Project Runway: How Sweet It Is

What a treat to see PR last night. Literally. After choosing new models*, the designers were awakened bright and early by the impeccable Gunn for a field trip. (Kit was adorable, freaking out because The Gunn saw her in her jammies. "I didn't have a bra on!")

Their destination: the Hershey's store in Times Square. The challenge: using any items in the store to create a design of their choice. No budget, but they only had 5 minutes to grab their materials and only that day to create the look, which had to be wearable. The designers were giddy as they grabbed treasures from shelves. They were, oh, what's the expression? Like kids in a candy store.

Back in the work room they all went a little crazy, tossing candy and fooling around and then they came down from their sugar high to get to work. Most of the designers chose to work with sensible materials: the fabric from logo pillows and toys (Sweet P had some trauma over gutting little teddy bears for their fleece), candy wrappers and foil. Jillian decided to be bold and actually make an edible garment out of red Twizzlers. (I hate Twizzlers, btw, totally a Red Vines gal).

We also got to learn a serious tale from Elisa's past. 3 years ago she was in London, about to launch a t-shirt line, when she was on the receiving end of a pedestrian-car kerfuffle. Poor thing had her skull opened up, a broken neck and was in a coma for 5 days. ("That might explain why she's so spacey", commented The Neighbor). Elisa went on to share that she saw Project Runway as a chance to see what was possible for her, having been waylaid by the accident.

As the designers got to work there was the standard off-sides bitchiness (Hi, Christian! Say, did anyone but you ever design anything you ever liked?) but face-to-face there was a lot of collaboration, designers asking advice of each other and caring about the answers. It was sweet.

By the time Tim showed up for a review, most of the designers were well on their way. Super sewer Rami (the future Mr. Hat) was nearly done. Tim exclaimed, "It's Jillian!" Rami replied, "Jillian is my target audience?" He seemed vaguely horrified. I think Jillian was, too.

Now, as we all know, if The Gunn expressed concern for the direction of your garment, you'd best start thinking up your justifications for the judges. This week Elisa and Sweet P got the "I'm concerned" speech. Sweet P had started out with a rather ambitious project that included a waistband of broken cocoa mugs. It looked cool but she wasn't sure it would actually be wearable and she wasn't happy with the skirt of the dress, which was in fact heinous. (Teddy bear pelts as patchwork. No.) So she 86'ed her original design and started working on another little thing that was basically a foil bodice with a meshy looking skirt. Tim declared that it looked "like a coffee filter or a maxi pad". Ouch. And sweet Elisa had this vision of an "avant garde Gretel" dress, which was a chocolate brown velvet sheath that had some kind of wicky in the wacky woo embellishment at the neck and these weird foil arm blobs that fit over the elbow and looked like decapitated Hershey's kisses. Classic example of the concept not working in reality. Tim was concerned about it's lack of "wow".

Jillian was in the weeds. She was doing a red mini-dress with a 2 tiered Twizzler fringe skirt and a bodice of sculpted Twizzlers. It looked super impressive but she was way behind on time because of all the detail plus the pesky realization that Twizzlers are really hard to sew. Who knew?

Guest judge this week was designer Zac Posen (yummy).

The vast majority of the designs were awesome. I must grudgingly give snaps to Christian, who made a fantastic dress out of the paper bits from Reese's cups. I seriously can't stand him but dang, that boy has chops.

You got chocolate in my peanut butter! It was a great dress.

Another personal favorite had to be this fun and punky little number from my little cutie patootie, Kit:

Wear this to a club and they'll be saying "Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!"

Here's Jillian's Twizzler dress. She was still sewing when it came time to fit the models and her model hopped in with some mad hand sewing skillz to help get the dress finished. "You look good, I look good" was her modest justification for helping. Jills sure better be keeping her next week.

Kors deemed it "deliciously chic". Oh. That man and his witty banter.

Another look worth noting was the very sophisticated outfit Teddybear Chris created. This is a man who, as he put it himself, "Could make an entire parade float out of candy". His big, theatrical showboat aesthetic isn't all that lurks in his bag of tricks. He managed to edit himself into a very attractive ensemble for which the judges gave major snaps.

I'm not going to show you Victorya's dress. Suffice to say it was stupid and the weird kabuki walk she had her model do down the runway was even more stupid. Still hating her.

Rami was the winner, the only designer so far to win more than one challenge. His dress was very interesting and his attention to detail in the construction of the garment was impeccable. It had great lines and a fun use of color. I didn't much care for it.

The skirt was super cute but the bodice was a bit much for my taste. But as we've noted before, I'm not a judge. Where he succeeded with those who are, besides overall craftsmanship, was in displaying what Kors called "the joy of candy". I think the appropriate word to describe this dress would be "confection" and that's ultimately what this challenge was about.

Sweet P's dress was the other end of the spectrum. Plain and boring and safe. Which landed her in the bottom 2. But after the brow beating, it was Elisa who was auf'ed for what Heidi decried as "a sad brown dress when it should have been playful". And looking at this hot mess, you have to agree:

But the second she was auf'ed I was tres sad. Guess I hadn't realized how much I'd come to like her. And her exit was pure Elisa, lots of namaste-like hippie chick blessings and sweet smiles and after she doled out farewell hugs she charmingly said, "I'm going to wander off now". She was, for all her "special brownies" aura, a class act and she kept that up to the end, talking in the confessional about how the experience had "fortified" her and how grateful she was. I'll miss her patchouli scented little self.

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*Ricky was the last to choose a model. He almost cried.