New Zealand's Next Top Model - Week Seven

Illustrations courtesy of Alan Gray

We’re down to eight models remaining after last week’s shock elimination, and this week it’s back to school as the girls get a refresher in the basics and learn the ancient history of their rare kind.

Saramail: And then there were 8.  Maybe it’s time we got back to basics? Love Sara

The girls board their glamour bus for Auckland University where Colin guides them through some runway training 101.   They start off their training in flats and Danielle finally masters the art of the walk, saying the one on one time with Colin made her more comfortable. They graduate to medium height ‘training wheels’ heels which are a bit more problematic for Danielle, she flips them off mid-strut and nails poor Elza in the back of the head.  Despite her assault with a deadly weapon (stiletto is Italian for dagger), Danielle is no longer the worst walker of the pack!  That dubious honour belongs to Dakota who Colin says can’t turn left or right due to her “lack of body strength”.  Poor Dakota, she has bigger problems than Derek Zoolander, at least his only Achilles heel was his left turn.

They move on up to skyscraper heels and I can almost feel my ankles spontaneously spraining just watching them.  Holly says she found it easiest to walk in the highest heels but Colin thinks she’s a bit overly confident and prone to “Ben Stiller leg”.  Nellie loses a shoe mid walk but nonchalantly carries on balancing on the tiptoes of one foot, what a trooper. Colin asks the girls if they think they can beat him in heels and initiates an impromptu game of bullrush.  It’s like something out of a horror movie, he’s like a giant spider in stilettos effortlessly pursuing a swarm of concrete shod flies.  FLY MY PRETTIES!

Saramail: A Top Model never stops learning.  Who’s at the top of the class?  Love Sara.

The girls hop aboard their luxurious transport and head to MOTAT where a very dapper Colin introduces them to Ella Drake, a New Zealander and exclusive model for Gucci.  They head to the olde worlde schoolroom where Professor Colin quizzes them on top model trivia. Danielle says she felt immediately mischievous because that’s how she was at school.  The presence of those inkwells is probably not helping; I bet she’s dying to dip someone’s plait in one. I know I am. Dakota likes her chances because she reads two-year-old French Vogues from the library, as “New Zealand is two years behind the fashion world”.  Ooh I bet that comment made some local designers bristle. Colin says Elza is clearly more intelligent than Nellie and that he now realizes they are not telepathic.  This is a real shame because they would make great creepy psychic twins.  Elza wins the challenge with no help from her ESP-less sibling. Don’t you think that Colin would be the kind of teacher to whack your knuckles with a ruler if you were talking in class?

Back at home pressure is starting to show on our ladies, and Nellie is having a sulk under the duvet because she thinks Elza is doing better than her.  A stressed Danielle has bandaged fingers from punching a wall, multiple times.  She says she’s “going through more downs than ups and is never this emotional back home”.  That’s extreme kind of behaviour, I hope these girls have access to some kind of counseling, or boxing gloves.  Or a room made of gelatine.  

Saramail: Hair Today Gone Tomorrow.  Love Sara.

Chris is waiting for the models with the team from Herbal Essences and Russ Flatt from episode one, who has returned to shoot them for a new range of hair products. Lara is first up but Russ is not impressed, describing her expression as “constipation face”. Dakota looks great but she quickly crashes her set and breaks the prop telephone.  Our beguiling brown-noser then tells Russ she likes his beard.  However, her machinations are not lost on Russ who says she knows how to “suck up” but in the “big bad world of fashion that’s a really good thing.”

Nellie has a studded Zorro mask and a tiger, a rare berry-eating variety I believe, as her props.  She looks pretty awesome and her tiger friend doesn’t seem averse to being hand fed fruits.  Danielle looks so cute in her gingham frock, even she has to admit that she looks nice, however she’s still very reserved and Chris says it’s painful to watch at times.  Holly has her mind set on being happy for her shoot and gets confused when Russ wants her to be just the opposite. She finds it hard to convey the emotion and gets weepy over her inability to deliver.  Russ says she’s an ice queen and adds “to me the girl's a princess, you should just get over yourself”.  OUCH.  Holly gets so wound up she says she wants to punch someone.  Please keep Danielle’s wall away from her, it’s been through enough already!  Elza earns applause for drinking out of her shoe and tonguing a mound of honeycomb stuffed in a trophy.  Chris says Elza stole the show, and she was the “highlight of the day” for Russ, he thinks all the girls could learn from her. 

Judgment Day

Sara commends the girls on making it to the top eight, although it would have been the top nine if Sara didn’t get so carried away with her elimination secateurs last week and over zealously trimmed the contestants. MOTAT Schoolmarm Ella Drake is this week’s guest judge.  

Elza's product is called Dangerously Straight and Colin says he feels “dangerously straight just looking” at her photo.  HOWL.  The panel are pleasantly stunned to see Danielle in a dress and high heels. Her photo is totally ADORBS.  Lara is not happy with her shoot and her eyes almost immediately moisten. Chris likes her frustrated expression in the photo but the judges decide that any positive aspects are a result of Russ’s direction and not in any way thanks to Lara. Sara tells Dakota that her feedback from Colin’s tutorial was that she loses concentration, like a goldfish.  Her photo is rather spectacular though, but did they airbrush out the birthmark on her arm? The judges love Courtney’s vibrant photo, but is her pose a little bit, well, draggy?  I’m having flashbacks to the grimy dancefloor of Alfies circa 1991, except Courtney is wearing more clothing than any of the ‘ladies’ of the night ever wore there.

Panel discussion

Chris is bored, bored bored with Lara and finds her to be hard work.  Ella says Holly looks a little vacant and she’s another one that Chris identified as being labour intensive.  Sara compares Holly’s eyes to a Mako shark, with nothing behind them in every shot.  Oooh.  A thrilled Dakota is called first, Sara says she’s starting to listen.  Michaela and her “consistently good photos” are called next with Courtney following swiftly behind.  Holly’s shark eyes scan her rivals as they are called one by one until there is just her and Lara remaining. Sara says that Holly’s eyes remain dead and that Lara is a great little mover but “can she move her face”?  There is nail-biting anticipation!  Lara is in and Holly is ousted.  Holly says she’s trying to be warm as her eyes start to well up, but she is very brave in defeat. 

Next weeks preview looks so insanely good, lingerie in a church, (blasphemy!), underwater videography and a showdown between sweet-natured Michaela and bratty Dakota.  TV3 is going to make us wait a whole week AND they want us to waste 50 cents texting them who we think will win!  Well, I’m going to tell you right now who wins.  SPOILER ALERT. Colin is going to snatch the Cleo magazine editorial, the Covergirl contract, the Ford Fiesta, the flight to L.A. AND all the glory from the outstretched hands of the final model, and he’ll do it while running in high heels and cackling all the way to the bank!  Sigh, well a girl can dream.

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