Project Runway's Most Dramatic Moments, S2, Part 1

Season 2, Bitches! Hit it!

1) Little Lamb Meltdown-Gate

It's what always happens with reality shows post-inaugural season. The participants become all too aware of the cameras and the drama becomes slightly more contrived. Gone are the days when Wendy and Kara Saun would bare their ids for the world to see, caring not for how they looked or came across. Instead, we get crocodile tears and literal "boo-hoo"ing.

Long story short: In the second episode of the new season, the designers had to literally make something out of the clothes off their backs. Andrae, due almost entirely to his inability to adjust to the insane deadlines of Project Runway, sent an unfinished dress down the runway and tried to cover for it by acting like a silent film star in a weepy melodrama.

"What were you thinking about this challenge?"

"Where to begin? The first thing said to us at the party was blah blah blah...[Insert British accent here] how far you would go for fashion...blah blah blah...and it's not an easy thing to do. I've come a long way, I've gone far to be here blah blah blah..."

"Oh dear, I'm so sorry...and the means to do it was creativity and innovation which are things that I do well, I think I'm very creative and I think I'm very innovative as well, and I was very lucky because what I had to work with was a testimony of the first or maybe the last three years of my career."


"I was bedraggled emotionally so were my clothes. I'm not supposed to be crying, Jesus!"

Jesus Christ, he actually described himself as "bedraggled." What's next? Ragamuffin? And no, little lamb. You're not supposed to be crying. We always felt that this little show was just that - a show. Tim said as much at the time too. Granted, we don't think it was entirely a put on. That would require a Best Actress Nominee level of acting talent. It seems to us that he probably was pretty emotionally raw but turned the dials up to 11 because he felt trapped and didn't know what else to do.

There were two things that raised this to the level of delicious drama instead of eye-rollingly bad drama. One, the "I'm So LA" t-shirt, which could NOT have been more apropos, and two:

You just can't buy that kind of entertainment, kittens.

2) Lingerie-Gate

Ladies and ...Ladies, we have quite the championship bout for you this evening, with two fighters ready to tear a piece off each other! In this corner, wearing a sparkly Members Only jacket, that gigantic attention-seeking designer...

SANTINO RICE!

And in this corner, wearing her patented chunky jewelry and JBF hair, that take-no-shit fashion editor who WASN'T portrayed by Meryl Streep...

NINA GARCIA!

To offer assistance to our combatants, we have ...

two terrified designers...

and three mortified models!

Honestly, do we really need to give you a rundown on this one? Is there a fan of Project Runway who DOESN'T know the particulars of this little throwdown?

If you polled PR fans to name the top 3 most entertaining moments in the history of the show, we're confident that this one would make almost everyone's list. Sure, it was as calculated as Andrae's little meltdown, but because Santino is Santino and because Nina is Nina, this was far, FAR more entertaining. All we can think re-watching this is that the producers must have been peeing their pants with joy while the whole thing unwound in front of them. Pure reality television gold.

PLUS, it allowed Nina to deliver the line that pretty much defines her entire tenure on the show:

"IT'S AESTHETICALLY NOT PLEASING!"

It was generally thought that Santino was being terribly disrespectful to her but honestly, we don't think so anymore.

Re-watching it, we can see that BOTH of them were really enjoying the back and forth on this one and both of them respected the other for their willingness to fight it out.


Even if...

...neither of them would ever admit it.

We can just picture the two of them sharing a cigarette in the post-drama glow.


[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Top Ten PR Looks of All Time: Number One

Drumroll please...



Number 1




Season 1: Episode 3 - "Commercial Appeal"
Designed by Jay McCarroll
Model: Julia Beynon

You all had this one figured out anyway. Besides, we've said in the past, many many times, that this was the number one look of all time. And it came in the third episode! Several have come close but no one has ever beaten Jay's Banana Republic dress.

The details are what make this dress - the pin tucking, the buttons in the back, the buckles on the straps, and of course, the Chrysler Building-inspired chevrons in the bodice. This was the dress that not only got the judges to sit up and notice Jay and got Jay to realize he was in it to win it, it was also the dress that got that relatively small group of people watching the show at the time to realize "Hey, this show is pretty special." We don't think we're overstating it when we say that this was the dress that launched Project Runway.

Honorable Mentions:

There was only one criterion for the Top Ten list: we both had to be in full agreement. The following looks were instances where one of us couldn't get the other to agree that it was Top Ten material. Don't get us wrong, though; we're in full agreement that these were among the best looks of all time for the show, we just couldn't agree to place them in the Top Ten.


First row: Daniel Vosovic, Andrae Gonzalo, Austin Scarlett
Second row: Jeffrey Sebelia, Rami Kashou, Nick Verreos


[Photos: Barbara Nitke/Bravotv.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]

Starting Your Week with Delicious Dish.

New York Magazine has an eye-opening article about what happens to Bravo reality show contestants after their 15 minutes are up. We were really happy to read this because it contains stuff that we'd been hearing for a while but didn't have the right to publish ourselves. Bravo doesn't come off that great here and Heidi has a real bitchquote at the end.

Some choice bits (but you really need to read the whole thing):

Jay:
“I haven’t been living anywhere for two years,” he says. “I sleep at other people’s houses. I sleep here if I’m drunk.”

“I have a fucking gazillion e-mails from all over the world from people asking, Why isn’t your stuff out there?” says Jay. “Yet financially, I have no way to get them a product because I got pushed out of a boat and into the ocean, as if, Oh, you can survive now.”

(Photo: Jessica Wynne)

Andrae:
"Today, he still sews the odd custom dress for $1,500, and he teaches too, but he makes a fair chunk of his money doing gigs that exploit his reality-show fame, like hosting events at gay bars in Pittsburgh. He knows this won’t last. “I tell everyone I’m not a star,” he says. “I’m a brown dwarf.”

Austin:
"Austin Scarlett, the young Quentin Crisp from the first season of Project Runway, says he was approached about a role on Heather Graham’s short-lived sitcom, Emily’s Reasons Why Not. Today he wonders if he should have mulled it over. “Because I don’t think you should turn down work that much,” he says. “That’s one of my continuing struggles, being considered a reality-TV, you know, star.” I ask if he’s ever done TV gigs he’s come to regret. “Yeeeeeeeees,” he says. “Battle of the Network Reality Stars.” Shortly afterward, he appeared on a reality reunion show on Bravo, too. “I felt so cheap and tawdry,” he says. “They gave me $500, and I was like, Keep the money. It was just part of my confusion, grasping for the next thing.”

Nick:
“When they asked me why I wanted to be on Project Runway,” says Nick Verreos, 40, who made the fetching Barbie dress from Season Two (it sold for $1,700 on projectrunway.com), “I said I wanted to use it as a trampoline. Because I knew I was doing fierce stuff, but nobody was noticing.”

Santino:
“No one wanted to interview Chloe,” Santino says. “I’m sure I did like 500 percent more interviews. That’s what I won.”

"I crack myself up by saying, It’s lucky that I turn things down so that Nick has stuff to do,” says Santino."

“Between Heidi and Michael Kors and Nina Garcia, the judges were like a three-headed monster,” he says. “They all basically have the same point of view. I mean, have one avant-garde person who has an art-as-fashion approach, rather than fashion-as-commerce approach.” Then, of course, he made an almost perversely beautiful collection for Fashion Week, and the judges said there wasn’t enough of him in it. “And it’s like, Really?” he asks. “Gee, that’s funny, because I made this shit!”

Laura:
"When Laura, hugely popular with fans, failed to notify the network she’d signed a contract to host a style show on MSN.com, they called and demanded an explanation. “And I said, ‘So what do you have to offer me?’ ” she says. (She’s now in talks with Bravo about doing something for its Website and iVillage.)"

UPDATE: "Is Jay McCarroll Homeless? He Sure Said So (and So Did His Publicist)." Read it here.

Andrae: Gathering Moss

A damn shame. We can understand the judges' reasoning behind the auf'ing, but it seemed to us that Andrae was finally getting the hang of this thing and realized it's about expressing yourself through your designs and not by playing to the camera. This was actually a cute dress.

Unfortunately, this was a cute dress with some issues. Namely, the fit. We can't really add anything to what the judges said on that issue. It just looks big and stiff on her and completely obliterates her natural curves. And we hate the knot in the belt.

Oh sure, it's a little costume-y, but come on, it's made out of plants. All of the designs looked costume-y to us. Even Chloe's, to a certain extent.

Could have done without all that schmutz on the bottom of the skirt though. Yes, he needed to add something to this all-moss dress, but that wasn't the place to put it.

With only some minor adjustments to the design and some more attention paid to the fit, we think this could have won it. The design is classic. Sort of like Audrey Hepburn as a wood nymph. Unfortunately, at this stage in the game, designer's are auf'd for the most minor of transgressions and someone had to go this week. He got on our nerves more often than not, but he has vision and talent. We would have loved to have seen what he could have done for Bryant Park.



[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Andrae: Now THAT'S what we're talking about.

Hello, 911? We'd like to report a robbery.

We may have given the impression that we hate Andrae. That's not it. We think he needs to pare down the bullshit and just express himself in his work, because when he does, he really demonstrates the soul of an artist. This was a unique and beautiful inspiration that yielded a unique and beautiful dress.

If we can wax a little poetic, it has a dreamy, lyrical quality to it that up to now had not been seen in any of Andrae's designs. If he could tap into that more often, he could really be a force to be reckoned with.

Minor criticisms: we could have done without the baubles and the blue fabric was just a bit too heavy in the front. Not-so-minor criticism: the fit in the bust ain't so hot.

Aside from that, this was a uniquely beautiful garment that clearly came from a place of pure inspiration. He really should have won this one.


[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Justify My Dance Recital

Here's what we find so annoying about Andrae: he can't just complete the task at hand; he has to make some sort of grandstanding statement all the time.

Which is fine, but this is a reality show competition and it's just not the place for you to be crying about past failures, making a statement on standards of beauty, or in this case, designing something completely inappropriate for competitive figure skating.

Taken on its own, it's okay, we guess. A little sloppy-looking, but okay. It might make a decent dancer's costume but the whole fetishy, Justify My Love thing he's got going on here sort of overwhelms the whole garment. It's fine to use your work to make a statement but so far, every statement he's attempted to make has been an empty one.

Tootie!

And speaking of dancer's costumes...

This is, again, a perfectly serviceable design, but it looks like something a 14 year old would wear at a dance recital. All she needs is patent leather tap shoes with bows on them, braces, and a home perm to complete the look.

The bodice is nice and the fabric she used is pretty. If she'd lost the hat and reconsidered the fringe, it would have gone a long way to dispel the stench of rented dance costume.


[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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Congratulations Daniel and Andrae!

Quickie recap: The designers not only have to design an outfit for Banana Republic, they have to design and implement a window display for a Banana Republic store. You can read Tim's take on this episode here and listen to his podcast here.

Truth be told, we don't love this outfit.

The dress itself has some nice detailing and it's well executed but we both went "Hunh?" when Nina called it "modern." We were thinking exactly the opposite. It just looked so done to us.

See, this just falls into the "pretty but plain" category for us. It looks like a basic but well done Simplicity pattern. Not to disparage home-sewers (in fact, we love checking out what some of our talented bitches-with-needles are working on), but you have to admit ladies, there are a lot of very basic designs out there for the intermediate-level sewer and this looks like one of them to us.

And it's made doubly worse by the addition of that far-too-precious jacket.

It not only looks, as Tim suggested, a little prim, it looks a little juvenile. Like a ten-year-old's party dress.

We suspect that a big part of the win was due to Rebecca really hauling ass and working it in the window. We hope you took her out for some solid food as a treat, boys.

Despite our criticisms, we don't hate the outfit. Like we said, it's well-executed. It's just kinda basic - even for that House of Basic, Banana Republic.

And besides, it once again afforded us a minor, but delicious weekly pleasure.

The "steam coming out of Santino's ears" screencap. Say what you will about the man, he is hella entertaining. There is not one emotion that he can successfully keep off his face. He puts everything right out there. Which is why, every time we get one of these screencaps, there is only one person we can think of.

We can't be the only ones who see it, can we?


[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]


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