Project Runway Episode Six - Maximum Fuss for Minimum Models

Illustrations courtesy of Alan Gray

This week the designers must reduce their designs to teeny weenie little sizes. However, they are not allowed to use electro magnetic compression rays, shrinky dinks technology or tiny tailor elves; just their dressmaking tools and a magnifying glass to craft their micro-frocks.    Who is up to the task of miniturisation?

Heidi drops the bombshell to the designers that they will have new models, tiny wee girls!  The challenge is to create a fashionable kids look, this should be fun. Although Jonathon has an apparent phobia of children, saying ‘they are very small’.  Who amongst the mini models will be the next future-Heidi?

The designers go on rampage at Mood, the fabrics and the fur fly.  Especially the fur, did you see the ultra cute dog hanging out on the shop floor?  He’s a Boston terrier and his name is Swatch and he lives at Mood!  Ahhh every workplace should have a resident pet. 

Mila resorts to her one true love for her design, colour blocking.  Janeane is keeping it simple, perhaps to her detriment.  Children like their clothing quite fancy nowadays but her top looks like a homemade drawstring bag that any child would stamp their feet and have a tantrum over if they were forced to wear (I speak from experience, I got sent to my room once for refusing to wear a knitted poncho).  Seth Aaron has an 11 year old daughter so thinks he has real insight into what children want and whips up a mini Avril Lavigne creation, although some of the other designers, including Emilio prefer to keep things conservative. 

Tim arrives the morning of the runway show and springs another surprise on them. They need to create a corresponding ‘adult’ version of their mini fashions.  He tells them it’s a “great, great challenge” but no one seems to agree.  Emilio is worried how he will reinvent his prissy pink frock for a grown up.

Last week Seth Aaron got called out by the designers as the most distracting with his constant babble and noise, this week attention is turned to Anthony and his diarrhea gob.  The designers place bets to see how long he can go without talking and he can only manage a weak 14 minutes 56 seconds before breaking down. 

Tim arrives to critique and he really hands it to Janeane, telling her “you are really rocking Halloween here” over her choice of colour palette.  Janeane is deeply disturbed as she says she hates Halloween and would never do anything inspired by it. Tim diplomatically tells her “just be prepared for a response to that”.  Amy takes a gamble and makes hundred of multi coloured petals (or are they scales?) with which to make a pair of Technicolor dreampants for her grown up look.  Tim’s brow deeply furrows, risking the collapse of his forehead as he tells her “these pants will either stop the show or it’s going to be clown clothes”.  Clown clothes called out two weeks in a row! 

Seth is on the right track with his look, showing off the mini handbag he has crafted and telling Tim his daughter loves handbags and has over 200 of them.  Little girls do love handbags.  Imagine if your dad was a designer and could make you a handbag a week!  You’d be in princess heaven.   Tim says, “I am profoundly wowed.  Wowed.”

The models come in for their fittings and Jonathon says “that one little child made me so nervous that I now stink” as he raises his armpit to inhale the sweat of his fearful labours.   Amy is still constructing her petals closing in on midnight and she’s getting nervous about the risk she’s taking as she hasn’t had a chance to see what the finished article will look like.  As the time draws near for the fashion show, Amy’s mini model doesn’t seem too confident about the acid flashback pantaloons either, asking the adult model if she’s “ready for the circus” when it comes time to fitting.  Cheeky! 

Fashion designer Tory Burch is this week’s guest designer, a lady who is apparently famed for making caftans and clothes for Gossip Girl.  When Amy’s coral, teal and black scale pants appear on the runway they do, unfortunately, resemble clown clothes.  Her child companion looks like her hobo daughter that she couldn’t afford to adequately clothe on her meager clown salary.  Jesse’s grey dress looks awfully uncomfortable with its asymmetrical bodice and sloping trim, I guess it’s his attempt to make it look quirky but it just looks like it was sewn by a cross-eyed tailor suffering from tremors. Mila’s dress looks so Flintstones that I can’t believe no one is commenting on it.  It’s a block of pink and green with spotted trim.  It could have come straight out of Pebbles wardrobe; all she’s missing is a bone in her hair.  

Amy, Janeane and Jonathon are the called out as the worst designers and Jesse, Jay and Seth Aaron are top of the class.  They like Jesse’s but Heidi isn’t keen on the “skewed A-line section” of the dress.   Seth’s model Sydney immediately points out her love of the purse when asked what she likes about her outfit.  Michael says Seth Aaron’s adult jacket is the best-tailored item they’ve seen all season and it does look rather remarkably engineered.

The judges think that Janeane’s is too simple and Heidi says, “It looks like a cheap mall outfit”.  Jonathon’s treacherous model Fabriana says the jacket is “kind of like, pushing into my skin” when Heidi asks her if it’s comfortable.   Jonathon’s adult companion piece is a big puffball composed of what looks like several boxes of tissues.  Michael says, “She looks like she got caught in a tornado of toilet paper”. Amy doesn’t fare much better with Michael who says Amy’s child model Caitlin “looks like the house was on fire and she grabbed every garment in the house” which makes Caitlin and adult model Alison both laugh.  Michael says the pants are a train wreck and Heidi says, “It’s hideous and bizarre”.  The judges agree that Seth Aaron was spot on with both of his designs and he wins the challenge, saying his daughter is going to be so happy.  Weepy Janeane gets clipped for her budget mall fashions and must join her fellow evicted contestants at the fabric remnant counter in the hellish bowels of Parsons School for Design.