Jesus Christ! Are we EVER going to be done with these All-Star posts?
Mychael, though he's a sweetheart, kind of illustrated perfectly why the All-Star concept is a bit of a bust, in our opinion. It's because all of the participants go into it as veterans of reality television and subsequently most of them were boring to watch on camera. You have one of two options when you're acutely aware of how these things are edited: you can either shut up and just do the work or you can run around like a jackass trying to get as much camera time as you can. Neither option makes for particularly entertaining television.
Anyway, let's look at some dresses.
This was pretty cute, actually. We like the color and we really like the origami-like construction. The only real problem with the look is that it's not flawlessly executed.
This was a big no. Uli and Korto made dresses out of the restaurant materials that looked like real clothes; Chris and Sweet P made dresses that look like costumes. This? This just looks like a very basic dress with a lot of trash stapled to the front of it. Unfabulous.
Y'know, originally we hated this but we're coming around on it. We love the colors he chose.
And the skirt is again, interesting because of its origami folds.
The problem is with the proportions. There's too much skirt to too little top. And overall there's still an execution issue. That top's not fitted very well.
This was a really cute look.
Again, we really like the color pairing here. In fact, he managed to establish a color story with only 4 pieces. We love the little shrug and we even like the structured shoulders but it's a shame you can see the padding underneath.
And the back is kind of sexy.
In the end, it was not a contender for the win by any stretch, but there were some good designs here. Unfortunately, he was too rusty to do the "make it work" thing in such a short time frame. Because of the execution issues and the poor design for the restaurant challenge, he didn't have a chance of making it to the top four. Still, all of these pieces felt very much like a continuation of his better work from when he was on the show.
We're all for Easy Sewer's calm, cool, and collected demeanor but come on, Epperson. Give the editors something to work with. He's spoken a total of about 15 words in two episodes.
Then again...
Model: Erica Malde
He certainly gives us plenty to work with.
Kittens, this is AWFUL.
As jumpsuits go, it's well made and a little stylish. The problem is, it's a jumpsuit for a pregnant woman. Look what that bump does. It's pulling and stretching that fabric like there's no tomorrow. No pregnant woman wants a look that screams "This doesn't fit me properly!"
And we keep looking, but can't seem to find how exactly she's supposed to get in and out of this thing. If she's as far along as Rebecca Romijn, she's going to need to get out of that thing quite often in order to pee.
But the worst move of all, was that vest thing, which looks like she's wearing a tablecloth. Sorry, Epperson. We think you're cool and we think you're talented, but this was impractical and unflattering from top to bottom.
Gordana:
Model: Tara Egan
J'ADORE.
This one snuck up on us and it took more than one viewing to realize what a stylish, well-made look this is.
The colors are sophisticated and the look is flattering, comfortable, and stylish. Mitchell, THIS is a going to lunch outfit for the chic mom-to-be. Take notes.
We love the subtlety of it. The straps are interesting, the cardigan is practical and stylish, and the layered hem makes a nice touch. Finishing it off with tights so she doesn't flash her hoo-ha to the world was perfect.
Irina:
Model: Celine Chua
It's definitely a cute dress and it's certainly well made, but something about it isn't sitting right with us.
For one, we hate that pot scrubber/loofah she attached to the sash. It comes close to ruining a nice simple design. Another problem is that not only is the skirt way too short for a maternity dress, it rises in the front as if she had never considered the bump at all. One good wind and the world's your obstetrician.
We do like the colors, though. We always did have a fondness for tone on tone.
But ultimately, the problem with this dress is that it's a little too cute. In that sense, it's a bit retro, hearkening back to the days when pregnant women were expected to dress like desexualized baby dolls. A Betty Draper dress.
Tim Gunn's Workroom Critique:
In other news, the latest entry in the T Lo Awards is now up. Go!
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen attend the 'Opening Ceremony' Japan flagship store opening reception party on August 29, 2009 in Tokyo wearing Maison Michel fall 2009 lace ears.
So *snort* minions, we leave *snicker* this one open to you. Bound to be come a *titter* trend or bound to be relegated to the fashion dustbin along with the Nehru jacket and the leisure suit? We are refraining *heh* from offering our opin--HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
"You people. You think money's the answer to every problem."
There it is. The line - uttered by Betty's father - that encapsulates the entire theme of the episode. Each episode is like a puzzle. At first glance, it's hard to figure out, but once you get that corner piece, everything falls into place. It's about money, or more specifically, class status, because in America, the former determines the latter. Once you figure out the hook, you can see it played out over and over in every scene. The little subplot of Sally Draper stealing money out of Gene's money clip was pretty much a framing device for the whole episode.
As this episode demonstrated, you can change your social class with the acquisition of money, but you'll never fit in as well as the people who are born into their class. Or as Connie, the old guy that Don meets while fixing a couple of Old Fashioneds (because both men literally are a couple of old fashioneds) says, once you get inside that mansion, "It's different inside." They're both men who started off in the lower classes - some online speculation at Television Without Pity has it that Connie is Conrad Hilton - and Don once again relates a telling piece of his humble background to someone other than his wife, and both have found that life in the upper classes isn't what they thought it would be.
Roger and his new wife Jane are throwing a Kentucky Derby party at their country club and that brings everyone's anxiety about social status to the foreground. The creative team finds out that not only are they not invited to the party, which brings out their class envy and the inevitable comparing of bona fides ("I've been here 6 years longer than you," Sal retorts to Paul's whine about being excluded), they also have to work through the weekend to come up with ideas for the Bacardi account.
Jane stops by the office to flaunt her new clothes and her new status as Rogers' wife. Joan does a classic slow burn as Jane goes out of her way to treat her like a servant. Certainly, Joan must be looking at Jane and thinking about what she could have had in Roger, but from a viewer standpoint, Jane looks like a pretty tragic creature. Desperately unhappy and in over her head, she, much like Betty, drinks too much and eats too little.
We get a deeper look at Joan's own marriage as she and her rapist husband Greg prepare and host a dinner party for the Chief of Surgery at Greg's hospital. Again, class and social status hang over everything as Joan and Greg argue over who gets to sit where at the table depending upon their status and Joan quotes no less an authority on social mores than Emily Post to make her point. There are various "classes" of doctors and wives attending and the wives even take a moment in the kitchen to openly compare their status with each other. The Chief of Surgery's wife recalls with fondness the days when they had no money, like Joan and Greg. Joan gets two surprises this episode: one, that right now, Greg needs her more than she needs him and two, that he's not as good a doctor as she would have hoped and therefore, her plans of moving to Riverdale and leaving her job suddenly look a little less likely.
When the conversation inadvertently shifts to Greg's lacking skills as a surgeon, he forces his wife into the spotlight to save him. If there's one thing Joan can do, it's stand in the spotlight to divert attention to herself. Dutifully, she does so, albeit with visible unease. It's not so much that she minds putting on a show; it's that she's concerned that she has to put on a show to help her husband out. Whatever sadness and unease the scene held was partially overshadowed by the sheer incongruity of beautiful, voluptuous Joan standing up to play the accordion, an instrument that pretty much no one in present day considers sexy. Joan being Joan though, turned an instrument we all associate with Lawrence Welk polkas into the sexiest little musical number we could imagine.
Vincent Kartheiser, who plays Pete, said in a pre-season 3 promo on the AMC site that this season was going to feature way more singing and dancing. We thought at the time that he was just making a smartass crack because who would ever associate singing and dancing with Mad Men? Turns out, he wasn't joking. Last week had Peggy singing in front of her mirror and this week had no less than three singing numbers performed by Paul Kinsey, Joan, and Roger, plus a jaw-dropping dance routine performed by the ridiculous Pete and Trudy Campbell.
At Roger and Jane's party everyone's anxiety about their social standing is right under the surface. Don and Betty show up and the husbands and wives all make a beeline to them at once, eager to bask in their standing and be recognized. Pete and Trudy, because they're very at ease in this milieu ("With this set," brags Trudy to Betty, "one of my old beaux might appear!") do better than Harry Crane and his wife, who are visibly uncomfortable and by the end of the party, annoyed at being so bad at working the crowd.
Working the crowd certainly isn't a problem for the openly social climbing Campbells, as they take to the dance floor and quickly overtake it, forcing everyone else off with their energetic Charleston routine. And it is a routine. Only a childless couple would have had the time or even the inclination to rehearse their Charleston as these two so clearly did. That wasn't a spontaneous moment. We can imagine the two of them spending hours in their apartment going over it again and again to get it perfect. Pete was scanning the crowd the entire time, eager for approval.
Back at Sterling Cooper, the creative team is hard at not-work and even there the social strata are delineated. Paul went to Princeton, Smitty went to University of Michigan, and Peggy went to Miss Deaver's Secretarial School. But even Paul's relative superior standing is questioned and derided by his drug dealing college buddy who sneers that Paul was pure Joisey who only got into Princeton on a scholarship.
Meanwhile, Peggy continues her journey away from her restrictive upbringing. Last week she sought out a one night stand and this week she uttered the destined-to-be-immortal line, "I'm Peggy Olson and I want to smoke marijuana." With all the social anxiety flying around this episode, it's notable that once again, Peggy is the only one doing fine. "I'm in a really good place," she announces with satisfaction to her co-workers, and later, to her new secretary re-affirms her feelings. "I'm not scared of any of this." If last week's fling was a little unclear, it should be clear by now that Peggy is the only person on the show who knows what she wants, knows what she's doing, and is happy both with the journey and the destination. Everyone else is struggling to determine who they are and what they want except for her.
Betty has another encounter outside another ladies room with a stranger that leads to thoughts of adultery. A man placing his hand on a very pregnant woman's stomach makes for a bizarre seduction scene, but Betty adores any kind of attention, no matter how inappropriate (like flirting and holding hands with a ten year old). Since the guy apparently knows Bert Cooper and works in the governor's office, count on him making another appearance.
It would be almost irresponsible to have a discussion about class and status in America in the 1960s and not bring race into it. Because this is Mad Men, it's done in oblique ways. One of the criticisms of the show from people who, frankly, don't get it, is that it deals with all the social changes of the time but glosses over the biggest social change of all, the civil rights movement. People who make that argument are not paying attention. This is a show set in a milieu almost exclusively populated by white middle to upper-middle class characters. Black people were for the most part, in the background. That's the whole point. If you pay attention, you can see that they're slowly working their way into the foreground. The Carla we saw last night was a lot less conciliatory than the Carla we were introduced to last season. She's taking no shit at all from Gene and snaps "I'm NOT Viola!" and an irritated "We don't all know each other" to the befuddled man. If that wasn't enough, then Roger yanks it to the foreground through his shocking (by modern standards) blackface routine to the crowd at his party. Most of the crowd laughs politely, but some of them, Don and Pete, most notably, uncomfortably wince through the scene.
Roger is a jackass. He always was a jackass, but as time progresses, he's become even more of one. He's a perfect example of the type of person who's going to be left behind by the changes to come. It seems like his relationship with Don is irretrievably broken as Don tells him that people don't think he's happy; they think he's a fool. That's probably true, but even Don has a moment while watching Roger and Jane dance. It seems that Don is realizing that Roger just might be happy after all and goes out into the darkness to find his petulant upper class wife to give her a kiss.
Last year we happened to mention that we were enjoying the hell out of The Rachel Zoe Project and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the comments section about us becoming "Bravo whores" and "selling out."
By the way, we haven't yet sold out but if there are any rich TV executives out there with some extra cash laying around, we're willing to lie back and think of England if we have to. Hey, a boy's got to make his rent sometimes.
To be honest, we were a little amused by the whole over-reaction. It's a show on the Bravo network revolving around fashion. It would have been strange for us NOT to watch it.
We get it: Rachel Zoe, the most horrible human being to breath air. Responsible for the death of millions. Blahblahblah. We tried to explain then that she really wasn't the main reason to watch the show. Sure, she represents a lot about the intersection of fashion and celebrity that is not good and she doesn't particularly strike us as the type of person we would enjoy being around for more than 30 seconds, but she's hardly the supervillain people make her out to be. As reality television characters go, she doesn't rate anywhere near the top of the list when it comes to annoying or sociopathic tendencies, both of which are in abundance on reality television programs.
Besides, say what you will about her, but she is a force to be reckoned with in the fashion industry and solely responsible for a lot of what you see on the most important runway of them all, the red carpet:
So busy were we with the launch of Project Runway that we dissed our Bravo peeps by forgetting to mention that the new season of the show launched last week. With the launch of season 2 comes the return of one of our favorite reality show "characters" ever:
Brad, one of Rachel's 2 assistants. We'll keep reiterating this until you get sick of it: Rachel is not the reason to watch this show. The clothes are one reason and the supporting characters are another. Seriously, how adorable is that? Like one of those cute little dogs you carry around in your purse. Plus he's hysterically funny; one of those types that's just made for the cameras to follow around. And we LOVE his personal style.
Last season ended with a little of a Brad-induced cliffhanger.
Because Taylor, Rachel's other assistant and the one who was cast in the "bitch" role, stormed out and threatened to never come back because she hated Brad that much.
How can anyone hate that?
Whatever. The whole thing was glossed over in the season premiere last week and it was business as usual for the rag-tag band. The business being dressing various stars for the Golden Globe awards and all the drama that goes on behind the scenes. You've got to admire a woman who can call up Karl Lagerfeld and request that he alter one of his couture creations for Cameron Diaz.
Aside from the drama, there was the part of the show that makes Lorenzo weep:
The part where they just walk around various showrooms pointing at things and saying "I want that." AND GETTING THEM.
After all the various moments of eye-rolling drama, Rachel sat down with her favorite gays and watched her clients walk the red carpet for the Globes. Part of what made it so fun for us was that the looks she was frantically trying to put together (including the altered Chanel for Cameron Diaz) were all featured here by us here and here. We're sure Rachel was devastated to hear that we didn't give her high marks for all the looks at the time.
Anyway, that's it. If you're at all interested in looking at beautiful clothes and want to see the insane process that gets them on actresses' backs (a process that Uncle Nick revealed in the interview we featured last week), this is a fun hour full of eye candy. Episode 2 airs tomorrow night at 10. We'll be checking in with a post about that some time in the coming week.
In the mean time, check out this interview we did with Taylor a couple weeks back wherein she dishes the shit:
Let’s start with your background, how did you become a stylist? I started in the wardrobe department on a movie set and from there I met different costume designers and started working on commercials, and then finally, celebrity styling.
Is that how you got hired by Rachel? I basically solicited her. I told everyone in town that I wanted to work for Rachel and she was bombarded by phone calls…we have the same doctor, and they kept telling her that she had to meet me, so after many months of pursuing her, I finally got to meet her, we hit it off, and I’ve been with her ever since.
Since 2005, right? What is it like working with Rachel? Yes, that’s correct. She’s a great boss. She doesn’t micromanage things; she lets you do things on your own at your own pace. She’s amazing.
What skills do you need to be a successful stylist? There’s a bunch of them. First of all, you have to be really dedicated and organized because this is a 24-hour job. Also, having a good eye, paying attention to details, following the trends, having taste, of course, that’s a big part of being a stylist, also, always knowing what’s new, what’s out there, what’s about to break.
Watching the episodes, it seems that there’s a lot of pressure all the time and that you need to always be aggressive, on top of things…do you have to be a bitch to survive in this business? I don’t think you need to be bitchy, but you definitely need to be on top of things, always be on the ball and that can be interpreted as being a bitch.
Do you have favorite designers? Oh, yes, I love Chanel, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Balmain, Alexander Wang, so many…
There’s a lot of drama centered around you this season. Yeah, there’s some stuff that involves me, some drama, some frustrations. There’s no secret that I’ve been with Rachel for a very long time and I do want more for myself and that is definitely expressed on the show, what I want and where I want to go. I want more than just being an assistant, basically. You’ll see.
It looks like you and Brad are finally getting along now. What changed? It’s been a whole year since Season 1 and we definitely learned how to work with each other. I apologized for being so crazy and we learned how to work with each other and now I adore him.
Speaking of Brad, how come he’s the one going to all the shows and stuff while you run around like a headless chicken? I love fashion shows but if there’s work to be done I’d rather focus on that than attend the shows. We worked it out, it’s fine, he goes to the shows and I do other things. He works just as hard as I do.
You mentioned in the first episode that you despise Award shows, why is that? [Laughs] Because it’s become so intense, so much pressure, you can’t really do fashion, you have to think about mainstream America, what’s going to be received well. It’s not about taking the coolest, chicest dresses, it’s more about pleasing the masses. I’m not so into that. I understand on a professional level why that is important, all the exposure you get from an award show, but it’s so contrived, there’s nothing fun about it.
Watching the episode it looks like the economic downturn has affected the way you guys do things. Yes, definitely. The design houses have cut back on making a lot of dresses and that limits the options that we get. It's so much better when you have as many options as possible and if the designers are only producing three dresses as opposed to six and we get one out of the three, it’s really bad for us. People don’t have the budget anymore to FedEx us things, it’s a constant battle.
Having to deal with so many celebrities on a daily basis, all the fittings and all, what is the most annoying thing a celebrity can do to piss you off? [Laughs] There are lots things, but the most annoying thing is when you have done fifty fittings, you have decided on a dress, and they change their minds at the last minute for no reason at all. That’s annoying.
How about the designers? Not sending the clothes we want.
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BONUS, BITCHES! You've got to watch this hysterically funny spoof of the show:
Jesus Christ! Are we EVER going to be done with these All-Star posts?
Mychael, though he's a sweetheart, kind of illustrated perfectly why the All-Star concept is a bit of a bust, in our opinion. It's because all of the participants go into it as veterans of reality television and subsequently most of them were boring to watch on camera. You have one of two options when you're acutely aware of how these things are edited: you can either shut up and just do the work or you can run around like a jackass trying to get as much camera time as you can. Neither option makes for particularly entertaining television.
This was pretty cute, actually. We like the color and we really like the origami-like construction. The only real problem with the look is that it's not flawlessly executed.
This was a big no. Uli and Korto made dresses out of the restaurant materials that looked like real clothes; Chris and Sweet P made dresses that look like costumes. This? This just looks like a very basic dress with a lot of trash stapled to the front of it. Unfabulous.
Y'know, originally we hated this but we're coming around on it. We love the colors he chose.
And the skirt is again, interesting because of its origami folds.
The problem is with the proportions. There's too much skirt to too little top. And overall there's still an execution issue. That top's not fitted very well.
This was a really cute look.
Again, we really like the color pairing here. In fact, he managed to establish a color story with only 4 pieces. We love the little shrug and we even like the structured shoulders but it's a shame you can see the padding underneath.
And the back is kind of sexy.
