Project Runway 5×01 – Deja Vu

There’s a lot of reality TV out there, but one of those I steadfastly watch, is Project Runway has one of the winning formulas: Fashion, ranging from utterly fabulous to WTF is that??, it’s got a challenge and a prize that is worth fighting for and makes sense (a r/s with Tila Tequila? Paris Hilton’s BFF? You gotta wonder at the people who compete on these shows) and to round up, it’s got a whole host of characters for the necessary drama.

So Season 5 starts amidst it’s own drama as the last season to be shown in NY on Bravo before hopping over to Lifetime and LA. Marketing has been lacklustre to say the least, and there’s that completely spoilerific move of posting all the episode summaries and guest judges right to the end. (don’t click that link if you don’t want to be spoiled!) One of my favourite things about PR was the anticipation of seeing whether they were going to do a weird challenge that week. Ah well.

But anyhow, I faithfully caught Season 5’s debut episode, and here’s my react. Be warned! I’m nowhere a fashion guru but I know what I like and I don’t, even if you don’t agree with me!

It’s the grocery challenge! What fun~ They brought back Austin Scarlett, corn husk dress extraordinaire to be the guest judge, but he was either really stressed out or they made him retake his scenes, because he was so uncampy and unflamboyant, totally unlike the frou-frou he was on S1.

There’s lots of links to great recaps and opinions can be found at Blogging Project Runway and Project Rungay (my fav PR sites) already, so we’ll just narrow it down to some which I thought were more sigificant.

Check out all the dresses here or here. I should add though, that seeing the pictures and seeing the making of up close on TV is quite a different experience. Some dresses that I thought were boring were actually much prettier in reality.

Also way too many designers now, too lazy to post pix, so I’d suggest opening up the bravo link here if you want to follow what I’m talking about.

Kenley’s dress was kinda pretty! My personal favourite of the lot. I liked the contrasting bright colours and the assymetrical skirt and pattern. It’s pretty but ultimately not wow enough to win, but I would wear it… LOVE!

The picture might look pretty uninspiring, but the top was made and woven from mopheads, and actually looks pretty nice in the show. Boring skirt though, I think if Terri had gone full steam ahead and did an entire mop-knit dress it might have been more interesting. OK…

Suede’s dress… well the blue stuff made it minutely more interesting (I love blue so I’m biased, sue me) but in that picture, I keep thinking the model should have a bone through her hair (ala Flintstones Pebbles) and she looks like she’s going to eat me. OK…meh~

Emily’s dress is a plain white lace thing withan attached blue collar. Meh~

The pink dress by Leanne is an example of a dress that looked alot better on TV than it did in the picture. The straps and the back are covered in meringues/sweets, quite cute. But the white frou-frou things aren’t very pretty I think. Her model is quite nice looking though. Ok…

It’s made out of paper towels, but she kinda looks like a wedding cake, so I’d give her points for transforming her material into something else. The little lipstick marks were an effort for the tiniest bit of colour, quite quirky but in vain. Meh…

Jerrell is like those stererotypical dudez who talk like they’re hip and cool, yo~ His dress was pretty nice though. The top half pattern was cute and the umbrella lining was sweet. The fringed/furry sleeve looked abit like cookie monster died on her shoulder, But mostly lovelovelove the umbrellas in her hair! Love!

Keith’s dress: very cute, very wearable but for this particular challenge, not particularly creative or outstanding. Something I would wear though. Love

Wesley’s yellow dress was similarly simple, but I did like all the little detail which you can only see when you go a lot closer to the dress in the show. The flyswatters and plastic cups do make for a great effect. Simple and elegant, Love!

I thought Joe’s Italiano dress was quite pretty. Lovely pasta skirt and great use of the oven mitt. Creative yet still good looking. Love

Korto’s bright yellow robe was very nicely made. Nothing particularly creative, but I think an interesting silhouette that stood out from everyone elses. Also the use of the produce and the tomatoes was quite a nice touch. Love!

Daniel’s plastic cup dress was an engineering feat~ Very simple dress, but the construction when you look more closely at how he joined it up was quite well thought out. It’s a pretty blue, I would so wear that… Love!

Blayne’s weird swimsuit thing which he called Girllicious (I flinched everytime he said that) was just UGLY. UGLY UGLY UGLY. It’s only saving grace was that it was something difference and that there were worse pieces. He sewed the poor model in at the crotch, like gross! And what was that white thing on the front? It felt like a panel for the model to open up so she could pee! UGLY!

Auf-ed: The dreary slasher excuse for a dress. That was seriously ugly, and just by looking at Jerry’s model’s face you knew she thought it was hideous as well! The raincoat thing was all wrong, his ’summer dress’ underneath was wtf… and he’s kinda annoyingly superior. Granted Stella’s garbage dress thing was something I could have done (that is by no means a compliment of any kind when it comes to dressmaking!) but at least it looked like it could have worked in some other material. His was just UGLY. UGLY UGLY UGLY, I can’t understand why he’s so proud of it! HIDEOUS!

Winner: Cute marbled skirt but wtf bustier. I like the idea Kelli had with it. The skirt was fabulously pretty and looked nothing like a vacumn cleaner bag, the studded belt thing was nice, but the ‘lace’ boob shields… it had potential but didn’t match the rest of the outfit at all. Love!

 Stella. almost auf-ed with her lazy uncreative dress. It might have looked nice in other materials, but in this case, it wasn’t anything special. meh~

All in all, not too bad an episode. Click here to remember what S1’s episode produced. The lovely corn husk dress was unforgettable, along with Wendy Pepper’s dismal attempt at using candy (that didn’t even qualify as a garment, merely candy draping, am surprised she didn’t get eliminated here) and the first auf-ing of Daniel Franco.

I love Tim’s Take because it’s his point of view (which usually makes more sense than some of the judges/producer decisions) and he’s so campy about it. Def one of my favourite things about watching the show. And who decided to change the Tim’s Take format? The old format where they showed the picture of the dress with his individual take was so much easier to read, especially if I was too lazy to catch the episode at least I could see the the outcome was. BOO to the current weird page scrolling thing, because I can never remember which page I was reading!