The Collar That Almost Ate Our Marriage

Oh, Kittens.

We do NOT agree on this dress.

The short version:
Lorenzo: PRO-dress
Tom: Decidedly NOT pro-dress

Tom is waiting to receive your catcalls and offerings of ripe fruit at high velocity.

Longer version: well, it's a little more complicated than that. We do agree on some things.

For instance, we both agree that the collar's too damn much.

On the other hand, we disagree on the judges' reaction to it. It is similar to the collar he made for the avant garde challenge, we'll grant them that. But Lorenzo thinks the judges over-reacted to that as if Chris has been pulling these exuberant asymmetrical collars out every week. Like, say Christian with his puffy sleeves and Rami with his draping. His point is, THOSE two designers are for more deserving of that criticism than Chris and Tom definitely agrees with that.

But.

It's a pretty distinctive, over-the-top look. We're not talking about a design element that can be interpreted for a range of clothing (like draping or styles of sleeves), we're talking about a big, Virgin-Queen-sized collar obscuring poor Marcia's right peripheral vision once again.

It's a bit of a red flag to the judges to pull such a distinct look out once again. She looks like her airbag deployed.

Marie Françoise de La Cropte de St. Abre, Marquise d'Argence by Jean Marc Nattier

And in a strange way, it didn't seem to call back to the original painting much. He went for exactly the same colors and fabrics and then went off and made something that doesn't really feel so much like an inspiration as a declaration of "Here's a dress I can make in those same colors."

Lorenzo does love the colors and thinks it's an interesting take on the original dress, but Tom's not totally with him on every point. It IS a beautiful and striking dress, but...

...is it us or does it look a little sloppy and wrinkly? Like, the execution is fine, but there's something a little off with the presentation?

Armchair psychoanalysts that we are, it just looked like Chris was over the whole thing this week. He just seemed tired and fed up, so he pulled a strong, striking design out of his trickbag and put it together. It didn't feel like inspiration, it felt like a survival technique. Which, hey, you do what you gotta do if you're exhausted and still want to stay in the game.

There's a reason Signor Cavalli loved it more than the others. Unlike the sitting judges, who've been there with Chris since day one and are certain to have preconceptions at this point, he took the dress on its own merits and declared it a work of art.

And it was, in its own way a stunning and dramatic dress, but it just didn't feel like Chris put 100% into it and we think that's what the sitting judges were responding to.


[Photos: Metmuseum.org - Barbara Nitke/Bravotv.com - Screencaps: Project RunGay]


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