Well, they certainly started off on a different foot this year, giving the designers a whole bucketload of expensive, high-quality fabrics, rather than asking them to tear apart their suites in search of material.
There were a few really impressive pieces, but i was quite disappointed at how many rather uninspired offerings there were, especially since the designers were basically given free rein to do whatever they wanted.
I thought Simone was probably the right choice to go home. Elisa’s multicolored train (wreck) was pretty awful, but the dress she attached it to was well made and very stylish, and i guess the judges decided to give her a chance to curb her flights of fancy. Simone’s dress was bad, the jacket was bad, and together each made the other even worse. And it was, as the judges said, poorly put together.
I thought Rami’s win was well deserved, although i was quite surprised not to see Chris among the top three. I was sort of rooting for him, after seeing the poor guy lumbering across Bryant Park well behind everyone else.
I wasn’t as impressed with Christian’s outfit as the judges were (you can really see the influence that working in England has had on him). I thought it looked a too busy and ill-fitting. But i just looked at the pictures on the website, and it looks better, so maybe it was just the angle of the TV cameras or something.
The one trend that i’m getting a bit worried about in these Bravo shows is (what seems to be) the increasing emphasis on having well-established and successful people as contestants. Half of those designers already seem to be thriving in the fashion industry, and i’d personally be a bit interested in seeing some more talented novices or people from outside the industry.
Anyway, i’m sure i’ll have more to add later on, but i just wanted to kick off the season. Carry on!
I suspected at first that Elisa would go, since they seemed to be playing up her craziness. But when I saw Simone’s dress on the runway, I figured that it was going to be her. I remember a classic putdown line Michael Kors said to someone once, that it looked like a dress of someone whose mother was a “bad home sewer,” and that to me was exactly what Simone’s dress looked like. Plus, it wasn’t even a great design. They criticized the lingere designer’s dress because it was too basic, but Simone’s was just as basic, and the colors weren’t even pretty.
Of course, sometimes I totally don’t get what the judges see or don’t see, because I thought Christian’s design was awful. The way the plaid was lined up in the back was well done, but overall, I thought it looked like a reject from an old Designing Women episode. When they held him back, I seriously thought he was going to be one of the “lowest score” people.
I think that they kept Elisa because even though she failed she tried something different. Yeah, it didn’t work, but she tried. You could see what she was going for, and, had she used lighter weight fabrics, she may have pulled it off. She used color well, the dress had a nice shape, and was constructed well.
I liked Simone’s idea (and I liked the color combo). But they had a lot of time to complete this challange and that was a basic dress. It should have been constructed beautifully.
You and me both. That dress hurt to look at.
Those dresses must look very different in person or something. Sometimes they will pick a dress that makes me yell at the TV. “Hey, Nina, what’s in Elle next month? Butt ugly is the new black?”
I was suprised that Sweet P’s dress wasn’t in the bottom three. It looked like one of those pillowcase dresses for babies, except with mismatched fabric.
I agree that Chris’s dress should’ve been in the top three.
I was hoping Christian wouldn’t win, we would’ve never heard the end of it.
The whole point of the show is that the designers are supposed to be restricted in terms of time, theme, and materials. Where’s the fun in giving everyone a boatload of really expensive fabric and free reign to do whatever they want right off the bat? That’s what Fashion Week is for!
I also agree that for a group that includes a lot of working designers (a trend I’m not to fond of), the designs they came up with were painfully uninspired and simply crappy overall. I hardly liked any of them, and thought that the lingerie baby doll was a breath of fresh air simply by virtue of not being unforgivably hideous.
There wasn’t a single piece in the entire collection that even approached stuff from last season’s first challenge, like Michael’s coffee filter dress (which didn’t even win).
We’ll see, but so far I’m not impressed with the designers. I’d also like somebody to please throw Christian and Sweet P into a volcano at their earliest convenience.
I have to repeat what was said above: they gave the contestants all the fabric they could possibly want and time and the results were… underwhelming. This episode has again shown that the judges and I are seeing two completely different things. The ones I thought were some of the best were set as mediocre, along with the ones I thought were the worst being mediocre (Sweet P) and praised (Christian).
Christian’s outfit (My first reaction: “It looks like something vomited that trim on the front”) was, IMHO, awful looking. I must have completely missed something, as all the detailing they were praising looked non-existent. Sweet P’s looked like a potato sack with straps.
I agree with all of that…the dress itself was pretty. Even my husband liked it!
Yeah, I didn’t get that. It seriously looked like something a person would turn out in a high school home ec class.
I know…and then sometimes they’ll hate something that I thought was nice. Remember that “romantic” dress Jeffrey did towards the end of last season? It had kind of a floaty white skirt, a blue bodice, and a red sash. I thought it was really pretty, and thank god, not shredded up like most of his stuff, and the judges didn’t like it. I thought it was the best thing he ever did. I guess that’s why I’m not in fashion.
So did I, but I’m not sure if I’m just responding to the color (which I love) or the style (which I wish I could wear - but can’t.) But I really liked it.
I also liked Steven’s suit thingy - but I can see that the judges wouldn’t.
I didn’t get Christian’s thing, I thought it made his model look bad. There’s no reason for the models to look bad (Plus, the models this year… some of them have weird walks.)
So I just went to look at the designs on bravotv.com, and oh my god is their website a trainwreck. Last year it was cluttered and confusing, but this year it’s cluttered, confusing and slooooooooooooooooow. Oh yeah, and it keeps trying to crash my browser. And half the buttons appear to be nonfunctional. How hard is it to make a website with a picture gallery that’s not based on some flash application written by a rabid howler monkey, people? And why do they only put up one picture per design? “La la la the details on the back are gorgeous la la la we’re not going to show you on television, check out our semifunctional website for another picture… of the front.”
And once again, I’ve continued my 2-year-long streak of NEVER PICKING THE RIGHT OUTFIT to win.
In my opinion, like the opinions shown above, Chris’s purple dress was the most fetching of all the lot. Looked pretty, well designed, and put together. I, too, absolutely hated that winning design. It looked like crap! That ruffle stuff on the front was mismatched, and looked like a bad 70’s tux.
I chose Sweet P for the loser - it looked so stiff and just… like a sewn-together pillowcase.
My only comment is that, when I saw the winning dress come down the runway, I said to myself, “That flower is so Mother of the Bride.” Then Michael Kors said exactly the same thing. Clearly I have internalized this show a bit. Anyone else think Rami’s dress was boring? At least it was beautifully constructed, but certainly uninspiring and not particularly innovative.
I’m glad they didn’t send Elisa home. The idea for her dress was cool but she didn’t think it through. I think she might come up with some interesting stuff if she gets a grip on herself.
Well, in Architecture school the saying was that if you wanted to see everybody fail, the perfect assignment was just to say “design something”. It is restrictions that make a designer’s mind fly. Give them a completely blank canvas and they have nothing to hold on to. In that sense, I loved the challenge. Whoever does poorly has no excuses, but at the same time, it is probably the hardest possible challenge.
About the contestants being too “high level”, I guess they are trying to avoid a nutfest at the end where there is no real talent but just all personalities. I think I prefer it this way. We might be missing some of the fun of the total basket cases and the excitement of a total rookie with talent squaring off against a certified craft master, but in the end, it raises the level of the show.
As for the episode, blah. Still too many people for me to keep straight and underwhelming stuff all around. We will see.
I don’t have Bravo so I’ve been downloading episodes of shows I like from iTunes. But season 4 of Project Runway hasn’t shown up. Does anyone know why or do they know a place I CAN watch it?
I just looked around for you. It looks like right now it’s watch it on Bravo or not at all. The site is loaded with people begging them for either streaming from the site or put it on iTunes.
Hopefully Bravo will listen and give the people what they want.
