Children, the word for today is "uneven." Not the quality of the work, mind you. She's no less even in the quality of her work than the other contestants. No, we mean it's uneven in the sense that there's no overriding aesthetic or through-line for her work. We guess one could spin that as a wide range but the fact is, in order to declare that one has a wide range one would have to demonstrate quality in all their work. Like we said before, when she's good (1,5,6,7,8,10), she's really good but when she's bad (2,9,12), she's really bad. To her credit, there are more good looks than bad but she's all over the place in terms of her style. If we must be armchair psychologists (and you know we must), we'd have to say that she was a little lost during the competition and trying too hard to please the judges instead of following her own muse. This might explain why their criticism had a tendency to make her cry.
Another credit to her is that she really attempts to do something different almost every time, whether it's a kimono, a shark fin dress, pants and a vest, a coat, blouson sleeves or a big glittery flame flower on a drag queen.
There aren't really any themes to her competition work. We thought "volume" and "ethnic" were her touchstones but looking over this, that's not really true. There were only two looks with an ethnic flair (1,5) and while there is quite a bit of volume (1,5,6,9,12) there are as much or more fitted pieces (2,3,4,7,8,10). Color-wise, she tended toward yellows and reds but not so much that it was a motif. Another slight theme is the vest or jacket (2,4,5,7,8,10), which she returned to several times.
In the end, she was an erratic contestant, more so than we realized, who demonstrated enough talent and style to get her to the end. We're glad she's there because we really do like her work but looking at this collection we have to say she was lucky a couple of times too.
[Photos: Barbara Nitke/Bravo]
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