline to all the plastic leaves to the way you could actually see where the plastic pieces were sewn together. This was a nightmare, and one of them (Justin) should have stepped back and decided they needed to remove at least four design elements and work on improving the ones that remained.  Oh my god I have just seen the back again and it is ten thousand times worse than the front! Execute them both! No, keep Justin, he's doing well. Execute Ginger Damien!

You may notice that the person sent home was never in my lowest scores. I disagree completely with Kahindo and Angela being sent home so early, while Timothy deserved to be sent home but the dress he made with Miranda was.....less than cataclysmic.

This is what my average score card looks like so far, out of 20

Alexander- (6+4+2)/3=4 (that is an awful score but he's made awful clothes)
Alexandria- (15+13+19)/3=15.7 (Good girl, but I am genuinely not biased)
Angela-8/1=8 (You'll see soon that's not a terrible score)
Bradon-(13+19+10)/3=14 (shame, he had such a great start)
Dom-(12+15+19)/3=15.3 (So close to beating Alexandria. Nice work.)
Helen-(5+8+17)/3=10 (She has Kate to thank for a half-decent overall score)
Jeremy-(12+12+12)/3=12 (I'll give him this, he's consistent. He needs to wow though)
Justin- (14+11+2)/3=9.7 (Strange that he had nearly double Helen's score until the third challenge)
Kahindo- (9+10)/2=9.5 (That is not the score of someone who lasted 2 challenges. Certainly this season)
Kate- (11+16+17)/3=14.7 (She's come back strong)
Karen (8+7+10)/3=8.3 ( I'm not seeing anything special and her construction is always awful)
Ken (5+10+12)/3=9 (I'm disappointed)
Miranda (18+5+8)/3=10.3 (Time to impress me again)
Sandro- (2+2+5)/3=3 (Ew. That is all.)
Sue- (13+5+5)/3=7.7 (Another one due another decent look)
Timothy (3+6+8)=5.7 (It's bad but, well.....^^)

So that's me. Don't expect regular posts, just more sporadic rubbish like this. We'll see what happens.

Sorry for the delay

Project Runway combined episodes 1-3 post coming up tonight, Hell's Kitchen final few episodes by Wednesday.