Love Gunn

Dear Tim,

Oh, how can I express how I feel about you? You are my ultimate hero. What Superman was to me 30 years ago, you have become for me now. If they made Tim Gunn Underoos, I'd have a drawerful.

I want to be you when I grow up. You are every single thing a proto-fabulous gayboy wants to be when he gets older: respected, well-dressed, commanding, sexy, and younger-looking than his actual age. What are your secrets, O Silver Fox? Will you teach this rapidly aging no-longer-a-boy before it's too late and I slide into the inevitable bronzer, botox and inappropriate spandex hell awaiting all of us?

I want your bearing. I want to stand and sit ramrod straight, with posture so perfect that it could slice atoms and puncture upholstery. I want to have the ability to stand with my hands on my hips and my head tilted back as if I were on the prow of a ship and, against all reason, make it look commanding and dignified instead of ridiculous.

I want to talk like you. I want to be able to measure my words carefully and diplomatically while broadcasting every single thing I'm thinking on my face. I want your vocabulary. I want to use "celadon" when others would say "Light green;" "pomegranate" when others would say "purple;" "caucus" when others would say "have a little talk;" and "chacun à son goût" when others would say "What the hell were the judges thinking?"

I want to have anything I wear just naturally look good on me, from a classic black suit and tie, to a sports coat and jeans, to a hardhat and neon yellow plastic vest. I want to age beautifully, with the bearing and commanding presence that experience brings, coupled with a genuine warmth and sense of fun that experience can bring if you're smart about it. And flawless skin.

Please Tim, let me be your sidekick. You can be the Obi-Wan to my Luke; the Fraulein Maria to my Liesl; the Bruce to my Dick. Think what we can do for each other! You can teach me the ancient arts of being fabulous and I can teach you to loosen up and let your inner bitch shine. Oh, the fun we'll have!

We'll hold hands and skip through the Cloisters, shouting out "Shatangi!" to passersby and collapsing into each other with laughter. We'll go to Banana Republic, take thousands of dollars worth of clothes into the dressing rooms and after twenty minutes, loudly exclaim "Wow! This rash is really spreading! How about you, Honey?"

When someone comes up to us on the street and asks 'What happened to Andrae?" for the 300th time that day, you'll calmly say "I killed him and dumped the body in the East River. They'll never be able to pin it on me." Then briskly walk away. We'll sneak into the Macy's P.A. booth so you can loudly declare "Designers, you have 15 minutes. Please shove anything you're holding down your pants and head for the nearest exit."

The city will be our oyster and all who see us reveling in our happiness will feel a brief moment of happiness themselves, quickly followed by the wistfulness that comes when they realize they could never be like us.

At night, we'll put on silk dressing gowns and light candles. You'll open the ancient books and teach me the arts. It'll all be very Memoirs of a Geisha except with better shoes. We'll discuss skincare, the importance of the arched eyebrow, the perfect haircut, how to destroy confidence with a sigh followed by a long silence, and other such weighty matters. I will follow my studies dutifully and never use my powers except to serve the common good and ensure fabulosity for all.

So listen, think about it. I'm cute and funny and I think I could make you happy, Baby. Just say the word. You know where to find me.

Oh, and uh ... don't tell my better half I said any of this.

Love,
PRGayboy#1

The Odd Couple

We wish we had more to say about Uli, but she's always in the background, keeping the drama to a minimum and working like a German. She's repetitive in the same way Laura is, but what she does, she always does well. This dress was beautiful if a little lampshade-y.

YES! Jubilee Jumbles is back, y'all! Last week's detour into taste has been hastily readjusted back into ticky-tackery. Judging by the apron, this is meant to be worn by the cook at Camp Jubilee Jumbles. We're starting to think Camp Ju-Ju is where you send little gay boys to try and turn them straight. The counselors probably all walk around in crotchless panties.

Fashion! What a feeling!

GLUE-SNIFFING BIKER CHICK MODELS!!!!

Awesome!

"*sssnnnnnnffffff!*

Whoa. I look gorgeous, Dude."

The Desperate Model Shimmy!

"This dress is tacky and my designer thinks I look like a hooker and the judges have been frowning at him lately and I'm working the shit out of this thing because I don't want to be barefoot in a black slip standing next to Heidi tomorrow morning!"

"Boop Boop Be Doo!"

Laura: Delicate Hothouse Flower.

As we all know, Laura's a Southern girl at heart, and like all Southern girls, she is at all times the picture of womanly grace and charm.

Or not.

Laura honey, you really brought the bitchery this week.

Ragging on your co-designers' styling choices...

Fucking with your co-designer's heads and discreetly smiling at their misfortune ...

Not to mention, getting downright thuggish. Yow. That's not a face we want to run into in a dark alley. Talk about wanting to cut a bitch.

Sweetie, what is it? Miss your kids? Competition getting a little too red hot? Sick and tired of all the prima donnas? Pissed that you wore that equestrian outfit twice for no good reason? What? What is it that set you off this week?

Ah. Of course.

You've been sleeping on IKEA sheets for the last 3 weeks. We completely understand. We'd be breathing fire too.

Still, just two little words of advice, sugar:

Titty tape.

Jeffrey: Angry Little Peanut.

Here's the thing about Jeffrey:

We don't like him all that much.

Not in the "love to hate him" manner that is the stock in trade of all reality shows, but more in the manner of "you're boring and one-note and full of yourself" that is the stock in trade of, well...reality. Say what you will about Santino or Wendy Pepper, but they were endlessly entertaining in the ways that their insecurities and paranoia played themselves out, both in their work and in their interactions with the other designers. Jeffrey, on the other hand, is that guy you went to high school with who got beat up a lot because he was still under 5 feet by Junior year, so he went all "hardcore," which meant of course, that he went around constantly describing himself as "hardcore" even though he never really explained what it meant and we were all left to assume that it had a lot do with wearing chains and spikes and a lot of black and angrily writing on your jeans with a Bic pen.

Dude, don't you get tired of bragging to the cameraman that you're the obvious winner - and then you don't win? Every week! You'd think by week 4, you'd be a little more "I think my stuff's good, but I don't know about these judges..." instead of "OH YEAH! IN! THE! BAG!!!"

We'll say this: most of his garments are interesting and do indeed demonstrate his self-proclaimed "mad skillZ." We just think that, aesthetically speaking, his designs are limited in scope and worse than that, somewhat ... we want to say "puerile" but that's not it; not quite.

It's just that "angry teenager" is a really limiting aesthetic, bordering on silly when it's coming from a 36-year-old man.

Anyway, the dress:

It IS beautiful, and we do love it, but we're not as convinced as so many others (Jeffrey foremost) that he should have won for it. Yes, you could move in the dress - and every time you did, you left behind a permanent crinkle. Look at the gathering in the waist in the top pic. Looks pretty messy to us. There's nothing wrong with making a conceptual piece, most of the designers did just that, but both Jeffrey and the judges talked this dress up like it was off-the-rack wearable and it was anything but.

Then there's the belt. We like the idea of a trompe l'oeil belt, just not this trompe l'oeil belt. It's too crude and messy-looking. It's, if we can be excused for using a very over-used word, "costumey." In fact, we think it could have been a stunning dress had he not painted it at all.

To be fair, we do sympathize with him that his work gets little consideration from the judges week in and week out. It's not to our tastes - or apparently theirs - but it's usually well executed and makes the attempt to be interesting. We're not his biggest fans, but we would like to see him win one. We even wouldn't mind seeing him in the final 4.

Now sit up straight and stop pouting, cranky hobbit.

Kayne and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Princess Pinking Shears really fell apart this week, didn't she?

There, there, little Kaynebow.

Hey, you know what? That color looks really good on you. Yes, we know you love color because you're from the South, but you haven't always wielded color wisely when dressing yourself. Pink and orange are not good colors for someone who's...well, pink and orange.

You should lose the choker, though.



Anyway...HONEY. That DRESS.

Oh, we can't even rip it that much. Laura did a better job than we ever could, anyway. So did you, for that matter. It's just SUCH an explosion of bad taste, y'know?

Still, there's something a little "Academy Awards '72" about it. It almost/sorta could have worked with different color choices.

"Tim Gunn said mean things about my dress!"

Aw, this warmed our cold, bitchy hearts. We've all been there, Kaynebow. Just remember what they taught us in the handbook: "I am FIERCE and FABULOUS and I NEVER LET THEM SEE ME CRY!" Although we have to admit, if you had collapsed into big wracking, drag queen sobs, it's quite possible we would have spontaneously combusted from pure entertainment overload. Kudos to you for holding it together, girl. On-camera, anyway.

But then you did something you really, really shouldn't have.

You got into it with Bad Mommy.

Sweetie, she eats her young. Now, far be it from us to cast aspersions on the smack-talking abilities of our Oklahoma sisters, but Laura is definitely operating on a different sphere of smack. Even we would approach her warily. Like a caged tiger. In a beaded cocktail dress.

Jeez, there's a lot of junk food on that table. No wonder everyone was so cranky this week.

In the end, you prevailed, due in no small part to your orange-hued fairy godmother, Duchess Kors herself, stepping in and defending you. And all that stress you'd been holding in came out in one tiny explosion of drama-queeninity:

Oh, Mary. Get a hold of yourself, your slip is showing.
They're not taking her out back and shooting her, for God's sake.

And hey, look on the bright side.

At least you figured out a way to shut her up.