This episode made me so happy! First of all the challenge was MY CHALLENGE. Witness my box of old tech parts collected over the years for Fashion Reasons:
Don’t throw away your old computer innards and broken gaming controllers…give them to me. Second, we lost the last two boooooooorrrrrriiiiiiiiinnnnnnnng white guys: Joe lost and Jake quit to be with his dying dog. There was no way either was going to win, or probably even place they were SO BORING, but I’m thrilled to see cookie cutter bland white men as cannon fodder in place of the parade of quirky we’re left with. Third, my girl won!
The Challenge: Fill a shopping cart with old tech stuff you found in a dumpster and then turn it into a fashion forward look a la Cinderella’s mice (they take what the stepsisters discard to make Cinderelly’s pink gown).
SAFE:
Designer: Candice is turning into the Queen Bee Mean Girl and it suits her tbh.
Look: Nothing much to say here. It’s well constructed but not particularly inspired.
Designer: LAURIE GETS NO SCREENTIME.
Look: Eh. I get and generally like her concept. Execution is a miss.
Designer: She had immunity and took it as an opportunity to do whatever the heck she came up with.
Look: Which in this case was a “bird dress”. And yes, that’s what this looks like. It certainly has potential — executed perfectly it would look amazing on the likes of Tilda Swinton. This, however, is not executed perfectly —
–and might’ve been in trouble if she didn’t have immunity. But I like the ideas.
LOSERS:
Designer: The show is starting to really get to her. It was clear from the beginning that Lindsey is not interested in showy fashion and unfortunately the judges don’t like her non showy choices. That’s hard to get past when you have to bring something to them every other day, with little to no time to process or recover in between. Also, Lindsey has “a germ thing” and her “brain doesn’t think unconventionally” so she was at quite the disadvantage in the ‘make a dress out trash’ challenge.
Look: This is a perfectly fine dress that would sell at Kohls or H&M if made out of conventional fabrics.
Designer: Oh Swapnil. We learned a lot about my sort of favorite designer this week. He’s a smoker, the kind that (in times of stress at least) can’t go an hour without a cigarette. And he’s apparently not only unbothered by not having won yet, he’s planned it that way all along. So I’m a bit mad at him, as Candice said — “You’re in a competition. Compete!”
Look: Yikes. Like Merline, the idea is there and pretty great. But the execution is a muddled mess. The judges are completely correct that the bottom looks like exactly what it is: a bunch of wires tied together over a muslin.
But it’s very clear that Swapnil is the judges’ sort of favorite, too. They all tore into him, especially Zac — but then later he told Lindsey she needed some ‘Swapnil juice’. Heidi loved that and wouldn’t let it go despite Zac’s embarrassment and Swapnil’s and Lindsey’s mortification. Swapnil has ‘Tim Gunn Save’ written all over him if he continues to slide by.
Designer: I’m not sorry to see him go. He’s not as awful as he was sometimes painted but he brought nothing at all to the competition. He claimed to embrace ‘matronly’ but I never really got it. He was boring and also boring. Plus boring.
Look: Like this. I’m falling asleep thinking about it. It’s not sexy, it’s not quirky, it’s not interesting. It’s obvious what it’s made out of, the proportions are off, the fit is weird, and there is no imagination whatsoever.
WINNERS:
Designer: Ashley also has ‘Tim Gunn Save’ written all over her if she falls down. And ‘plus size girl with low self-esteem gains confidence thru second chance’ would make a better story than Swapnil’s ‘bad boy must learn humility and responsibility’ (so tired that tale, I mean, I just described 90% of the MCU). But I don’t want Ashley to fall down and I do want both in the finale because they are the most consistent and imaginative.
Look: This is so adorable. And so clever. The judges loved it, I love it, I want to make one.
Designer: Edmund has had a strange trajectory but also seems to be headed for a home visit. ‘I failed to get on Project Runway 13 times but made it to the end the 14th’ is also a good story after all.
Look: It’s not my style but sure. The judges correctly stated the back on the top is the best part:
But the back of the bottom is unfinished I think?
Designer: KELLY. I’m so pleased she got here and got a win. ‘I taught myself to sew so I could remake the clothes I got at Goodwill so my classmates would’t recognize their cast-offs’ is not gonna win it all but I like her and her clothes.
Look: Love it. Astro-fashion is my other aesthetic. Looks right out of Captain Proton or something playing at Disney’s Sci-Fi Drive In restaurant. GREAT.