Top Design 9/17/08--"Window Display" summary

Previously on Top Design: the designers had to decorate bomb shelters. Oh, it was fun. They made them pair up, of course. The cutest couple, who didn’t win, but were super cute, were Nathan and Wisit. They got rid of one of the beds to make more space, since they decided they could sleep together. Hee. Andrea and Eddie won, because…I guess the judges liked their painting and they didn’t fill up the space with candles. Robert and Jennifer lost, since they pretty much drew a line down the center of the room and everyone was supposed to blend their styles. First the judges kicked off Jennifer, and then they kicked off Robert too for good measure. Surprise double elimination! Woo! (click for more)

Shazia says too many people are gone. More half naked shots of the boys. Nathan says winning would be amazing and he starts talking about being a starlet. Wisit tells us he graduated from Parsons (does Tim know him?) but he didn’t like his time in fashion. Eddie wants an individual challenge.

India is waiting for everyone in a strip mall parking lot. She wants to test them in “broader strokes”. Everyone will pair up to make window displays. Hee! Interesting. And actually more “design” than “decorating”. Andrea complains that she is paired with Preston, who has been in the bottom twice, and of course she’d rather have Eddie. India says of course they have clients! More reality TV stars! Sweet P, Daniel Franco, Jeffrey, Santino, and Andrae. Everyone recognizes them, I think. Eddie wants Santino. Jeffrey is rocking a 70s long mustache (the kind that hit your jaw but there’s no hair on your chin) and a red and tan stripped v-neck sweater. Yeah. Everyone else looks normal. Eddie gets his wish and he and Teresa get Santino. He thinks he is kind of like Santino. Honey, Santino could eat you alive. Kerry and Wisit get Jeffrey. Kerry kind of freaks out. Natalie and Ondine get Sweet P. Shaz and Nathan have Andrae. Oh they’re like twins! That means Preston and Andrea have Daniel Franco, who says that he was hoping to get “Team Gorgeous”. Oh man I have missed Daniel Franco. (Kmanpat: “I want Team Gorgeous too! Daniel can have Andrea and I can have Preston. That’s fair.”) They get 30 minutes to meet, and then one of them will be selected team leader.

It appears that each window has one outfit by the designer. Santino’s mannequin has a scary mask on so it has a face. It looks like a cape, with a hood. It’s “sick”. Under the dress is a black dress with a belt. Eddie totally takes over and just talks and talks while Teresa just stands there. I have no idea what he is talking about, though. Sweet P’s dress is a long strapless number with fat horizontal tiers in different autumnal colors. Ondine has made many many window displays. Natalie is also throwing ideas out, about butterflies. Sweet P thinks they’ll win. Daniel Franco’s dress is a chartreuse color. There’s a wide collar in a U shape, and the sides of the bodice are cut out. Then there’s a long ballgown skirt with a train. I actually like it. Andrea says she’d buy it in a heartbeat. Daniel Franco (I don’t know, I just feel like I always have to say his full name) has some poetry about his clothes. It’s actually descriptive of a landscape, so of course they’re going to go with that. He is glad to be making it easy for the people working with him. Andrae has a simple dark gray dress with a bubble hem and spaghetti straps. He starts talking about fall and elections and uncertainty. Nathan is depressed by the dress. Shaz speaks more his language, and is talking about vortices and whatnot. I think Nathan just sees a pretty dress. Jeffrey’s outfit is tight black pants and a black blazer, with no shirt. Actually it might be midnight blue. He tells them it’s inspired by “Blade Runner” but Kerry thinks he is talking about “Blades of Glory.” No…no that’s not the same at all. Jeffrey keeps talking and Kerry realizes he has no idea what Jeffrey is talking about. Wisit starts talking about graffiti and Jeffrey is confused. Kerry brings up mirrors and tiles and Jeffrey goes for it and makes him leader. Andrae picks his twin Nathan to be leader. Eddie is also chosen, and he makes sure to say that “we” will do a good job. Daniel Franco picks Preston, and Andrea pretends to be fine with it. Sweet P can’t decide, so she picks Ondine because she’s older. Sigh.

Now everyone has 30 minutes and $400 for paint, wallpaper, etc. Eddie is going for “Venetian mansion on the river”. Nathan doesn’t like Andrae’s vision but he’s the client so he’s going with it. Kerry is nervous about being leader and having to see the vision through. Wisit brings up his Rococo thing again, and Kerry has to shoot it down like Jeffrey did. Several times. But Wisit does bring up a good point, which is that there’s nothing special about a mirrored wall.

Shopping time! $500 to split between the hardware store and the craft store. They split up the teams. Preston takes almost all the money and gets trees. Ondine buys pink netting butterflies. Wisit is supposed to buy mirrors and spray paint, which he claims is not available (no paint? OK…). Instead he is buying “pretty things”. Kerry buys every mirror he can find for the kaleidoscope idea. Eddie breaks a mirror, apparently by touching it. Now everyone goes to the “Top Design Showroom” at the “Top Design Warehouse.” What is this? Is this like the center they were in last time, where they could go to all the super expensive showrooms and borrow furniture? It looks like a thrift store. But they get $600. Nathan doesn’t want to play it safe, so he’s getting some ethnic stuff.

3 hours to work. Eddie lets us know that “communicate and plan” is his mantra. By which he means “tell Teresa what to do by waving my arms around and talking really fast.” Preston has to trim and paint trees. Shaz asks Nathan if the wall is straight, and Nathan replies “Honey, there ain’t nothin’ straight on this show.” Hee! (Kmanpat: “Who needs me to make comments when they can do it themselves?”) He is worried about working with Shaz because she’s not really a hard worker. Kerry has foiled wallpaper, which seems to be shiny silver with red designs. He was going to make squares but Wisit wants to hang strips on each end of the window to frame the yellow paint. That yellow is the exact shade of yellow that their ladder is painted. Kerry is going with Wisit’s idea as a compromise. Being the leader means you don’t have to do that, silly. Natalie and Ondine paint blue on the walls and try to get it all done.

Todd shows up to give advice in time to make it useful. He tells Nathan to put paper on the mirror before he cracks it, to give him more control. He also tells them to put the dress in front of their gray to make sure it doesn’t blend in. Todd tells Kerry and Wisit to test their adhesive to make sure it dries. So Kerry gives Wisit one of the biggest mirrors and makes him hold it up by himself while he goes outside to get stuff. When Kerry gets back in the mirror has slid down so there are big smears of adhesive on the wall. Why didn’t they test it with a small mirror? Kerry blames Wisit for the screw up. Lots of people spray painting. Eddie also breaks mirrors. Natalie loses the arm off her mannequin. Eddie says they’re good. Their window is magenta with silver wallpaper. Teresa is fine with being the assistant. They’ve also got archways painted in the windows. I can’t tell if that’s the same wallpaper as Kerry and Wisit. Preston and Andrea are spreading rocks. He looks mighty fine in his wifebeater.

Everyone gets 4 hours the next day to work and finish everything. Ondine is mounting wallpaper, black with giant silver butterflies. Kerry mounts mirrors in different sizes. Preston and Andrea try to plan how to hang their mannequin from the ceiling. They figure out the rope will hold and then Preston tells Andrea to “put the bar in her butt” so he doesn’t have to hold it up. He says it like 5 more times because Andrea is having some trouble with it. Andrea says he needs to get along with everyone. Andrae shows up to investigate Nathan’s plan. He doesn’t want to hear from Andrae, in case he hates everything. And this comes true, because Andrae had too much wicker in his house when he was a child and now he is allergic to it or something. Finally he is like, “No, I can’t do the wicker, I’m so sorry.” I expected him to put hand to forehead. Shaz says there is a lot of wicker in the room. Sweet P is freaking out a little bit because her team is kind of behind. I would think that she would understand last minute working. Jeffrey hates the wallpaper. Fabulous. He just says he doesn’t like it and then leaves. Daniel Franco says that his window is the most dramatic, even though it looks like everything in it is black—walls, floor, trees. Preston asks him to sign the corner of the wall. Santino asks if that’s the finished color of the walls, and Eddie right away says that they can rub black shoe polish on it. Inside the building you can see that these aren’t really proper window displays, but instead are just walls that they built and then put in front of the windows. Santino asks Eddie if Teresa is “doing a good job for [him]” and Eddie says no. she’s taking too long. Teresa thinks he’s just freaking out.

Kerry doesn’t know what to do about the wallpaper, but Wisit thinks if they paint the sides of the actual window black, it will hide the wallpaper and narrow the space. The black stain is working for Eddie and Teresa. Nathan is still worried. Everyone finishes, and Teresa is worried because last time was a double elimination.

The judges appear that very night, after dark, to be judges. So all of Eddie’s freaking out about the paint in the sunlight is pointless. Kelly has a purple sequined beret on and her hair is frizzed out so much it looks like she got struck by lightening. Shazia reminds us that Jonathan Adler is married to Simon Doonan, who dresses windows for a living. No really, they’ll be married probably by the time you read this. Andrae’s window is gray, with French molding creating big frames. Inside the frames are broken pieces of mirror. There are more broken mirrors on the floor, and some dark pink flowers. A set of black shelves, and a wicker chair covered in canvas, and some silver lanterns. There isn’t much color. Nathan explains to the judges the concept of grayness and uncertainty and turmoil. Jonathan rolls his eyes. Kelly doesn’t get it, she thinks it needs Cliff notes. She asks about the ethnic vibe (the lanterns are kind of Asian) and Shaz makes up some BS about Pakistan. Andrae says it’s not what he imagined but that’s why you collaborate. Hmmm.

Sweet P’s window. Sigh. Blue walls, with framed unbroken mirrors. The skirt is pinned to the wall so it sweeps back, and there is blue fabric running from the mannequin to the ceiling like a cape in the wind or something. Covering the fabric are pink and purple butterflies. There are butterflies everywhere, all over the walls, the chair, etc. Natalie says it was her idea to pin the dress to the wall. Sweet P loves it.

Jeffrey’s window looks tiny on account of the black paint. Of course they shoot it from the side so you can still see the wallpaper. The yellow looks a little muted, and most of the open space is covered in mirrors anyways. There seem to be glass globes on the floor. Of course the first thing Kelly asks is why they closed off the windows, and Kerry describes the kaleidoscope idea. The baubles on the floor, Wisit says, don’t have a reference except for visual interest. Jeffrey says this isn’t what he imagined. Uh oh.

Santino’s window has dark draperies, and draped frames. The walls look old with the shoe polish on them. Actually, with the mask on the mannequin it really goes well together. There’s a black chair and black ribbons and broken mirrors everywhere. Kelly asks if they can get closer and Santino says he wants them inside. He says that he’s happy overall. Jonathan looks confused.

Daniel Franco’s window is all black. Black walls, black trees, black rocks. And the chartreuse dress. Well, the mannequin is suspended so it kind of floats (points deducted for using super thick rope that is obvious) and there are shiny bits in the trees. Kelly loves the dress. They like the color of the walls, which was Teresa’s idea. On closer inspection it might be a very dark charcoal gray.

India gets right down to business. Preston and Andrea get praise for their simple design with flawless colors. The judges also loved Ondine and Natalie’s creative confident window. Ondine and Natalie win. Interesting. Even more interesting is Jonathan’s admission in his blog that he liked the window so much that he wanted to wear the dress. I’ll let you have a minute to let that image sink in. They get to leave. Preston and Andrea also can escape. Backstage Ondine and Natalie break open the beer. Eddie and Teresa’s window had fantastic colors and satisfied their client, but it was sloppy and the dress didn’t stand out enough. But they are in. I just noticed that Kelly has on purple leg warmers to go with her beret. Well…they are not as thick as leg warmers, they’re more like purple socks with most of the foot part cut off.

Jonathan was disappointed with Kerry and Wisit. He picks on Wisit because he has a fashion background. The black paint enclosed the windows so much you couldn’t see anything. Kerry says Wisit is very talented, but Kerry is the one that connected with Jeffrey. He knows he screwed up by listening too much to Wisit. Wisit thinks that Jeffrey was too demanding and that was why their window sucked. Andrae’s political ramblings didn’t go with his dress, and Margaret thinks it’s good they satisfied their client but their window still sucked. Nathan admits that he didn’t like the dress and that might have thrown them off track. Shaz believes they just didn’t get their window where they wanted it. Jonathan would have liked to see them make a good window first, and then inject their story. India tries to get Shaz to throw Nathan under the bus, but she says that she won’t, even if that means she goes home with him. Nathan doesn’t want to throw Shaz under the bus (really he says that) but he also wants to keep going after working so hard. He knows he dropped the ball. Kerry carries responsibility for the failure. Wisit, after hemming and hawing, admits that Kerry shouldn’t go home just because he’s team leader.

Nathan and Shaz made a high school art project. Shaz has been quiet and is always behind someone. Kerry and Wisit could have done better work. Jeffrey was the wrong client for both of them. Jonathan knows designers have to be able to change their minds but they made all the wrong changes. Nathan doesn’t want to go home, he says, so Wisit gives him a hug. Aww, they’re so cute.

Nathan’s window was bad, and he is team leader, so ultimately he is responsible. Shaz hasn’t shown her style yet, so they have no reason to keep her around. This is how you know she is safe. Kerry pissed off his client and the window was unsuccessful, and he was team leader. Wisit has a fashion background but didn’t shine. Kerry is sent home. Wisit looks really hurt. I’m glad Kerry took responsibility for listening to Wisit, but no one really brought that up. He starts crying in his exit interview, saying he’s a man of his word and takes responsibility for the design. He says there’s something bigger for him, “because bigger is always better when it comes to Big Daddy.”

Nest week: design for bachelors. Shaz says bachelors are disgusting and gross. I think I’m going to put that at the same level as the one male competitor on “Hell’s Kitchen” that says “I can’t lose to a GIRL”. Someone doesn’t want to design a room around a TV. Eddie talks down to the salesperson at some store.