Ripping the Collections: Carol-Hannah - Part 2

The turkey has settled and Black Friday is a mere memory, so it's time to get back to dress ripping.

The proportions are off, unless she was trying to make the model look 10 months pregnant. We do like that frippery on the bodice, though. She just needed to make it a bit more fitted.

We don't know if it was Christopher's influence as her 13th-look helper, but she managed to bring the editorial eye to this look. It's got all of CH's trademarks but for once, she hasn't gone overboard on any of them. Beautifully done.

DULL. When the only thing of interest is the big Carrie Bradshaw circa 2002 fabric flower, then you need to step back and ask yourself if there's a place for this look in your Bryant Park collection.

We realize that there's a place in fashion for those high-waisted shorts and we've even trained our eye to see how they could work under the right circumstances. These are not the right circumstances. The proportions are really weird here and there's nothing at all flattering or pretty about this Little Blue Riding Hood look.

We like the idea behind this look. We just don't like the outcome. Again, it's a matter of proportion and knowing when to edit. Half of that effect, starting about a foot lower, would have made a huge difference.

We're not fans of that trademarked exposed and deconstructed seams thing that she does, but even if we were, we'd recognize that - yes, we're going to say it again - a little editing would have gone a long way here.

The girl clearly has a strong point of view and a range of techniques and tricks in her arsenal, but at the risk of repeating ourselves (too late), she needs to develop an eye that lets her know where the line is for going too far. She also needs to step away from the design every once in a while and consider the woman underneath who she envisions wearing it. As it is, there's a lot of concept and technique here, but no real understanding of a potential client base.

Additional pics:

[firstVIEW.com]


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Glee S1E11: Hairography

"I'm gonna say this as nice as I can. But you look like a sad clown hooker."

We are still in the throes of turkey and carb overload-induced coma while simultaneously attempting to gear ourselves up for what we hope is a mere toe-dip into Black Friday madness, and since this was a pretty disjointed episode that recycled a lot of the same old conflicts, we're only up for bullet points and videos. We figure that's all you're up for too. Ready? Go.

- Except there are no videos. Boo to Fox, who apparently is protecting its property vigorously. It gets harder and harder to find decent embeddable performance clips from each episode, and this week we couldn't find any at all, unfortunately.

- It says something about the quality of the episode that we're not particularly upset about Bullet Point # 1. There just weren't any kickass musical numbers. Sure, "Papa Don't Preach" was cute (and Quinn's best vocal performance yet) and so was "True Colors," if only for the long-overdue Tina solo. Her voice was perfectly suited for the song. That Hair + Beyonce mashup was funny - especially the deaf kids' reaction to it - but it's not like we were humming it the next day, which was kind of the point, we guess.

- But what really kind of made us uncomfortable was the "Imagine" number. They were clearly going for the lump-in-the-throat effect (and to be fair, they got it from us, a little bit), but we couldn't help thinking how rude it was for the New Directions kids to jump in uninvited. And it struck us as a little bit of a copout on the creators' part. If you wanted us to tear up over the deaf choir, then have the bravery to give them the spotlight on their own.

- "It's like cool epilepsy." lines like this, along with characters like the pick-pocketing Aphasia, are what keep the show from skirting too far into Hallmark Channel sweetness. The occasional political incorrectness of the show is, for us, a selling point and to its credit, it's applied equally to all the characters, from the pregnant head of the chastity club to the scheming bitchy queen, plotting to trick his unrequited love into loving him.

- Having said that, there's no denying that the show definitely has a problem with its female characters. Terri, her sister Kendra, Quinn, Sue Sylvester, Rachel - they're all either batshit crazy or scheming bitches, usually both. It's to the credit of Jane Lynch and Jessalyn Gilsig that they can find the comedy in their characters, but it's episodes like this one that illustrate just how pervasive it is on the show.

- And speaking scheming queens, we have to give it up for Kurt, who got some of the best lines of the night.

"You need something to distract from your horrible personality. Most of the time, I can't stand to be in the same room as you."

"Rachel manages to dress like a grandmother and a toddler at the same time."

"It makes it hard to appreciate your talent because I wanna shove a sock in your throat."

"Makeovers are like crack to me."

It could be argued that Kurt's character is a cliche and a tragic one at that, but like we said, it's a little refreshing that the gay character can be as politically incorrect as any of the other ones and they've built up enough goodwill by showing us various sides of the character in previous episodes, so we don't mind it at all.

- In case it wasn't obvious, this was clearly not our favorite episode of the season. All the plotlines feel like well-trod ground at this point. Don't get us wrong, it's always an hour bound to get you to laugh at least once and enjoy at least one musical number, but this one was a bit of a letdown.

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V S1E04: It's Only the Beginning

"We landed a punch."

Kittens, we couldn't wait to see last night's episode. Not because we were anxious to see what happened next; we already knew what happened next thanks to a screener sent to us by those lovely folks at Warner Brothers. The reason we couldn't wait is because the screener was a rough cut sans special effects (with some unintentionally hilarious results) and we were eager to see what the engine room and the V armada looked like. Well, now we know. Kinda cool that the Vs fly in V formation.

It's all coming together a little bit more. We can't say we know exactly what the Vs are planning, but they clearly built their plan banking on human fears and paranoia. You have to remember that this isn't a strict remake of the original V so it's not a foregone conclusion that they want to eat us. It looks to us like whatever the plan is, it's a bit more complicated than that.

So what do we know? We know that they're sucking humans further and further into relying on them to "save" them, by opening up "medical centers" where they can magically treat a host of ailments that we backwards humans haven't conquered. We know that they've been secretly experimenting on humans and that they plan on introducing a drug they call R6 into a common flu vaccine. We know that Valerie is pregnant with a little V hybrid and that Chad is dying (or was fooled into thinking he is). We know that Georgie is a loose cannon and a pain in the ass and we know that we won't shed a tear when he gets killed. We also know that Tyler is an idiot and we also won't shed a tear whenever he finds out how he's been used by the Vs. Whatever else Tyler is, he's "The One" and we don't think Lisa means her future husband when she calls him that. We know that "The Bliss" entails Anna acting out her own little Chanel No. 5 commercial for the V population, which makes us think she's as much a religious figure as she is a political one to her people - and that makes her far more dangerous and powerful than we originally thought. We know that Father Jack really is Action Priest and we know that Erica, for all her other good points, is kind of a lousy mother. We also know that there are cute gay Vs.

Okay, maybe that last one was just us. But did anyone else get a "I wish I could quit you" vibe from Fifth Columnist Joshua and his little compatriot, who sacrificed himself for the good of the movement? There were an awful lot of longing glances between them, wouldn't you say?

Thankfully, the creators realized that they needed to step up their game and they did so with this episode. We still see problems (and apparently so do they, hence, the hiatus): Erica needs work, the show needs to rethink its style, and the dialogue is sometimes painfully clunky, but the tension level rose dramatically with several major plot advancements and some juicy cliffhangers. How long is Ryan going to let Valerie think she's carrying a normal baby? Now that Erica knows her idiot son is in tight with the Vs, what will she do about it? Will Father Jack live? Of course he will, but now the Vs know who he is and that can't be good. Will Chad become a full-on V supporter after they save his life? What is R6? And what happens when that V armada shows up in our solar system? And the one that they're going to drag out as long as they can: Who is John May?

We know this: we can't wait for the show's return in March.

[Photo Credit: ABC TV]

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Labels: V Season 1, V Series

Ripping the Collections: Carol-Hannah - Part 1

Paging Dr. Whitfield.

Carol Hannah deserves major props for her collection, not because it was flawless (it wasn't), but because it stood out as having a unique and strong point of view in a finale that was top-heavy with the combined aesthetic of IrinAlthea. The girl likes her frippery and there's nothing at all wrong with that. The thing with frippery is, you gotta know when to stop.

Let's start the show.

It's a great opening dress. Love the use of color and the interesting draping. We're not entirely sold on the silhouette on the lower half, though. It's a tough one to pull off. Still, it's eye-catching and beautiful in its own way.

Of course, everyone's going to remember this dress because it was so obviously ripped off and put on the back of Carrie Underwood for the AMAs. CH had this to say to us about that:

"My first thought was "SHORTS??!!" I don't know what to say about this. I'm generally one to give the benefit of the doubt, but there's an awful lot of shady vibes coming from this given the timing, etc. It's one thing to be copied (potentially)...but a whole other... issue when copied poorly. I would absolutely LOVE to talk to her stylist."

Wow, do we ever hate the styling here. It's so distracting that it kind of ruins the look. We like the skirt but there's something off about the proportions. That top simply doesn't go with it, to our eyes.

COLOR! YAY! Not the most sophisticated hue, but we'll take it. Unfortunately, this top illustrates what we mean about knowing when to stop.Way too many twists there, making it look heavy and a little unflattering.

Kind of pretty, but a majorly unflattering silhouette. Could have used some form of embellishment because it's borderline boring.

Another illustration of her need to edit. Each of the design elements on this dress are interesting, but there are too many for one dress. We like what she did with the skirt; she just shouldn't have done so much of it. And the straps and neckline treatment look like she couldn't make up her mind about what she wanted the dress to be. Still, it's very eye-catching.

No complaints here. We LOVED this dress. Totally gorgeous. Love the way the sort of floral treatment continues up into the strap and really love the faded quality of the fabric. We would have loved to have seen this in a color, though.

When we first saw this we thought, "Really? You're gonna go there?" It's simply not an original look in any way and worse, it's totally incongruous to the rest of her collection. It's like she wandered in from a different show.

[Photos: firstVIEW.com - Video: YouTube/myLifetime]


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