Judging the Judges: Monique Lhuillier Fall 2008 Collection

Season 4 judge Monique Lhuillier showed her Fall 2008 collection last month and Style.com was there:

"Lhuillier doesn't do excess. Everything must be just right. Therefore, heavy embellishment—richly embroidered velvet and all-over cabochon-jeweled embroidery—came in clean silhouettes. Alternatively, the exaggerated ruffle on a gold cocktail dress meant no embellishment."

"A flapper, one with a smoldering, smoky look, served as the inspiration for Monique Lhuillier's fall collection. The clothes she wore this time around weren't an exact copy of the styles of the 1920s but they had the right spirit: fun and sexy."

As for us, we like, not love. It's a very basic and basically pretty collection of mostly red carpet-ready, drapey-draped gowns and dresses rendered in rich fall colors with the occasional interesting embellishment. We don't really like the bedazzled bits. We didn't like them when they were the hot thing and we like them even less now that they're about a season behind us. She played a bit with silhouettes and we like the gathered skirts, the lumpy (faux?) fur coat and the tweed jacket and coat with the (faux?) fur trim. It's not reinventing the wheel and it's mostly the kind of fashion that bores us generally, but it's pretty and wearable.

What do our bitches think?

[Photos: WireImage/Getty Images - Slideshow: Project RunGay]

Judging the Judges: Zac Posen Fall 2008 Collection

Darlings, enough with these previous contestants (for now). Let's get ripping on the judges! Zac Posen's Fall 2008 collection was described thusly by Style.com:

"The models wore pompoms on either side of their tight chignons, and many of the dresses were sheer enough to reveal spangled underwear and black garter belts. After-dark options edged out daywear by a wide margin, which was too bad, because the most elegant piece here was, hands down, a herringbone-tweed sheath, and it would have been great if the focus had been more of the same. That isn't to say eveningwear is a bad thing, but crinolines—which he showed under a robe à la française and a mini-parachute dress—are quite another story.

Posen cut all of the sugar and spice with great tailoring, some of it in a soft-quilted cloque that his program notes dubbed "bubble wrap." On the harder side, a Prince of Wales schoolboy suit looked signature—it was curvy and fit like a glove—but it didn't have quite the sex appeal of a plunging Le Smoking jumpsuit."

"[S]o much of this collection looked designed not for grown-up women (ones with jobs) but for living dolls."

It's that last sentence that nails it. Look, we're all for exuberance and whimsy in fashion, which too often takes itself far too seriously. But looking at this collection, one word repeats itself to us: "silly." We have no idea what got into him, but he decided to put out a collection that looks like a joke. Oh sure, some women somewhere will plunk down the cash to wear these things, but for the most part, it comes across almost ... disrespectful. Like he's daring women to go out in these ridiculous outfits.

Granted, it's not all bad. We like the colors (when they appear), and one or two pieces are nice on their own, but all that bright, shiny tackiness or overly frilly foundation garments rendered in silhouettes that make the wearers look more like items than women just left us flat.

Et vous?

[Photos: WireImage/Getty Images]

Judging the Judges: Betsey Johnson Fall 2008 Collection

Loony but lovable Betsey Johnson celebrated her 30th year in business with her Fall 2008 collection. style.com described it as so:

"The physical location of Betsey Johnson's beatnik romp was Bryant Park, but the imaginary setting was a dark and smoky joint in the Village like the Bottom Line or the Bitter End. Johnson went all out (no surprise there): Her set had bare lightbulbs and tables topped with straw-covered Chianti bottles and copies of On the Road. There were even three bongo players in striped shirts at the end of the runway smoking faux Gauloises. "I've got to have an environment that you can enter into because I get so terrified of showing clothes," Johnson admitted."

It's funny. Despite her decades-long reputation for youthful, girly clothes, Betsey Johnson only started appealing to us as a designer once we got older. Maybe it's because she's selling a mythical form of youth where everyone is thin, rebellious and sophisticated. However you dissect it, it certainly seems to be working for her. She always seems to tip her hat to the trends and then blissfully skip off to follow her own muse with each collection. This one has the usual mix of boho-punk, rocker chick, Vargas girl and beatnik influences, but even if she's another designer who's not reinventing her own wheel, the result is it's all her and like so much of her work, it's just fun.

Watch her show here:


[Photos: WireImage/Getty Images - Video: Coutorture.com]