Project Runway, Season 4 Ep 2

Cafe Society
1

I hope I’m not just clueless, but I can’t find a thread for this week’s PR.

First, I kinda hate Sarah Jessica Parker’s face. It annoys me. And then I feel guilty because she came across very well in this episode.

Anyway, I really liked some of the garments this week. I don’t think the right one won, but it was okay. The right one definitely went home.

Does Steve(n) remind anyone else of French Stewart? Does Kevin remind anyone else of Jeffrey Dean Morgan? Will the guy in the trucker hat ever stop crying? Is Elisa play-crazy or crazy-crazy?

Is there anybody out there?

2

I didn’t really care that much for most of the garments…I don’t think I’d have bought any of them if they were really in the Bitten line.

Elisa is creepy…Heidi was right to tell her that people wouldn’t like the idea of someone spitting on their dress. And she’s over forty–the fact that she acts like some weird little pixie skeeves me.

3

I am.

I liked this week’s episode. Elisa went from really strange last week to really funny and charming this one. But she’s toast if she can’t sew. Still I like seeing wacky creativity up close.

The crying guys have got to stop. Yesterday. Chris also cried. Yuck. Save the verklempt for another day, men.

I didn’t get Victorya’s win. The dress looked ugly and spooky to me. I did get why the losing dress lost. That was a very poor choice of fabric.

Christian is grating on my nerves enormously. The self love when he viewed his hideous jacket and whispered, “it’s perfect” was just icky. You’re too old for that kind of ego, little man.

I was surprised crying guy made the reddish dress and it didn’t place higher. I really thought it was very pretty. Sarah Jessica Parker came across as gracious and well informed. Her comments were critical yet kind. The only thing that bugs me about her is her insistance on having two first names.

4

Ricky’s crying is annoying, but I liked his dress. That was the only one I would have considered wearing, though not in that color.

I like Elisa, though if she can’t use a sewing machine or a serger she’s screwed. The “spitting” on the dress is far overblown from what she was actually doing, which is a tiny mark when you’re using both hands and can’t hold chalk. Freaking out over that was just Sweet P’s way to be a bitch and make a Elisa look bad, distancing herself from Elisa just in case. Her garment last week was beautiful except for the “pooping fabric” aspect. This week’s was even better. So she’s a little weird. She seems like a nice person with no ego problems…

…unlike Christian, who needs to get over himself, or go back to 1987 when that hairdo was cool, or something. Damn, he is annoying as hell, which IME means he’ll be on the show for a long time.

ETA: I always figured Sarah Jessica Parker had to have 2 first names because “Sarah Parker” was probably already taken in the SAG. Just my WAG anyway.

5

[QUOTE=LavenderBlue]
Christian is grating on my nerves enormously. The self love when he viewed his hideous jacket and whispered, “it’s perfect” was just icky. You’re too old for that kind of ego, little man.
[/QUOTE]

I very strongly feel that if you’re old enough for that kind of ego, you’re still young enough to be put into timeout until you learn some humility. Christian desperately needs to tone his superiority, before I reach through my TV and slap him on the mouth. If he were an English major, he’d be the guy who sits in the quad reading James Joyce and claiming to loveloveLOVE it. Then he’d finish his Thermos of black coffee (brewed at home because he can’t stand that swill from food services), hop on his Vespa, and scoot off to his 300-level philosophy class, skinny pants made yet skinnier by the wind caused by leaves passing through his ego cloud.

I hope some pictures of Christian dressed as Ronald McDonald for Hallowe’en or something turn up soon. If he was the English major example, then we’d be able to switch his coffee with Folgers and watch things unfold.

Elisa is absolutely bizarre. Spit marking to imbue the fabric with her essence? That doesn’t even make sense from a practical standpoint. The spit dries and then what? You do it again?

Handsewing or not, she’s at a major disadvantage when it comes to more structured garments, if all she’s ever going to do is work with things that have stretch.

6

I saw this, and all I could think was “do none of these designers have a mirror?” My God, their hair!

And then Tim Gunn namedropps the Tresemme Hair Salon! Who cares about the models, send the damn designers down there, stat! Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style my ass. That freaky little annoying emo-haired designer (is that Christian?) needs to go first. At gunpoint.

Otherwise, they really need to thin the herd out before I’ll muster any interest.

7

I haven’t been thrilled with any of the outfits (I almost used Project Runway-Speak and said “Garments”) so far this season. And I totally agree with the whole crying men thing. I don’t like crying women and I really don’t like crying men.

They’re going to have to thin the herd before I bother to learn anyone’s name. Unfortunately, Christian has made himself know to me in a way that isn’t favorable.

StG

8

I really don’t get all the eye-rolling about Elisa on this show. Sure, she’s a little different in her approach than most of the others, but you’d think an industry with such a variety of, ahem, “characters” could make room for someone with a little bit of Gaia-loving-hippie-crystal charm. She seems like a genuinely decent person, someone who has a particular way of looking at the world; they act like she’s escaped from some lunatic asylum. I don’t think she’ll go all the way in this competition, but i sort of like having her around.

I think my favorite item this week was the red thing made by Rami and Jillian, although it didn’t really look like a two-piece, which might have lost it some points. I definitely agreed with the losing outfit; it was pretty awful. Although Christian and Carmen’s contribution was also bad. The jacket just did not go with the dress, and when your dress makes a rail-thin model look chubby, then you’re probably not going to win any design awards either.

Christian strikes me as similar to Hung from Top Chef—someone who is not very good at taking advice or criticism. He seems completely unwilling to accept that anything he makes is less than perfect.

9

And yet Hung won.

StG

10

[QUOTE=mhendo]
I really don’t get all the eye-rolling about Elisa on this show.

[/QUOTE]

Sometimes it’s the people who should be the most tolerant who are the least.

People is strange.

11

[QUOTE=mhendo]
I really don’t get all the eye-rolling about Elisa on this show. Sure, she’s a little different in her approach than most of the others, but you’d think an industry with such a variety of, ahem, “characters” could make room for someone with a little bit of Gaia-loving-hippie-crystal charm. She seems like a genuinely decent person, someone who has a particular way of looking at the world; they act like she’s escaped from some lunatic asylum. I don’t think she’ll go all the way in this competition, but i sort of like having her around.
[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the constant spacey-ness doesn’t get wearing after a while, especially if you’re working on tight deadlines and little sleep. If you’re partners with someone and they’re using Victorian hand-tailoring techniques to finish the edge on the garment for hours, when you could just grab the serger and get it done in half an hour, then that’s going to do a little temper fraying. Did you see the part where Tim Gunn told her it was crazy to finish the edge by hand considering the deadline?

Also, if you’re capable of drafting a fitted jacket pattern, pants pattern, pencil skirt pattern, culottes pattern, etc. etc, and this woman who keeps going on about imbuing the fabric with spirit and energy is making the same one-seam Lycra dress . . . argh! How frustrating. Imagine how you would feel if you were, let’s say a cook, and one of your rivals kept cranking out omelettes, just changing the filling each time, while you’re busy making a wide array of dishes. I guarantee that if she doesn’t expand her design and sewing repertoire in the next few episodes, she’s going to get an earful from the judges. Remember last season when they got all down on Santino for not branching out more?

The people competing in this contest are for the most part skilled seamstresses/tailors, and so far Elisa hasn’t shown herself to be more than a one-trick pony from a construction viewpoint. That is, she hasn’t shown mastery of materials. Sure, she does her thing competently, but I don’t think her thing is fashion design in the vein of what Project Runway is looking for.

And I can’t believe more people aren’t freaked out by her spitting on the fabric. It wasn’t just a little dab with her tongue – she left a pretty big tongue print on there.

Anyway, what does everyone think Jack’s big reveal (that they keep hinting at in the promos after showing the female designers commenting on his ass) is going to be? I think either he’s a victim of sexual abuse, or he’s suing them all for sexual harassment. Looking at his profile on the site, though, it might be the HIV positive thing.

12

Just wanted to add that the challenge next week looks to be menswear. The mannequin that ones of the contestants is struggling with in the promo is definitely a male mannequin. I imagine that this might be a hell of a challenge for Elisa and many others.

13

[QUOTE=StGermain]
And yet Hung won.

StG
[/QUOTE]
But Hung also had plenty of talent.

And even so, just because you’ve got talent doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from advice and criticism given by people who are experts in your field. Unless, of course, you actually do have nothing left to learn. But i’m not sure how many people really fit that category.

14

[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington]
I wouldn’t be surprised if the constant spacey-ness doesn’t get wearing after a while, especially if you’re working on tight deadlines and little sleep. If you’re partners with someone and they’re using Victorian hand-tailoring techniques to finish the edge on the garment for hours, when you could just grab the serger and get it done in half an hour, then that’s going to do a little temper fraying. Did you see the part where Tim Gunn told her it was crazy to finish the edge by hand considering the deadline?
[/QUOTE]
But they’re all ragging on her, not just her partner. If she’s not affecting your chance to win, why do you care how she does things?

Also, while her partner Sweet P did show some understandable concern regarding the deadline, she actually seemed more interested in making fun of Elisa’s personality and quirky mannerisms and habits.

15

Are you honestly saying that you’ve never had a co-worker who was flighty and weird and kind of irritating with her flighty weirdness? Now imagine being trapped in a room with this person for hours and hours, with the stress of a strict deadline, and try not to complain about her. Now imagine that you are also living with this person. Of course there’s going to be resentment and cattiness! They’re human. They get irritated.

The majority of the contestants this season seem to be fairly normal people, committed to making garments with high standards and through meticulous and hard work. If someone with Elisa’s work style, which involves a lot of “guestimating” and sort of haphazard construction (the spit marking), came along, I could very easily see the other designers feeling this devalued their work and craftsmanship.

Elisa is approaching design and construction from a very different angle than the other designers, who for the most part seem to come from “classical” design backgrounds, where there’s a fairly structured process of creation. Elisa’s design process is very different from this, and is a hodgepodge of her own making. She uses some historical techniques (hand measuring) and some I’ve never heard of before (the spit marking) that are just not seen in standard construction today.

She’s an outsider in a group of outsiders. What’s happening is a perfectly natural part of human psychology; they are excluding her because she deviates from their expectations of what a seamstress should do.

[sub]I cannot believe I just wrote that last paragraph. Let me throw in some more Psych 101 words: Elisa is transgressing in and deviating from their subculture, and in fact comes from an entirely different subculture (the art world) which shares some superficial characteristics of behavior with the world of fashion. She has worked towards unifying those, but I doubt the two will ever make a cohesive whole. There is “glamorous” and there is “arty,” but never the twain shall meet.[/sub]

16

[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington]
Psych 101
[/QUOTE]
Psych 101 is right. She “devalued their work and craftmanship”? Give me a break. Do you really think that’s the motivation behind their cattiness?

Whatever. You don’t have to like her, and you’re welcome to think what you like about the way the others are reacting to her. I just happen to think their attitude is out of all proportion to her alleged offenses.

17

Yes, I do think the fact that she hasn’t shown she can construct structured garments is a serious blow against her integrity and ability as a designer. (Not integrity in the sense that she’s a liar, but that it leaves her resume as a designer with major holes.) I think her inclusion in this program cheapens the work of other designers who have abilities she doesn’t possess. And I think her approach to design alienates the more traditional designers. She was probably selected largely because she is such an utter nutbar compared to most other people and will spur The Drama. She also speaks Artist, which is amusing in its own way.

I don’t dislike her, but I don’t think she was a good choice for Project Runway either. She seems like a really nice person, but that doesn’t make her a proficient seamstress. Look at Christian – he’s a self-involved jerk, but he can sew like the devil on fire.

Hmm, look, she pretty much agrees with me about the other designers resenting and not understanding her on her blog:

I’m not saying that these people aren’t catty, but her differences make her a vulnerable target and she has a lot of weaknesses stacked against her in a program that is about traditional design and construction. Most people would react in a negative manner to someone without skills coming to compete against them in their career. It’s just what happens.

If she shows that she can compete with the others while lacking significant skills, then I’ll eat my words. But I don’t see her in the Top 3.

18

[QUOTE=Miss Purl McKnittington]
Anyway, what does everyone think Jack’s big reveal (that they keep hinting at in the promos after showing the female designers commenting on his ass) is going to be? I think either he’s a victim of sexual abuse, or he’s suing them all for sexual harassment. Looking at his profile on the site, though, it might be the HIV positive thing.
[/QUOTE]

I’m pretty sure it’s a health related thing and it’s supposed to come up in episode 5. It turned into a minor buhaha when it was happening, or so insiders said but I won’t reveal the hows or whys.

One of the funniest things to read afterwards is the recap by J Harvey on A Socialite’s Life ( http://socialitelife.buzznet.com/ ). He’s vicious, funny and usually on point in his summary of the episodes (Harvey is kinda hot for the jolly, weeping bear Chris). He also does ‘America’s Next Top Model’ which made me watch that series after reading his recaps.

19

Generally, I think the cast is very amusing this season. We got wackos, weeping men, victims, poseurs, Austin Redux and a range of talents - what’s not to love? My bigest gripe is the team challenges since they don’t show the best of any individual talent and are usually very painful to watch. Maybe that makes for ‘good tv’ but it makes me uncomfortable.

As for the apartment of intensly gay fellows calling themselves the ‘Star Team’ on their blackboard? <insert rollyeyes>

20

I was surprised by the results. I thought Christian and Carmen’s would be in the top two, not the bottom two. I didn’t love it, but it seemed really well designed for $15 and I didn’t agree that it looked “80s”. I actually loved Marion and Steven’s dress. I know they had a few problems with the contruction, but I thought it looked really nice if you didn’t get too close lol. I wasn’t overly thrilled with the top 2.