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After each episode of Project Runway's seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters gather to dish about the show. This week, the challenge was to design a red-carpet look for Heidi Klum. Emilio Sosa and Anthony Williams were the winners; Jonathan Peters was sent home.
June Thomas: Jessica, may I have your attention? This week's show had so much drama, it should win a Tony. Tim Gunn gave out more bad news than George Clooney did in Up in the Air.
What did you think of Maya's decision to withdraw—smart self-knowledge or, as Emilio so charmingly put it, is she just a quitter? I tend to think it's a bit of both. Good for her for realizing that she wasn't ready, but I hope she knows that she probably won't get another chance in the spotlight. I wish she'd done what one of the other designers suggested and created a crazy, visionary outfit that—and he didn't say this—would get her kicked off. Would it have been better to go down in a blaze of glory than to pack up her scissors and walk away quietly?
Jessica Grose: June! I was actually a tad disappointed at the lack of histrionics in Maya's exit. As a longtime watcher of reality TV, I expected a complete mental breakdown, a death in the family, or at least a mild illness to be behind her early departure. Instead, we just have her stone-faced with Tim, saying that her "vision" was not clear enough for her to proceed. Though there were no fireworks, I did believe her story. I think she made the right decision. And if Season 1 winner Jay McCarroll, who is now on Celebrity Fit Club, is any indication, the Project Runaway spotlight is no great shakes.
And anyway, Maya's leaving allowed Anthony to come back! What did you think about his return?
June: Well, it suits the show, since he brings much-needed sound bites in his ample wake. I wasn't knocked out by his garment—it felt pretty blahk-and-white to me—but that makes two "design for Heidi" challenges that he has won. (I know, his dress will be worn by Jessica Alba. That's a bigger deal than being worn by Heidi Klum, right?) Emilio works my last nerve—he clearly didn't get the modesty gene—but I have to admit that his dress was, as Michael Kors put it, impeccable. Boring enough to keep the focus on the person wearing it and beautifully made. It made me wonder why we don't see more dresses just like it on red carpets.
Jessica: I felt the same way about Anthony's dress! Maybe it looked fantastic in person, but the black and white looked blah to me on television. Agreed on Emilio's look, as well—it really fit his model perfectly. Jonathan's auf'ing was well-deserved. His dress looked like a Philip Lim after it had been torn apart and defaced by monkeys. After last week's "dirty tablecloth" fabric, it was clearly his time.
June: Defaced by monkeys or defecated on by monkeys? I was just relieved that he listened to Heidi's feedback about his precious cutwork technique. She said it made her think of curtains; I was reminded of my grandma's sofa. Either way, it was not going to work.
I will miss Jonathan's supremely expressive hair. Today he started with a big Hawaiian wave, but by the end of the show it was more like a question mark.
What do you think is going to happen to Anthony next? Mila has deserved an auf'ing for two consecutive weeks, but she's been kept around for affirmative-action reasons. I am now feeling like he's going to outlast her.
Jessica: Oh, lord, I hope that Anthony outlasts Mila! I am having trouble looking at her these days, her sour puss darkening my TV screen. Her dress this week was boring, and the fit was tacky. As Nina said, "It looked like something the Housewives of New Jersey would wear." But the fit apparently wasn't as bad as Seth Aaron's dress, which made Heidi sad. She said, "The cleavage isn't done in a way that looks glorious." And we know that one should always make Heidi's cleavage look glorious. To not do so is a crime against fashion and nature.
June: There were a lot of crimes against bangin' bodies this week. Michael Kors was more than a tad ethnocentric when he declared that no woman wants her butt to look big, but no woman wants to look like she's wearing Elizabethan pantaloons. Jay made the weird hip extenders, and he needed a lesson in how bras and breasts interface from Heidi. It just seemed weird that having now been around her for 11 weeks, none of the designers made anything that showed off Heidi's best assets—her titsets—all that well.
Jessica: I can forgive Seth Aaron for his gown, since he was told after he had already started making it that his model had booked a DKNY campaign and couldn't be there the day of the runway show. I liked his garment—a simple black dress with punk details—as it was coming down the runway, but when the models were standing there for judging, I thought it made his model look wide. This new model had a different body type, and since his fit has been so good in other weeks, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was thrown by the loss of his original model.
What did you think of guest judge Jessica Alba?
June: Ooh, good point on Seth Aaron. His dress didn't look good, and fit and styling has always been his long suit. The late substitution explains the lack of pop: He made it work, but it was never going to look spectacular on such a different body type. (It makes me smile a little to suggest that Cerri is anything but skin and bones, but it's all relative, I guess.)
I kind of fell in love with Jessica Alba. I didn't quite get why she got to do a silhouette-behind-the-screen entrance-—I can't remember any other guest judges getting an introduction more elaborate than a basic "sitting in the chair next to the picky Colombian lady is ..."—but she seemed both kind and discriminating. I love it when beautiful people act like there's any way they might ever get a little heavy around the hips or could go out for dinner with their husbands.
Where do you stand on the one-day challenge question? As much as I hate to agree with whiney contestants, it does seem ridiculous to give them so little time for a red-carpet challenge. What's the big hurry? Did Parsons need its classroom back or something?
Jessica: I'll bet because the challenge was so simple—design a red-carpet gown—not to mention rehashed (how many times have they designed for Heidi at this point?), the producers felt they needed to throw in the extra twist of time constraint to keep it marginally interesting. I, too, liked Jessica Alba's down-to-earth attitude, though I usually prefer a bit more sass in my guest judges. (Posh was the be-all, end-all of guest judges.)
So, what do you think is going down next week? They really are getting down to the wire. Though I hate to admit it, I think Mila's going to stick around. I'm calling a Mila, Emilio, Jay, Seth Aaron final four. If it's not a gown-based challenge, our sweet Anthony may not be long for this competition.
June: It's like choosing between prunes and chitterlings—except I love prunes, and although I've never had chitterlings, I'm a big offal eater. Neither Anthony nor Mila is going to win the competition, so I wish they'd just let them down gently instead of putting them both through another 28-hour stress fest. Plus, the late challenges are usually boring—big glamorous gowns instead of "make something fierce out of human hair, pig viscera, and a tartan fleece blanket."
Jessica: Maybe we can suggest a prunes and chitterlings challenge for next season. Or lemons and pigs' feet? Make it work, people!
Previous chats: Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Postscript: Jessica and June discovered Maya Luz's Web site late last night. They've developed a new theory behind her departure.
Jessica: Maya is hawking these hideous S&M-themed “Ball and Chain” purses on her Web site.
June: Purses? WTF?
Jessica: Even worse: she describes her aesthetic as "Fashism.” You have to read the mission statement.
June: Are you sure it's not an April Fool's thing? Racial supremacy puns are always such a good idea for foolin'.
Jessica: This is what Maya
says about “Fashism” in her Web site bio:
After a recent trip to Los Angeles, Maya
created quite a buzz in the streets and boutiques of Rodeo Drive with her ‘Ball
and Chain’ evening bag, which epitomize her most recent collection: Fashism,
inspired by the fashion victim, and the manipulation of beauty. Plucking,
tweezing, slicing and cutting have become the conceptual springboard from which
Maya has created a unique style that reflects her personal take on the prevalent
attitudes surrounding the beauty standard.
June: OMFG, she's a
fetishist. I'm sure she'll go far. The handbags are heinous, but those photos
are kind of hot in an “I need to seek therapy” kind of way. The sad thing is
that she never made Heidi a top that was essentially a crepe bandage with some
holes in it. I bet Heids would've loved it.
Jessica : It's not really that surprising that Maya
has an S&M dark side. That precision bob she sports...
June: It's not. Everything falls into place now.
Jessica: Maybe she left Project Runway because she was missing
her dungeon.
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After each episode of Project Runway's seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters gather to dish about the show. This week, the designers had to design their own textiles and then create original looks using those textiles. Emilio Sosa was the winner; Anthony Williams was sent home.
David Plotz: Those PR producers certainly know how to suck the joy out of the show, killing off Amy and Anthony in consecutive weeks. Anthony's Southern Queen act had grown on me, and though he certainly wasn't getting anywhere near Bryant Park with his closetful of cocktail dresses, I don't see why we have to endure another week of doleful Jonathan or Mila the Underminer instead of his joyous self.
I loved this challenge, which did a nearly perfect job in separating the four excellent remaining designers from the three crummy ones. Maya, Seth Aaron, Jay, and horrid Emilio all designed spectacular prints and, except for Jay, extremely interesting outfits. Any one of the three finalists could have won. It is a testament to Emilio's skill that his dress overcame the wretched egomania of his autographed print. But I would have given the crown to Maya, whose dress was, as one of the judges said, like electricity. It was a summer lightning storm in a dress.
Jessica Grose: David, I, too, miss the Magical Elves, the production team they had for PR when it was on Bravo. It was never more apparent than during the first scene with guest judge Vivienne Tam, when they had this one awful voice-over from her shilling for Hewlett Packard and then a harsh cut back to her smiling idiotically.
Hanna Rosin: The HP shilling was OUT OF CONTROL this time. I thought maybe Tim Gunn was going to have HP tattooed on his eyelids by the end.
D: The product placement has gotten so out of hand that I am actually going to tout rival products, just to punish Lifetime. I love the way they designed those dresses on their amazing iPads, powered by AMD chips, and I thought that the Maybelline lipstick worn by Emilio's model was stunning!
H: I actually want to praise the editing of this particular episode. They did a good job of planting confusing hints about who was going to get kicked off, thus creating a little suspense. When we saw Seth Aaron call his (surprisingly normal-looking) family, I was suddenly worried about him. And then Jonathan was sweating and panicky throughout, while Emilio was getting all that bad feedback. I really wasn’t sure whom the gun was pointing at throughout.
D: The Seth Aaron phone call home was a neat bait-and-switch, but I knew it was going nowhere when they made it clear that it was his birthday, and thus deserving of a special phone call, and when Seth Aaron said something to the effect that he would drown his own children in Garnier Fructis conditioner if they interfered with him winning the show.
J: Back to the fashion: I also loved Maya's design, particularly the detailing at the neck. And while Seth Aaron's design was not to my taste, it was incredibly well-made and had a strong point of view.
H: Oh come on, Jess, I saw you sporting a yellow tie just the other day.
D: What did you guys think of Tim's rather cruel takedown of Emilio's print, especially his insinuation that it encoded Seth Aaron's initials? It was the rare moment when Tim looked like a jerk. For all his viciousness, Emilio didn't deserve the derision.
H: I thought the reaction to Emilio's dress was quite interesting. The dress itself was a great juxtaposition of graffiti and vintage cut. But I don't think it's just the garment that they were reacting to. I think they suddenly saw Emilio as a professional who knew how to market himself. Like suddenly they had a vision of ESOSA ripoff handbags being sold on 47th Street 10 years down the road
J: I completely agree that darling Anthony should NOT have gone home. Nina said Jonathan’s outfit looked like a "dirty tablecloth"!
D: Nina's reaction to Jonathan's dress was so striking because it was the only genuine emotion I think we have ever seen from her. You get the sense that Michael Kors and Heidi could be hacked to pieces in front of her and she would merely sigh. But she seemed genuinely heartsick at the fashion crime committed by Jonathan.
H: Let's just re-create the dialogue, because it was so painful and dada:
Nina: "I feel sad"
Jonathan: "Is sad not an emotion?"
J: I liked the 1950s horror movie tableau Michael Kors painted in reference to Jonathan’s disaster: "Your husband helps you back into your straight jacket."
H: Mila has gotten strangely lazy and self-satisfied, but now I bet she is starting to panic. I dread the next episode, because she was already in high evil mode this episode. Next week she will be stealing people's scissors.
D: Which one of the top four won't get to Bryant Park? Seth Aaron is a mortal lock. I think Maya will sneak in too, because they will want to keep a woman. Then it comes down to Emilio versus Jay, and that's tough. I suspect Emilio gets that third spot.
J: I choose Jay over Emilio for Bryant Park—Jay never completely misses, but remember Emilio's pink bikini/washer monstrosity?
H: I bet they let all four of them go.
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After each episode of Project Runway’s seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters will gather to dish about the show. This week, the first part of the challenge was to create a high-end, signature look in teams of two inspired by 10 iconic outfits at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. The second part of the challenge was to create a mass-market look for less inspired by another team’s signature look. Mila Hermanovski was the winner. Ping Wu was sent home.
Hanna Rosin: I have to say, I am a total sucker for team challenges. They are bad for the fashion but excellent for tension and drama. The looks—with one exception —were pretty forgettable. And that second challenge was kind of pointless and messy. But this episode produced some of the best lines of the season so far: "I'm just trying to rein in the crazy" (Jesse on Ping) and "We're designing for the vice president of McDonald's” (Anthony).
David Plotz: I totally disagree with you, Hanna. We've seen exactly this episode of P.R. a dozen times before. There's the team leader whose ego is too big. The team leader whose subordinate is relentlessly, systematically undermining her. There's the team where one person can't sew. Oh, and then there's the "surprise" second challenge, which is supposed to come as a shock to everyone but is just as formulaic. If we wanted to see how reality teamwork is supposed to work, we should have tuned into the season premiere of America's Best Dance Crew over on MTV. I caught a few minutes of it, and enjoyed the team spirit—and the fashion—a lot more than I enjoyed tonight's P.R. episode.
H.R.: Well, we've also seen Nina Garcia do her little wave 100 times, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. And we've never seen the team challenge where the lady named after a tabletop game falls apart at the hands of Thurston Howell. Also, weren't you touched by Seth? What a gentleman not to sell out Anthony, when it was clear he had nothing to do with those looks. Makes me think he gets high a lot and preserves a permanent mellow.
Jessica Grose: I am somewhere in the middle between Hanna and David—I thought the episode was more sparky than the premiere but less interesting than last week's burlap-sack challenge. I knew it was going be a magnificent disaster when Ping said into the camera, with a straight face, "I am very good at giving clear instructions." However, I wish they had made more use of the Met, which has so many better sources of inspiration. It's a frickin’ art museum! I don't know why they're being painfully literal this season—make a dress out of a burlap sack! Design clothes that are inspired by ... other clothes! I wasn't even very impressed with the winners—but more on that later. What did you think about the rest of the clothes?
D.P.: Maybe it's how everything was filmed, but I thought this was an indistinct, blah bunch of outfits without a surprise in the bunch. (But let me just take a quick bow. After Episode 1, I predicted Ping's ejection in Episode 3.) And you're right, Hanna. Though I continue to wish Anthony back to the dinner theater he has escaped from, his McDonald's line was one of the funniest moments in Project Runway history.
Mila's victory was deserved, don't you think? She's a festering, vicious, open sore of a person, but I sympathize with her. I'm turning 40 this weekend, and seeing her, at 40, looking as if she's a billion years older than the young hottie designers (Maya, Amy, annoying Janeane) really makes me root for her. And she's a hell of a designer. I love the way she always uses a flash of color to line the inside of her pieces.
J.G.: I have to disagree with you, David—strongly! I hated Mila's look. I thought it was reminiscent of a German street sign, and it reminded me of a dress that Kara Janx made in season 2 of P.R. that was inspired by “no trespassing” tape. Mila and Jonathan’s look for less made their model look like a pregnant teenage hooker.
H.R.: I understand the appeal of Mila's jacket, "sportswear-inspired," etc. But it was not a museum piece. And she is such a consummate underminer. I'm waiting for the day she has her Wintour-inspired fit.
I preferred Maya's skyscraper on the shoulders, and their second look was quite nice. In general, I thought this episode was heavy on jargon, maybe to make up for any instinctively pleasing looks—"signature," "multifunctional," "hard and soft," "luxury and fashion-forward." Also, I think the money threw them off—they had $500 to create their signature look. Designing on the cheap seems to give them a sense of urgency and freedom. This time they were weighed down.
D.P.: That sinuous, eel-like shoulder of Maya and Jay's dress was a highlight for me, too. So was Amy and Jesus' jigsaw puzzle dress and Mila's jacket. Everything else left me unimpressed. And a shocking number of looks gave the models big asses.
J.G.: I was really bowled over—as Nina Garcia was—by Maya and Jay's look for less. I thought the pleating on the bodice was miraculous.
D.P.: Before we go, I wanted to mention a new deplorable trend: Talking models. The emergence of Models of the Runway is really messing up P.R., since the girls now seem to feel they are integral to the show, not just decoration. Last week they were the clients. This week, Ping's model sassed. Next week it will probably be Freaky Friday, with models and designers changing jobs.
H.R.: I have a different pet peeve that's been bugging me all season: the endless hugs. It used to be they hugged each other only when someone got kicked out. Now they've lowered the hug bar. They hug all the freaking time. I don't know whether it's gay Anthony; or whimpering, needy Janeane; or stoner Seth. But they are always hugging. Is this increasingly true on all reality shows, and I just never noticed?
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After each episode of Project Runway’s seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters will gather to dish about the show.
June Thomas: The first week of Project Runway is always a bit of a blur. The producers have to introduce 16 designers—and get them down the runway. That doesn't leave a lot of room to signal who's the kook, who's the no-hoper, and who's the bitch. But this episode was particularly turbo-charged, and it was great.
There was a lot less of the manufactured suspense that we're used to having in the announcement phase. Instead of a lot of shots of Heidi looking sadistic and the contestants looking nervous, Heidi just announced the winner (congratulations, Emilio Sosa), and a minute later, it was “auf Wiedersehen, Christiane King.”
Hanna Rosin: I have to say, I could have used a little more tension. As a challenge, "make a dress that reflects your design aesthetic" was a little flat, the equivalent of my editor telling me, "Write something." It's as if, after the disaster of last season, they have to remind us of the original formula, "make it work" and all.
That said, they did wring some drama out of Janeane Marie Ceccanti and Seth Aaron Henderson. She is like a walking Abilify commercial, and you can't imagine her making it through the season. Her outfit was also utterly forgettable, practically institutional.
Seth was the surprise of the evening. The whole episode I was trying to pin him down. Is he Pirates of Penzance? Vegas lounge lizard? Dan Zanes? It never occurred to me he would make a fine dress. Did you guys like the dress, by the way? The back was lovely, I thought, but the front was straight out of the Delia's catalog.
David Plotz: June and my beloved wife, Hanna, I'm honored if a little scared to be permitted to bring my Y chromosome to this discussion. Lifetime's commercials—vitamins specially formulated for women, weight-loss pills for women, calcium for women, cereals for fat women, hair-care products for women, based-on-a-true-woman’s-story movies (The Pregnancy Pact!) suggest that I am not Project Runway's target audience. But if Slate can have three women write about Friday Night Lights, it can certainly allow a guy into the Project Runway conversation.
Seth's gingham milkmaid hooker dress didn't interest me as much as his architectural hair, which was not even the most vertical of the Season 7 men’s, suggesting we have finally reached the grim cultural moment when men spend more time on their hair than women do.
Heidi, who seems to be a one-person pregnancy pact (what is this, her fourth kid?), seemed a little more robotic than usual in the premiere. She's surely bored with saying exactly the same thing week after week, season after season, and I felt like her boredom was showing. I don't know how many more seasons they can do with exactly the same formula, same words, same catchphrases, same everything.
J.T.: David, I think it can go on forever as long as they sign up talented contestants and the judging makes sense. After all, we tried change last season, and look how that worked out.
I did not think that Seth deserved to be in the top three, but perhaps that's because I'm sad that the judges like him. One look at the way he styles himself—I swear his runway outfit made him look like the ringmaster in a satanic circus—and I immediately took against him. But every reality show needs someone viewers love to hate. (I did like the back of his dress, well, other than that monstrous red zipper. I hated the fabric, though. It read very old-lady to me.)
Let's talk about the winners and losers. In every Week 1, only six of the contestants count: the top three and the bottom three, whose dresses we actually get to see for more than a millisecond. The rest are just extras.
I was glad Emilio won. He seems like a nice guy, but most important, he made a beautiful dress that was lovely to look at and showed off his technical skills. It was another short challenge, which is something I don't care for in general—would it kill the producers to give the designers enough time to think and to make properly finished garments?--but it did separate the contestants. In just over a day, Emilio managed all manner of braiding and appliqué and complicated inlays. The dress looked like something young women would want to buy, but it also had an expensive, high-end look. In fact, it was one of my all-time favorite Project Runway dresses.
D.P.: Totally with you on Emilio. Loved the dress. The other designer I wanted in the top three was Anna Lynett, the artist who made that very sunshine-y cute dress.
H.R.: June, you say only the top and bottom three matter. But I thought there were some real doozies that got away. Jay Nicolas Sario—one of three people on the show to refer to himself in the third person—had that dress with poof-balls stuck on it, an homage to paint-ball victims everywhere. And right after that came Pamela Ptak's pink flying nun. Those two definitely stuck with me.
J.T.: At the bottom of the pack, I would have been fine with any of them going home.
The judges were right about Jesus Estrada’s dress—not sexy, not fashionable, dated—but I kind of liked the chiffon train. Anthony Williams was safe because he brought the sound bites—“I’m sweating like a Baptist preacher”—and made a naked appeal to demographics when he described himself as "black and gay in the ghetto" and started ragging on the Miss America pageant. But he got the worst note that the judges can give: They questioned his “taste level.”
D.P.: I am already over Anthony, who seems like a character in a canceled sitcom. Ping Wu, too, is going to wear out her welcome soon; she’ll probably be auf'd by Episode 3. I'm most looking forward to either the success or failure of Type A egomaniac supervillain Pamela Ptak (who probably fired the other vowels in her last name just to keep the "a" in line). Her pink dress, with its gasp-inducing absence of a back, had the odd effect of making her model look simultaneously naked and fat.
J.T.: Ping is clearly this season's wacko—and although I can't see her lasting too far into the show, she's interesting and amusing, and she certainly has a point of view.
H.R.: I was sure that Ping was going to end up like Elisa, that yoga freak from Season 4 who spit on her fabrics. Especially after she started dancing in front of the mirror and giggling into her wrist like a Japanese teenager. And that weird tea cozy head thing? Her outfit did not translate on TV at all. It was impossible to discern its construction; it could have been strung together by that single suspender for all I know. But then the judges decided it had a kind of eccentric Rei Kawakubo charm and declared her the artiste of the show. To me, it was a lesson on the arbitrary nature of taste. It really could have gone either way.
J.T.: I totally thought of Elisa the spitter when I saw Ping. Despite being the contestant who appears to have the least-developed command of English, she spun a good story about her clothes. That always wins over the judges—and it does feel like a necessary talent for someone who wants to be a "real" designer. High fashion can be very conceptual. If you can conjure a whole world for your clothes to fit into, you can get around that whole "wearability" question.
H.R.: Yes, June, but isn't that where Brüno comes in? ("My collection is all about stones and hopping toads ...") And remember what happened to Malvin the egg man from last season? He was high concept, too.
J.T.: Christiane was the first person to be kicked off the show. Her dress was just too generic (and the blue fabric was garish—that old "taste level" thing again). Project Runway is a tough place for black women—I'm still feeling bad about Korto’s fate in Season 5—but Christiane’s outfit was boring and badly made, and that should earn you a ticket home.
H.R.: I have to bring up the subject of ethnic hierarchies on the show. They do seem to prefer the Persians. The woman who sewed my wedding dress was a Persian seamstress, so I understand it’s in the blood. But the show seems to accord the Persian women a certain authority and respect. Other ethnics, meanwhile—Ping, Anthony, Jesus—are played for comic relief.
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