Project Runway 8/27 (open spoilers for this ep)

Cafe Society
1

As someone who is in her third trimester, this episode was extra interesting: create a chic maternity look for Rebecca Romijn. Overall, I think the looks were mostly decent, better than the average maternity fare, which is a lot of ruffly, drapey tents, and big old elastic waist band pants in weird colors.

I agreed with the win. Shirin’s was clearly the most attractive, wearable garment on the runway in every way. Loved the coat too. I liked Althea’s, but the bust would never work on a pregnant woman. Louise’s was cute and sweet but a little too lingerie for my taste. Nice, though.

I was torn on who should be auf’d, Mitchell or Malvin. Mitchell’s was boring and badly sewn, but a fairly typical maternity outfit, honestly. Malvin’s kind of pissed me off. A mother chicken? Not how I’d want to be perceived, nor would I want to overly emphasize the bump with swaddling. Thank god he ditched the jodhpurs, because that would have been way too much. It bugged me that he thought he was kicked off because America didn’t get him. No, Malvin, you don’t get pregnant women. Not a surprise, but not America’s fault either.

I imagine if Mitchell puts one more poorly sewn piece of crap on the runway, he’ll be out. Looks like two of the most “conceptual” designers were kicked off right away. Maybe next will be those who can’t construct garments. One can hope.

2

Shirin definitely deserved the win. I covet that dress in my decidedly non-incubatory state.

I thought Malvin got screwed. No, he doesn’t get pregnant women, he’s a 23 year old boy. But I thought his concept was interesting, if executed too literally, and the dress he did last week was beautiful. Mitchell has sent utter crap out two out of two times, and is a whiny little bitch to boot. I thought he should have gone home last week (not that I’m mourning Whatshername, but at least she failed spectacularly in an interesting way). I’m a little concerned that the switch to Lifetime dictates a reduced tolerance for “quirk”.

3

I wanted Mitchell to go rather badly. Blaming the model last week was completely unacceptable. Furthermore, even if his measurements last week had been right the dress in progress was f ugly. Also, having smocked before, I happen to know it is fairly easy to loose 6" with a single mathematical error. I suspect the model was not that much bigger, he just doesn’t know what he is doing. OK. He didn’t get eliminated last week, and maybe you give one pass but then he pulls the same stuff this week.

What he put on the runway this week was trailer trash on parade. Every poorly sewn seam on the shorts showed through the tee shirt and the colors were boring and really made no statement. I could see Stacy and Clinton jumping up on the runway and rescuing the poor girl.

Malvin kind of went too far along his concept path, but I think had he done that drape in the same fabric as the bodice it might have worked.

4

I also worry about the lack of tolerance for quirk, but I don’t think it is about Lifetime. I think Heidi and Nina Garcia are much more conservative than Micheal Kors. I think had he been around for this show the decision would have been different.

5

The best line of the night was Tim’s comment about the coo-coo from last week. Not said in a malicious or snarky way. Just Tim’s wry observation. You have to love the man.

The Michael C. Hall guy can just go away. Two screw ups in two weeks should be enough to send you home.

I liked Shirin’s design very much. I did not like googling Ms. Romjin and discovering she named the poor twin girls Charlie and Dolly. Just awful IMO.

6

What annoyed me about his comment was that he seemed to think it was gauche old America that couldn’t handle his lofty conceptuality. No, really, it was just that your design was not something a pregnant woman would ever, ever wear. In that sense, at least Mitchell’s was an outfit that I’ve seen out there.

I honestly don’t know any pregnant women who would wear anything remotely resembling that outfit. It made me cringe. Last week’s dress was interesting in theory, but in practice was overworked and not very well fitting, and executed in what looked like canvas, which made it a lot less red carpet. These outfits probably look a lot cooler in his mind than they do in real life.

I hope Mitchell is out soon too, because he has an annoying personality and seems like he can’t sew. However, I recall Suede not being able to sew and being much more annoying, and he lasted into the Top 5 last season, so I don’t want to get my hopes up.

7

I liked Shirin’s outfit a lot and she deserved the win for that jacket alone, but the dress I liked didn’t even make it to the top 3. I’m terrible with remembering their names so early in the season, but was one of the last (if not the last) dress to come down the runway and it was a light blue. It looked like it could be easily made into a non-maternity dress. So cute.

I was so happy to see that gu::looks up namy get the boot. He seriously gave me the creeps and I have no idea why. Nicolas (the red headed guy) also gives me the creeps and I want him GONE. ::shudder::

8

There wasn’t really a doubt in my mind that Shirin would win this one. The judges usually appreciate when the designers do an extra piece, like a coat, and her whole outfit was really nice.

Everyone kept going on about the color of Althea’s long dress, but it just looked black and white/ivory to me. Maybe it didn’t translate on TV. Unfortunately, Tim Gunn isn’t blogging this season (except for an introductory post on his MySpace page). I can’t blame him, though, since all of this happened many months ago, and he might not be able to dredge up details from that early in the process. Too bad, I usually enjoyed reading his take on things.

9

Yeah, I wondered about the color too. I assume it must have been a very dark blue, but it certainly looked black on my television. Also, a couple of people remarked that no pregnant woman would wear that neckline, but while I agree that no *normal *pregnant woman would, there’s a whole lot of *celebrities *who’d do it in a heartbeat. Angelina would be all “Can we make these cups a little smaller?” Hell, Heidi would be all “Can we throw a cutlet in here, and do it in red?”

SWB, I also loved that little blue dress. I think that many of the designers succeeded at making something that you wouldn’t necessarily have to be pregnant to want to wear.

Rubystreak, I remember thinking as Malvin was working on his first ep dress “Is that freakin’ BURLAP?”, but on the runway it looked more like a coarse silk, and I rather liked it. Even if you disagree that it was a nice dress, it was certainly better than Mitchell’s, which was neither nice nor a dress.

Is anyone watching the models’ spinoff?

10

Shirin’s was beautiful, and the coat was really nice. She definitely fulfilled the brief.

Irishbaby is now 7 weeks old and I can tell you the things I looked for in my maternity clothes:
Comfort
Coverage
Coolness

What this actually meant was a lot of shirt/tunic/shift dresses worn over leggings and multiple jersey wrap dresses for work, accessorised with scarves, belts and necklaces, with babydoll style tops over jeans when I went out.

Basically- I wore things like the outfits Christopher, Logan and Shirin sent down the catwalk.

Mitchell’s would have been fine if it was well made.
Carol Hannah’s is a nice colour but a hideous shape.
Louise’s would have been nicer if it was short enough to be worn as a dressy top over jeans.

I cannot believe no-one called Epperson on that nasty catsuit/sackcloth jacket ensemble. Hello! you’ve got 4 kids, didn’t your wife explain that pregnancy entails frequent bathroom trips… cream catsuits are therefore not a good idea for heavily pregnant ladies.

Logan looks like he should be modelling the clothes, not designing them. Christopher seems sweet, Nicolas is creepy and I find it hard to tell 4 of the girls apart (2 similar blondes-Carol Hannah and Althea, 2 similar brunettes-Shirin and Irina). Ra’mon Lawrence might be entertaining and I think we’re going to hear far more than we need to about Johnny’s struggle with drugs.

11

I am and I think it’s enhancing the regular PR enormously. It’s great to see the playful banter and comraderie between the models, and see them talk about their (and each other’s) designers with surprising candor. It doesn’t come as too big a shock that they can’t stand Mitchell, but it was very cute and touching when they saw Malvin get cut. Sure, his outfit was nuts, but he seemed like a sweet guy and the models had enormous affection for him.

It also adds some nice drama to see the model auf-ing each week, because now we have more personalities and backstories to the pretty faces, and since their getting cut is largely the luck of the draw (it’s hardly ever the model’s fault if the designer’s a failure), they don’t take it personally but it’s still poignant to see them go.

A great addition to the show.

12

Is it just me. or did anyone else expect Ra’Mon to resond to the judges with:
“See, my damie, Pootie Tang don’t wa-da-tah to the shama cow… 'cause thats a cama cama leepa-chaiii, dig?”

13

I loved Louise’s dress (don’t care about the lingerie inspiration; I didn’t think it was too overt) and personally prefer it to Shirin’s outfit, but I think Shirin deserves the win because her outfit stands out as working well specifically for maternity. That lovely pleating detail, in the curve it followed, certainly wouldn’t have as much impact on a flat torso, whereas Louise’s dress looked like just a regular beautiful dress with extra bump room (I wondered when i saw her making it whether it really counted as form fitting).

I remember thinking that the only pregnant woman who would wear Malvin’s outfit would be one actively trying to exploit her pregnancy as conceptual art, which put a bad taste in my mouth. Kind of a “look at me, I’m all avant-garde because I’m pregnant. Ponder the strange dichotomies of life carrying life and compliment my deepness!” Rather than any sort of real pregnant person attitude.

To be honest, the idea of arrows pointing to the baby (in the purple minidress) wasn’t inherently terrible to me - it was sort of like concept-lite, concept-made-fashion, if I thought he (can’t recall name) had done it intentionally, which I don’t. And it really did look like a bowling ball carrier. Wrong fabric, wrong colors. I liked Nina’s idea of doing it in different textures of black or something.

I like the two biggest kooks being cut first, because they weren’t necessarily the most creative, they were simply the most obnoxious about it. It seems like a possible trend toward “forget being here to be a tv personality; you better be serious about these friggin’ challenges” (Of course, then Lifetime goes and screws it up with the Superfluous Model Commentary Show. I was happy to spot at least two or three models that caught my eye with some classic beauty, though, after the fug of seasons 4 and 5, but that’s neither here nor there).

Those shorts were hideous. I knew they would be right when Sewing-Problems-Guy started joking around with them. Rest of the look was wearable, though, if unimagintive.

And yeah, the long dress was blue. Quite pretty, but the fact that she (names’ll take me a while)'d wanted to present it as a day look at first was eyebrow-raising, and her runway story implied that she was backtracking to conceiving it for night (obviously what the producers wanted us to think, anyway). Hmm.

I *really *want to like Epperson, but the dingy-looking too-short bottom treatment on his otherwise fairly interesting first challenge dress was fail, and now this challenge’s weird-ass jacket was fail as well. Jumpsuit was an interesting idea, but so 70’s! Not something any not-trying-too-hard pregnant woman would wear nowadays, I think (Not that I was even there in the 70s).

I think I remember liking parts of all of them. Even Malvin’s looked like a pretty drape when he first started working on it (I envisioned a short toga-ish party dress, I guess). So, not a bad challenge.

14

“Hmm” what? Tim explicitly said “Lose that scenario” when he talked to her about it and she said it was supposed to be a day dress. She wisely did what she was told, and instead of trying to sell it as a day concept, said she meant it to be an evening gown. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not like this is a truth-telling contest.

15

I hate it when the conceptual designers get aufed for one well-made but badly conceived outfit. At the very least, see what he does with a few challenges and see if he’s too out there.

OK, no woman wants to be considered a chicken carrying an egg, but comparing that to the carrying sling after the baby is born . . . I get it and I actually think it is cool - a prenatal baby sling. How is that worse than a crappily sewn outfit that looks like a shirt over a wife-beater and oversized shorts that are cut like boyshort panties?

16

Well to be fair, those shorts did have one pregnancy advantage, inasmuch as you wouldn’t have to take them off to actually have the baby.

17

I looked over the pictures of Malvin’s outfit today, and there are more problems than just the concept. It’s VERY bulky, with a lot of twisting fabric under the right arm and in the back. The draping of the fabric is not very attractive or artful, and the fabric itself is reminiscent of burlap, ala his red carpet dress. Fix any one of these issues and I think Mitchell would have been out and Malvin safe. The problem is, the overall effect is that his model is a homeless person who took a few yards of sacking and wrapped them around her pregnant self. NOT attractive, not fashion forward, definitely not pregnant chic. Cringeworthy, in fact, where Mitchell’s was just lame.

18

Don’t worry guys, Mitchell will be going soon. He lives here in Savannah and works at a little dress shop called Bleu Belle. He obviously didn’t get very far on PR because he is just a working-class slob nowadays. There have been several stories about him in the paper. He says he always uses neutrals because he is color blind. I don’t know if they have revealed that yet on the show, but he talked about it here, and went on and on about how he focused on structure and construction instead of color! HAHAha! Overall, he’s an embarrassment to my hometown, and on top of that he’s a whiny twit.

Savannah College of Art and Design is batting zero with their grads who have been on PR. There was this one blond girl from Season two that was the first to be auf’ed, and another black girl from season three (I think) who went pretty early as well.

Like someone else upthread observed, my favorite dress didn’t even make the top three. It was that little blue number that was the last one to come out in the runway show, and I think Irina made it.

So far I like Shirin, Irina, and Louise. Hate Epperson, Nicolas, and Mitchell.

19

**Yes. **

The Melvin auf’ing made me really sour. Even if you hated the concept, it was a concept and at least interesting to a degree. There is nothing in Mitchell that makes me want to see more.

20

The winning dress was great.

I too wondered about the ‘fabulous choice of color’ that to me just looked like black.

I was very disappointed in the bottom three - Malvin should have been safe. It was a little conceptual, but I liked the concept. And it was well made. The other two were poorly made. Mitchell should have been out after being given a second chance last week. I would have been OK with the horrible bowling ball outfit being Auf’d too.