First post no content for mouseover spoiler.
I just don’t understand Maya. I can appreciate how stressful it has to be to perform each task and go through the criticism of your design, but why not stay as long as you can? When the judges feel you’re done, you’re done. Why give up?
Still, I’m glad her departure got us Anthony back! I loved his dress. LOVED it. I thought Emilio’s was really well made, but I’d wear Anthony’s in a heartbeat. You could tell that Jessica Alba really wanted it.
Honestly, if Emilio doesn’t win this whole thing I’ll be really disappointed. Besides that WTF Bikini, I think he’s done fantastic on all the other designs. His work is really made well and usually tasteful. That dress last night looks like he stitched her into it.
I hope when Heidi saw this episode back she realized how much she got into Jonathan’s head about that material he’d worked for eight hours on. I think he should have stuck with it but just used less of that material. The dress he ended up with was bad, bad, bad.
Side catty note: If Mila is really 40 years old then I’ll eat all of your hats. That woman looks like she’s approaching 50 easily. Easily.
I think Emilio deserved the win last night, but I’m picking Seth Aaron for overall; he’s been the most consistent designer the whole season, he never loses his point of view, and he makes LOTS of pieces. That man is TALENTED.
I’m with the thought that there MUST have been stuff going on off-camera for Mya to leave, although I can understand her frustration with never winning a challenge and being regularly in the top 3. I’m sorry she left, but I’m just sure there’s more to it than they showed.
I am glad Anthony is back; I don’t think he’ll make the top 3, but he’s really good when he gets away from sweetheart necklines and that one dress sillhouette.
Drama with the models, though. Catty, catty, catty.
I watched the first 5 minutes of the models show last night then realized why I didn’t watch it. It was a bunch of horrid people being horrid to each other (which can work with a script, but is just unpleasant television when those are real people not characters).
Isn’t this the second “design a dress for heidi” challenge in the same season? I think this show might have run its course.
I’m consistently unimpressed by Emilio. Last night’s was boring. Well made, but blah. The week before was a boring dress with a bad print. He didn’t deserve to go home, but he didn’t deserve the win, either, no one really did. When she first said “there’s no winner this week,” I thought she was going to return with “you all need to up your game” because nothing really seemed interesting. They all went wrong in some direction or other.
My gut feeling on Maya is this: they talked a while back about how she’s always so referential and what complete and utter death it would be to show a complete collection “inspired by” someone else. I think that, on top of the standard amount of stress of the competition, the dual questions of who she truly is as a designer and what will happen to her career if her big shot at Bryant Park is viewed as too referential have been gnawing at her. After thinking on it a while, she decided it was maybe better in the long term to pull back and get herself together a bit more and go at it with a clear sense of self than to risk torpedoing her career with a first show that’s viewed as derivative and trite and lacking in original point of view.
Of course, my gut may not know shit. “I’m just not ready” may be the fashion world’s “spending more time with my family.” But she seemed remarkably calm and at peace with leaving for someone who had left under some sort of personal duress. And to be a new grad competing with one of the oldest, most experienced fields we’ve ever seen, and every week listen to the judges harp on “point of view” and being true to yourself as a designer…that’s got to be hard even for someone with a really strong, non-referential design aesthetic.
My pick for the final 3, at this point, is Seth Aaron, Emilio, and either Jay or Miss Sophia. I just don’t see it being Captain Colorblock–she’s just too weak and dated when they drag her away from her one trick.
To me the fact that there was no thread about it until today further hints at this show being just about done.
I too loved Anthony’s dress. I’m so glad he didn’t fall flat on his face. I agree he’s not the winner of the whole shooting match but that dress asserts that he deserves a spot.
I’m suspicious enough to wonder if Maya’s departure was more calculated than they made it look. My theory is that she knew (as I believe we all did) that she was not going to win. By walking away she becomes the story. She will be the most memorable and recognized designer to come in 6th (or is it 7th?) place.
Emilio’s dress was not a groundbreaking design, but I believe based on Nina’s repeated declarations that it was “impeccable!” that it really must have been superbly made.Now, having said that - it’s Project Runway, not Project Seamstress. I just wanted to acknowledge that I did enjoy looking at it, because if he hadn’t made the underneath structure well his model could’ve ended up looking like bag of hangers with a bobblehead on the runway.
Judging by the interview over on TLo, your gut is mor or less right.
http://tomandlorenzo2.blogspot.com/2010/04/t-lo-interviews-maya.html
I’ll miss Maya’s designs. I think she’s got a lot of talent and would have liked to have seen what she might have come up with at Bryant Park (10 designers showed this year). That said, I’m really happy Anthony’s back and that he came back and won was even better. I thought his dress was beautiful even though it definitely needed work construction-wise, the white section on the bodice was sloppy.
Emilio’s was very nice too although I didn’t care for the embellishment at the top. It was also incredibly well-made something we haven’t seen a lot of this year (or last, for that matter).
Jonathan seems like a sweet guy but I think he really deserved the auf. He tried his “cut-away technique” before and it didn’t work so I wonder why he chose to do it again? His first dress looked like an upholstered sofa and the dress he sent down the runwayy looked like an Ace bandage.
Mila completely missed the point of the challenge and the dress was poorly made to boot. Seth’s was boring and I get that Jay likes the poufy, volume thing but to put that on someone’s ass? Not a good idea.
This season has been pretty meh though still better than season 6. I read an interview with Tim Gunn where he said the formula for the show has gone stale and needs to be shaken up a bit. I really hope the producers take his point of view into consideration for season 8.
I agree with almost everything you said. (Except about Emilio. He’s good enough to make it to the end, but he really should have gone home for the bikini.)
Maya backing out in the middle of a challenge was just wrong. If she didn’t want to be perceived in a bad light by her peers, I think she screwed the pooch because she looks like a quitter. If she had let her model strut down the runway in that or the previous challenge, then said “Ok, don’t vote anyone off because I’m going to go instead,” she’d be less of a quitter. If she wanted to have her own vision, then staying would be the best thing and learning from the talented people she was around.
I think Anthony’s dress last night should have won and it might be my favorite thing all season.
That’s no gut feeling. That’s exactly the reason they showed.
And if not for the bikini, then certainly for the hideous mother/daughter Easter Sunday at the Mormon Compound dresses.
That said, his dress this week was beautifully made and perfectly fitted, although I didn’t love the fabric or care for the boob sprout. I preferred Anthony’s though. Seth Aaron’s was boring, and Jonathan’s was hideous, and Mila’s was ill-conceived and ill-fitting. And I can’t remember Jay’s, so…
I agree that Maya should have done the challenge and then quit. I’m interested to see what she’d have made. Also, just for me personally, I work right up the street from MassArt*, and though I don’t know her, I know some people who do.
*As a fashionable aside, a friend and I have a game we play at lunch… “Prostitute? or MassArt student?” 
My friend that I watch with thinks the two winners are guaranteed for Bryant Park and the rest are wild cards.
Personally, for the top two I liked the sparkly dress and the black dress rather than Anthony’s black and white dress. But then I was considering overall rather than for Heidi+red carpet…
Yeah… who knows… even if she wasn’t ready for the pressure for that level of fashion career, surely she could use the extra paycheck. I think if I was in that situation I’d rather crash and burn than quit. But if she wanted to quit while she’s ahead, I’m not going to judge her either…
Strategically, I think she made the right choice. We’re not talking about a show where you do lots of crazy shit for the cameras and then when it’s done you go back to your real life that has no relationship to the show at all. We’re talking about something that can have a real and palpable impact on the rest of your career.
Maya is fresh out of school–apparently she’d only graduated a month or so before filming started. She is a complete unknown, with nothing to show the world that she’s got the goods except her student portfolio and her work on the show. A bad show at Fashion Week isn’t such a huge deal if you’re one of the big design houses, because when you have a huge body of work it’s easy to blow off one show as an off season, a blip on the radar. If you even have a solid resume working for other designers, or your own small label with a loyal following, a bad show isn’t a total disaster because you have that body of work to fall back on. But if you don’t have that body of work as a cushion, a bad show at Bryant Park is a Very Bad Thing.
For someone like Maya, doing poorly at Fashion Week would drastically weaken her position in terms of starting her own line or even getting a job for another designer. In that situation, buyers only know her as “that PR chick who sent down that dreadful collection.” Other designers she might apply for jobs with will see her as someone who did good student work but bombed in the real world. By continuing in the competition, she risks putting herself behind a whole rack full of 8 balls at the very beginning of her career, before she ever gets that first job or opens her own shop.
By doing things the way she did, stepping out by choice while she’s on top (or close to it), she has a stronger position. Right now, she has no negatives in her body of work–she’s just got the student portfolio that was good enough to get her on the show, and the strong but not necessarily stellar work she’s done on the show. She doesn’t have that last bad look that people tend to remember when thinking about a contestant on this show–the last look, the one people will remember, is that ruffly dress with the really awesome print she designed. It’s a much better image for a potential buyer, investor, or employer to have in mind than a single look that was auf-worthy, or a bad collection.