Project Runway Season Two - Hard Wear

Illustrations courtesy of Alan Gray

Precious metals and precious little else collide in this weeks challenge as the designers work with hard ware supplies to create futuristic outfits for elegant robots, malfunctioning droids, ill-attired automatons, and an exotic dancer who got lost on her way to work and wandered in the wrong door.

All the designers are gleefully shrieking at landing in the top ten, but really, big wow, there were only 16 contestants to begin with.  That’s like getting excited over coming third in a three-legged race with only four contenders.  You can start gloating when you’re top three, babies.

Heidi shoos the designers off to meet Tim and a ‘secret designer’ who just turns out to be, yawn, Michael Kors, at the Michael Kors store.  Michael tells them that for this challenge they will be shopping at a hardware store.  Wait, so they had to hike over to Michael’s store just to be told that?  Maybe business is bad so he needed to pimp out his wares to keep his kitchen stocked with cream cakes, although I predict a rush on shoe orders after his pink pumps turned up on Lea Michele for her saucy Glee shoot in GQ.  The designers will also have to create an accessory to “enhance and compliment” their look on a budget of $150 for the entire outfit and just 30 minutes to shop.  Hardware is expensive, I bet a tradesperson would spend double that just getting supplies to caulk a sink.  The options are also limited for what they can use as ‘fabric’, it’s garbage bags, sheet metal or sandpaper.  Exfoliate while you look fashionable!  Emilio eschews a base fabric and selects a butt load of washers and cord, but when he gets to the counter he discovers he is over budget and has to dump some of his supplies.  It might be more of a bikini than a dress he winds up with. 

A lot of the designers break out the tin snips to create metallic bodices for their garments.  Emilio turns his nose up at this practise as he says its “been done”.  It does have an air of high school fashion show about it.  His plan however, is no better; he wants to create a macramé dress with his washers and hot pink nylon cord.  If all else fails maybe he can adapt it into a creepy 70’s kitchen owl.   The other designers think Emilio’s ‘Paco Rabbane’ inspired outfit has borrowed more from stripper culture than couture.  I hope there are some Lucite heels on the Bluefly.com wall to really complete its exotic dancer appeal. 

Tim arrives to do a once over, and as usual he looks like he smells something ghastly in the workroom, however today he probably does what with all the paint, glue and chemical compounds littering the studio.  Mila is the self confessed queen of colour blocking and the hardware challenge is no exception; she is banging bits of monochromatic plastic together. Tim says Jesse’s is looking “so school project/school play” just as I said EXCATLY the same thing!  Maybe great minds do think alike?  Or more likely, it’s just totally obvious that it sucks.  Tim asks, “What is with you guys and all this copper?” there is an inordinate amount of the flashy metal around the room.   Copper might yield easily but it rarely looks good when it’s scrunched like the wrong side of an Easter egg wrapper, as Jesse has done with his piece.  Emilio describes his thing (it can’t be called a garment as yet) an “intergalactic macramé flapper……….something” but chooses to omit the obvious influence of stripper ware.  Tim asks if Emilio has enough hardware to complete his look and worriedly says, “you may end up with a bikini”.  Oh Tim, our minds are so in synch!

The models arrive for their fittings and Emilio realises he will never have enough washers to retain the modesty of his 6 foot tall model and decides to rejig his design into a bathing suit.  We called it Tim!  Jay has a disaster when his garbage pants won’t even go over his models feet as they have shrunk during sewing.   If his skintight pants split on the runway his outfit could be more revealing than Emilio’s bits of string!

None of the designers feel confident in their garments and they all joke about being in the bottom.  Jonathon (my favourite because he always bring the LOLs) imitates Heidi saying, “You ten have the lowest scores”.  It’s a hard joke for them to take though as there’s more than a grain of truth in it, there are some real train wrecks in this workroom. 

Mila’s model is up first on the runway and her dress looks a little bit like an uncomfortable piece of fetish wear.  It’s cleverly constructed from paint trays but it looks like it is a garment purely for standing around in, you wouldn’t want to sit in it. Jesse’s dirty puffball nightmare is more like a school play costume than ever. Jonathon’s looks a bit like an art deco building Halloween costume, but a very well made one.  You could shelter inside of it in the wake of a natural disaster.  Emilio’s is soooooooo sleazy, his leggy blonde model could be trying out for Playboy, someone call Hugh Hefner! I was wondering what Amy was going to do with all that scratchy sandpaper but she has crafted her garment really nicely, creating fans and chevron patterns with the different grains of paper.

The stunned judges are intrigued by Emilio’s lack of a garment and an incredulous Nina asks him “What happened?” Michael says, “The simple truth is she looks really cheesy, that’s a full cheese fest”.  Despite it looking like the tangled mess at the bottom of your nana’s knitting bag, they find some redemption in the fact that he took a risk and tried something different.    Michael thinks Anthony’s looks like a bad prom dress and Nina thinks it’s boring.  It’s so not the worst, at least it looks wearable and not like a harness! They all hate Jesse’s; Nina thinks it looks like the Tin Man fromThe Wizard of Oz while Michael says she’s dressed up in a Hershey’s Kiss costume, but it’s Heidi who gets the call of the day by describing the skirt as looking like “a dirty vacuum bag”.

Heidi announces that Jay is the winner.  Hooray!  I’m glad frosty Mila didn’t win again.  Her ego doesn’t need any more inflating.  It’s down to Jesse and Emilio in the bottom two.  Heidi rips Jesse to shreds for being costumey and says that Emilio’s was “pure Vegas showgirl” but its Jesse that gets auf’d.  He thinks there has been a miscarriage of justice and Tim makes an uncharacteristic declaration that although he had problems with Jesse’s work he never anticipated this outcome.  Hmmm who did he think should go home?  Emilio, for the plumbers slutty apprentice perhaps?