A reminder that this is on tonight, for thems as is curious.
Okay, if Princess about the densest person that ever drew breath or what?
She’d better pray she’s not on a losing team for a loooooong time.
And what’s with the midwest mom? She looked as mournful as a kicked puppy when she was in the pit. Hey, suck it up and at least pretend to have some dignity.
Yeah, Princess and Jeff, what a pair. I loved Princess’s “It was after everyone went home…” – everyone but the camera crew and the host, whom you’ve specifically been told is the person you need to impress. What a maroon.
I love the variety of ways they have deliberately chosen to do things differently from The Apprentice – someone did an excellent critique of the latter show. Remixing teams every week – interesting; the players have to renegotiate the relationships in addition to trying to perform the task. Bringing in different advisors for each task, instead of casting a George and a Carolyn – also good. The way he runs the pit – or at least the way they’ve edited him running the pit – very brisk, very decisive, I like it.
I am definitely digging this show – best of the summer crop, IMHO.
I can’t believe Tommy didn’t get of the woman from St. Louis who said she didn’t know how to talk to gays! She wants to work in fashion?!?!
The last episode (Cotton Club vs. Studio 54 recreations) was the first one I saw so maybe I am not understanding things about the teams and the role of the leaders.
Can someone please explain why it was all right for the team “leader” to go to the party in the Hamptons and leave his team to work on the project–and the guy who rose to the occasion and tried to lead got cut for the sub-standard results?? That seemed like the functional equivalent of a platoon leader who says, hey, boys, take Hill 634 and I will be in the Officer’s tent, they are serving martinis all afternoon. I thought for certain that big hair guy (I don’t remember any of the names except for Princess) would be cut for abandoning his team.
First, the “social” task is considered equally legitimate/important as the “main” task. For instance, if the other team had lost, Princess’s ass would have bounced out of there so fast your head would spin – and the fact that James (big hair guy) did well definitely counted in his favor. Hilfiger sees the ability to schmooze to be just as important as design sense and business sense. (BTW, there’s a social task each week, with one or two people from each team going).
Second, the person who picks the team isn’t necessarily the “leader” – he or she is just the person who picks. Team identity is a lot more fluid in this show than on The Apprentice – the teams reshuffle each week, with the person chosen first one week being the person who chooses the next week. It isn’t really equivalent to PM – once the teams form, the person picking doesn’t necessarily have any more authority than anyone else on the team. The guy who got booted got booted not because he picked the team, but because he set himself up as the one with the knowledge of the period, and thus the overall style arbiter of what they did. He didn’t necessarily make the assignments of who did what task – that was done more collaboratively, IIRC,
After watching for a few weeks, I can say this:
I can’t stand Princess.
I can’t stand Tommy (not Hilfiger, the contestant Tommy).
Shauna is a useless backbiter.
Jeff is a trainwreck.
And most of the rest of the folks are just so out of their league. Can you imagine ANY of them working for/with Tommy Hilfiger, Mr. Preppy?
The ‘team’ dynamic is a much better fit for what TH is looking for than a more slavish Apprentice copy would be. At least, assuming the goal is to find a designer. Without designated leaders assigning tasks, it comes down to whoever comes up with the better inspirations/ideas, or at least, whoever can convince most of the others on the team that their ideas are better.
But there is definitely a ‘work ethic’ of a sort: not so much What did you do? in the sense of did you put in enough time cutting/painting/pasting/whatever as Which of the ideas did you come up with?
Which I also think has killed Princess. Not only did she fail in extremely visible ways on both the social tasks so far, but it meant she isn’t able to point to any aspect of the challenges and say “I came up with the inspiration for that.”
I think the two who were praised for the social schmoozing would be smartest not to volunteer for any more, for quite a while: quit while you’re ahead on that aspect, and concentrate on producing in other areas.
Heh.
Buh-bye, Tommy!
I couldn’t be happier that the little slime is gone! Now, if we can just get rid of Princess and Jeff, things could get interesting.
Query: How can they have contestants who are vying to have their own line under the Tommy Hilfiger label. . . who have never designed nor sewn anything in their lives? What’s wrong with this picture?
Princess is just a well of talents. Bad at the social aspects, bad at designing clothes. How DID she survive again??
Okay, maybe her original design was better, but I thought that was one seriously UGLY dress, and about 180 degrees away from sexy. All those flat pleats? and that overskirt made the model look hippy. And adding a big bulky shawl on top of it? Oh, yeah, let’s make the model’s top half look oversized, too.
OTOH, the yellow teams dress was elegant and sexy, but not especially original I thought. The designer (Elizabeth, was it?) would do better to stop emphasizing that she never designed anything else – it just screams ‘beginner’s luck.’
Deanna’s kinda hot.
Oh, I dunno – it’s their very horribleness that makes them so amusing. It’s crystal clear neither of them has any kind of chance of winning, and watching their antics provides dozens of weekly WTF moments. Plus it looks like Jeff fucks up big-time next week – we can only look forward to that.
SBS – was that not the fugliest thing you’ve ever seen? And so badly put together. I was kind of surprised Tommy went to the trouble of bringing whatsherface into the pit for not having contributed enough, when it was clear that it had to be Tommy or Princess going home. (Heh. I loved, “I’m not sure if this horribly uneven hem in the back is intentional or not…”)
As far as the other team was concerned – I thought Elizabeth’s dress was totally stunning. (BTW – when did they do the show? Had she seen Hilary Swank’s Oscar dress when she came up with this idea?) OTOH, going for “real creative” didn’t work all that well for the Blue Team, did it?
annieclaus – someone with no particular clothing skills (design or construction, if not both) is not going to win this thing – Shauna’s “skill” is shopping, for crying out loud! – but it does make for kind of an interesting mix. And clearly ability to sew wasn’t enough to save that wanker Tommy.
I am so totally digging this show – I can’t believe it hasn’t caught on more.
Dammit – I just realized this is getting moved to Wednesdays because of Big Brother. Was it on last night, does anyone know?
Yes, it was. Julie was sent home.
The task was to design two outfits, one for men, one for women, with an “Americana” theme, and the outfits had to be “relevant” (i.e. marketable).
The teams split up, with half of each team staying in NYC, and the other half traveling to Texas and New Mexico (or was it Arizona? - someplace southwest anyway).
The away team was supposed to call back to the home team with ideas and instructions for the outfits. They were given a budget of $1,000, and 48 hours to complete the outfits.
The winning team produced a fairly decent cowboy-type outfit, and the losing team lost because they went overboard incorporating Native American culture, and the result looked more like a costume than something anyone would wear.
Jeff was on the winning team, which was lucky, because he made a couple of questionable decisions. He hired a denim designer to make a special pair of jeans, and paid him $500 – half the budget – which meant that his team only had $40 to pay the seamstress for everything she did.
The second questionable decision was to go back to the denim designer to do a jacket, with only 90 minutes left till deadline. One of the team members could have done it, but Jeff wouldn’t consider it. The result was that Jeff didn’t have the jacket done on time, and they couldn’t use it.
His teammates criticized him for this to Hilfiger, but Hilfiger thought it showed initiative – sometimes you have to pay to get something done.
No particular reason for firing Julie, IMHO. The dark-haired woman was the one who insisted on using Indian blankets as shawls (for both the men’s and women’s outfit), and they looked stupid.
Julie had gone on the Arizona trip, and I assume she contributed something on that end. No one was complaining about her anyway. When she got back she designed a purse to go with the outfit.
But Hilfiger obviously didn’t like her. He said she was too passive, and he didn’t think the purse was enough of a contribution to this task.
Looks like next week’s task will be to refurbish and open a clothing store.
Don’t forget: she also painted the soles of the woman’s boots. Clever, yes? Decorate something virtually never seen, with paint that will wear off before the owner has walked the first mile.
I noticed that Princess talked a good game – she wanted to do more contemporary clothes with just bits and pieces of indian inspiration (which would have been a better choice) AND the way she was talking while the other half of the team was away made it sound like she’d made up her mind and that was that, no matter what the returnees thought…and then, her ideas simply went away, apparently.
What bugged me about the show was that the Albuquerque team (New Mexico, not Arizona) was shown only ceremonial Native American garb. So why wouldn’t they come up with something costume-y? For all they knew, that’s all Native Americans wore! On the other hand, the Texas team saw a glitzy outfit on the cowgirl show troupe, but they also saw typical working wear. The New Mexico team was sandbagged without even knowing it! (I thought sure they’d come up with something beaded within an inch of its life. . . or at least one of those cool vests made out of bits of bone or something.) I don’t mind that Julie’s gone; she really didn’t do much, and always looked like she was cold. The bosom buddiness of Shauna and the peculiar girl (Deana, is it?) is beginning to grate, however!
Maybe true…but TH told them they had to come up with clothes that people would actually be willing to wear.
Really, what they should have done was more like use the color palette and pattern styles for decor, not slavish imitation. Like, oh, a fawn colored skirt with a band of ‘indian style’ embroidery around the hem. Like those stylized figures they carved into rocks? Or geometrics, like beading patterns. Not beads, just those patterns. Use turquoise and silver jewelry. Maybe a tote style bag for the woman made from a blanket.
Just bits and pieces to add flavor to ordinary pants/skirt/jacket garb.
TM said one good piece can make or break a collection and that Jeff’s decision to spend $500 was a correct one.
IANADesigner, so if Hilfiger says it, it must be true. 
But I would have been upset if Jeff’s team had lost, and Jeff wasn’t fired.
For one thing, the jeans looked like ordinary jeans. The designer put leather inserts near the waist, but you couldn’t see them because the belt covered them up. Hilfiger commented on the white shirt with the black piping, but I don’t think he noticed the jeans.
Jeff was stupid not to ask up front what the jeans would cost. What if $500 wasn’t enough and the designer kept the jeans? I doubt Hilfiger hires craftspeople without knowing what they’ll cost.
And then the whole fiasco with the jacket.
What Jeff did looked like daring and initiative to Hilfiger. The others should take note of that.