I watched this episode the night it aired. And fell asleep at some point during the runway show. I woke up, put the episode back on, fast-forwarded to where I left off…and then promptly fell asleep AGAIN before the judging began. Something about that endless parade of little black cocktail dresses was either incredibly soothing or perhaps simply robbed me of my will to live.
Or maybe the endless parade of designer freakouts ALL EPISODE LONG was just that tiring. Not a good showing for the remaining ladies. In case you actually depend on these recaps to fill you in on any pertinent details (that I have been skipping more and more each week because zzzzzzzzProjRun-related narcolepsyzzzzzzzz), here’s how it mostly went:
DARKEST TIMELINE BRITTA: ZOMG
TIM: Chillax, dude.
SONJIA: ZOMG ZOMG
TIM: Sack up, ho.
ELENA: ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG
TIM: ZOMG YOURSELF I AM NOT PAID ENOUGH TO BABYSIT ALL YOU NUTBARS.
At this point, I really am dying to ask Elena two specific questions. First, why in the world did she even bother applying to Project Runway, when EVERY. SINGLE. CHALLENGE, no matter how straightforward, is apparently beneath her or contrary to her aesthetics and principles and process and blah? None of the challenges this season have been that unusual. A version of most (if not all) of these challenges have been done almost every season already. Every week she’s got a different reason why that particular challenge is impossible for her. She’s too high end! Too avant garde! Too modern too edgy too hot too cold too doomed to only sell her work on an Etsy shop with Lady-Gaga-like styling. Whatever. She is exhausting and not at all fun to watch or listen to.
And that brings me to my second question: How the bloody hell is she managing to game the Fan Favorite poll and be so far out in front? She’s currently at 38%? With Britta/Melissa trailing at number two with 25%? And my beloved Comrade Snape is all the way down at number SIX with just 3% of the votes? Christ, even I-Don’t-Do-Feminine Dreads Girl has 5% and I STILL DON’T EVEN KNOW HER REAL NAME.
It’s enough to make me actually vote for someone this season. Or at least to maybe consider voting for someone. I dunno. I’m still pretty tired.
Let’s move on to the dresses. Dmitry, Sonjia and Ven all ended up in the SafeMiddle, much to Sonjia’s relief and Dmitry/Ven’s collective outrage. Their dresses were both fine (and probably better constructed than some of the crap that landed in the top), but both of them essentially made dresses that they’ve made multiple times before. Ven keeps doing that damned pleated rose thing, which was cool the first time and is now definitely getting diminishing returns. Dmitry made another tight-tight pencil dress with with subtle details at the neckline. But this time he made it in gray. Whee.
(It also looked way too much like Korto’s design.)
That means our tops were:
(Click to embiggen.)
Fabio, who had immunity, in case you couldn’t tell just by looking at this thing. The judging was crazy inconsistent, as usual, since they praised Fabio’s standard take on the LBD while crying boredom on other versions. This is a cute little dress and I like the hem, but I HATE that clunky zipper with the heat of a million Elena Dramasuns. We see way too many big visible zippers on ProjRun but I wonder if it’s mostly because every challenge is a one-day challenge? So there’s just no time for details like zippers and hems and oh, I don’t know, DECENT LOOKING CLOTHING?
Elena, who somehow managed to overcome All Of The Obstacles this week and design a super-futuristic trash bag dress that looks like a costume reject from 1997′s The Fifth Element.
Melissa, who also Faced Challenges And Second-Guessed Herself Before Staying True To Who She Is As A Designer, even though this dress didn’t fit her model at all and kinda sorta made her look like brown bunched-up sausage. Cool neckline, though.
And Christopher NotCostello, who won. No wonder I fell asleep. (TWICE.) Like Ven, he pulled the same damn trick out of his trickbag for the millionth week in a row and shredded chiffon. This dress is fine and lovely and all, but I AM SORRY, every time I see the shredded chiffon up close I see nothing but messy fly-away threads and can only imagine how raggedy it will look like after you wear it a few times. (Here’s the Lord & Taylor version, which does away with the shredding technique ANYWAY.)
With four high-scoring designs, that left us with two bottoms:
Since this was a “make a dress for a department store” challenge, Gunnar made a dress that is sold (and probably sells pretty well) at every department store in America. And was promptly eviscerated for it by the judges. It certainly isn’t anything exciting or groundbreaking, but I actually liked it better than Fabio’s and it fits his model better than Melissa’s. After weeks of getting top 3 spots for badly-sewn garbage, it was surprising that this middle-of-the-pack design landed him in the bottom. I woulda swapped this one for Sonjia’s sad little peplum (OY WITH THE PEPLUMS ALREADY) dress.
No surprise here, though I really think Alicia had some great IDEAS for this dress, but couldn’t quite get them to come together. I love the idea of the dropped waist with tuxedo-like detailing, but…eh. This one is hitting at the wrong point or needs a few inches off the bottom, and the neckline is jacked. Something lower and more flapper-like might have worked?
After falling asleep the second time, I gave up on making it to the elimination and decided to try again later, once again fast-forwarding through an hour or so of meltdowns. So imagine my surprise and delight that there WAS NO ELIMINATION. Surprise! Those two designers who bailed effed with our production schedule so everybody gets a freebie. In other words, I could’ve just taken another nap.
About Amy Corbett Storch
