Project Runway 2/14/13--"The Ulitmate Hard and Soft" summary

Previously on Project Runway: everyone designs for Heidi. Various people act like this doesn’t happen every single season. It’s for her perfume launch, so some people are making outfits for the ad campaign and some are making outfits for some PR event. Layana tried to throw Kate under the bus, and it’s kind of shady, but since Team KIR cannot lose, of course Kate is one of the winners. Patricia made a weird leather lattice outfit, which was interesting, but seriously there was no way Heidi was wearing it. So magically Daniel was the other winner, even though there was supposed to be one ad campaign winner and one PR event winner. Ben completely failed and was pretty close to sending his model out with no top, but Cindy made a fairly standard dress in the wrong fabric so it looked terrible. So she didn't make it. (click for more)

So! The finale! There were eight collections. That’s right, eight. Most of them sucked, although one was fine. They did not give out names, so we don’t know who goes with what collection. Then all sixteen designers came out afterwards. And you know what? The first thing I thought of was “16 divided by two is eight.” Teams of two? So a final EIGHT? I just cannot think of another reason there would be eight collections.

Daniel has crazy colored pajamas. Amanda says she needs to have more fun. Uh…OK. She doesn’t want to be in the middle anymore. Sure, I suppose you could get out of the middle that way, by having a ton of fun and being crazy. Ben needs “a jolt of fresh air”. The teams are pretty lopsided. Matt thinks some people on the good team are just coasting.

Inside the workroom there is some mood lighting and candles. Once again, Heidi is not talking to anyone on the runway. Sigh. Tim says that these are [product placement] candles. Hey, they don’t give me any money. Each has two scents, Hawaiian Breeze and Vanilla Passionfruit. Unconventional materials challenge! They will be going to a flower shop. I wish they had come up with a new unconventional materials location. Amanda whines that flowers are her worst nightmare because she didn’t even have flowers at her wedding. Ugh, I don’t like her now. Then Heidi comes out (lame) and she says her favorite unconventional materials challenge was the hardware store. So they have to go there too. Just go with it, it ties into the candles. Each team will make six looks. So your line must have both things, but each individual look is not required to have both. So you can have one look with just flowers and vice versa. Once Heidi leaves, because I guess she is too busy for this, Tim says that the teams are uneven and they want to even them out. So since Team KIR has eight, and Dream Team has 5, Dream Team gets to pick out two people to switch teams. Which...is still uneven. Actually it makes Dream Team have one more person. What? Fine. Michelle says not Patricia, while Ben wants Stanley. They discuss Kate vs. Layana, and eventually tell Tim they would like Stanley and Layana. Stanley says he’s super efficient and that will help them out. NOW Team KIR gets to pick out someone. This is so complicated! Anyway, when Tim announces it, Michelle freaks out, and then Team KIR already has decided somewhere along the line that they want her on their team. Michelle, weren’t you complaining last week that no one ever saw your designs because your team sucked so bad? Now’s your chance! They don’t even discuss it. Michelle really just hates Patricia really badly. I guess she “talks for people” and is condescending. Patricia interviews that she’s glad to work with Michelle. Each team gets $2500, so flowers must be expensive this season. And two days. I will reserve my celebrating until I’m sure there’s no twist. They never give them two days for a challenge unless they are making their own fabric.

Stanley wants the theme of 1950’s Dior. Very specific. Kate and Amanda know what they want to do, and do not want to pair up. Amanda thinks it’s her job to pick up the slack on her team. Team KIR doesn’t seem to have a cohesive theme, not that they really need to. Richard and Michelle end up paired off, which is good because I was worried they’d decide to pair Michelle and Patricia. Richard says “RuPaul meets Gilligan’s Island”. Ha! Awesome. Now Michelle has decided if they lose she’ll go home because Richard has been praised before. What? Michelle, what are you talking about?

Shopping. Tu buys buckets. Richard finds miniblinds, and he and Michelle freak out over a black and white mini blind dress. She acts excited but interviews that she’ll have to edit him. Patricia says she’s happy and hugs Michelle, who clearly is not interested in hugs. “Step the fuck back.” Oh, you should have said that in person and not confessional. I know Patricia should be able to read the room better, but Michelle needs to calm down or something. Chill. At the flower shop, Ben wants to use color to make their team collection cohesive. Color doesn’t make things cohesive but we’ll go with it. Amanda gives an interview where she reminds everyone that she hates flowers, and says “Flowers go like this” and then wiggles her fingers. She says “I just don’t like the lines. They totally bore me.” Is this woman for real? Flowers are too boring and squiggly for you? Ugh. Joe buys ferns and weird things.

Eight hours until the end of the first day. Richard has like, a giant tangle of branches. I don’t know. Stanley says if Dream Team can’t get it together, he and Layana will make their own team. Amanda is making a dress out of moss. She is now discovering that moss sheds. What happened to “I hate flowers and just want to use hardware”? Daniel says her dress has alopecia. Hee! They figure something out involving wood glue and spray bottles. Richard and Michelle are discovering their design will not work because of how the blinds are cut up. I think they have notches in them already or something. Michelle is worried. Kate gets some gloves and starts bending chicken wire. She says this show is worth bleeding for. Ben gets some board and nails and makes a loom to weave his own fabric. Do you have time for that? You had no time last week and you didn’t even have to do anything! Gah. Richard and Michelle figure out what they’re doing and they seem to be excited again.

The next day begins. Samantha has some lattice work for a bodice, but she needs a strong skirt and she’s not seeing it right now. Starting to freak out. Joe has a big net, that he’s going to drape everything off of. Michelle says he’s trolling the ocean. Heh. Daniel points out to his team that while everyone’s garments are cool, they do not go together in any way. Patricia says they are cohesive because they’re using hardware and floral. I can see some of the condescending tone that Michelle complained about, but I am busy laughing. “We’re cohesive because we’re doing the same challenge!”

Tim time! Michelle and Richard are putting flowers into the spaces between the blinds, and Tim is thrilled. Patricia has what looks like feathers. Joe’s dress is shapeless. He thinks Tim doesn’t get what he’s doing, because he’s in some avant garde place. Amanda’s moss dress is patchy but she insists she’s covering the moss with stuff. Daniel has…something…I think it’s a plant that looks like frost. Kate’s dress gets the caveat that it not look like a craft project. She interviews that you can’t tell someone to make clothes out of flowers and hardware and expect them to be normal. Do you watch this show? That is EXACTLY what the judges always want. They want normal looking clothes. She has immunity anyway. Tim tells them they need to get going and also nothing is cohesive. Kate thinks the solution is black netting. Michelle points out that if you group the clothing in the right order, it could be a decades thing. Sure. Dream Team time. Tu is making “a sleeveless jacket”, aka a vest. Tim is really shocked that Ben made his own loom. Samantha has an unfinished top and nothing else. This team has time management problems.

Model fittings. Amanda has lots of silver pins or nails, and they are heavy. Kate has to tell her model to wear leggings so the chicken wire doesn’t scratch her. Yikes. Joe has scrapped the net, or at the very least he’s got some mesh underneath to hang things on. It’s pretty boxy, and he says it’s like a sweater, because when it’s cold out, do you wear a skimpy dress? Do you look around when you go out in the winter? There are still girls in skimpy dresses. I guess avant garde things play with silhouette. Amanda’s moss is now falling out in larger chunks. I’m still not sure why she used moss at all if she hates flowers so much. She has some petals from something, but they are a weird orangey-yellow and look like dead leaves. Also she’s out of petals. Patricia says she doesn’t want to see any moss, and interviews that she told Amanda not to do whatever it is that she’s failed at, and she’s bringing the team down. This is said as Patricia is tying knots in a cape made from string and feathers. At least that’s what it looks like. Everyone freaks out like Amanda is going to drag all of them down to the bottom. Maybe she will, but seriously. I don’t think the plain moss dress is that bad. It’s not super exciting but it’s not a trainwreck. Kate joins in, because Amanda has been changing her mind about her design all day. Joe walks over, says to cut up the dress in a certain way, and then all of a sudden everyone is thrilled and it works.

In the morning, Amanda thinks her dress is going to fall apart and basically tells Michelle she’ll never be able to finish, she can just get as far as possible before the runway show. Layana goes over to Samantha and says “I’m worried about your dress.” Ouch. She tells her what to do, but Samantha says she knows what to do and is sticking to her vision. Layana says in confessional “I tried to help her out, as a good teammate. I believe that’s one of the reasons that they chose me.” I’m pretty sure they didn’t choose you so you could boss everyone around. Kate says she doesn’t think it looks like a craft project, but at the end of the day, it’s a craft project. Amanda is still complaining. Hot makeup guy Scott. Joe has to shimmy his model into his dress, which is dumb for two reasons. One, he was bragging about how it was going to be like a sweater and loose and not formfitting. Two, he put a zipper in the back and apparently just forgot it was there. Duh. Oh hey, no twist. Look at that.

Heidi actually looks OK today. Guest judge is BETTE MIDLER. Awesome. Oh, and there is some blogger, who couldn’t be bothered to dress nicely and is wearing a football jersey. Not that all bloggers are like that, but seriously. The best part is Heidi introduces Bette from behind the scrim and I think several designers recognize her silhouette. Team KIR. Daniel: sheath dress with huge hips. Like panniers on a donkey. It’s covered in a silvery gray, with green and white flowers over the hips. It is a weird shape. Joe: the base of the dress is gray mesh, and then there is a block of red along one side. The shoulders and part of the sleeves are white flowers. It doesn’t look as blocky I imagined it while he was talking about it. But it does look like a tunic or a bulky sweater dress. Richard and Michelle: she has molded bra cups made from blinds, and a cage-like grid over the rest of her. There’s just skin under her torso, and then a skirt of flowers beneath the grid on the bottom. The grid thing is cool, but the skirt looks like someone crammed their produce in there. I kind of wish there were no flowers, somehow. Patricia: a brown sheath dress, I’m not sure what it’s made out of, and then it looks like she just piled flowers on top. They are all stuck on there, dangling off her arms, all random colors. Sigh. At least make all your dangling flowers cover her skirt. Right now it looks like you ran out of time. Also it looks crazy. What a mess. Like giant fringe. Amanda: short dress with moss on the pencil skirt, then across her chest a swath of orange-red flower petals, and at the halter neckline silver pins or nails. It actually looks pretty good, and the moss looks fine. From here anyway. Kate: sleeveless square-neck top with a giant tea length skirt. The skirt has what looks like brown ribbon at the hem, and is then a pink skirt and white bodice. I think it looks cool. It looks better than Patricia’s.

Dream Team. Matt: skirt made with yellow flowers, all globe shaped so the skirt looks kind of puffy, and a top that is vertical black and white stripes. It is striking and looks like real clothes. Stanley: tea length dress, covered in green leaves all down the bodice almost to her knees, and then big white flowers at the bottom. There is silver mesh showing at the bottom but I’m not sure if that’s on purpose. I like this one too. Tu: the skirt is slightly A-line, and has yellow flowers and greenery, arranged so it looks like he took whole flowers and laid them on the skirt with the flower heads at the hem. Maybe he did. The top is a beige vest with a belt, although I’m not sure what it’s made out of. Wood? Straw? The vest has a very high neck and a collar. Ben: short dress with a full skirt, in horizontal strips of pink, orange, and yellow. The top has more yellow petals, and the yellow goes over one shoulder, but the other is white? Titscrepancy. Samantha: silver mesh skirt, with a peplum edged in yellow petals, and a sleeveless high necked top with a white latticework (which she said she made from contact paper). Under the mesh in the skirt are big green leaves. It’s cute, but it looks like a mesh dress and I’m not sure if the judges will ding her for that. Actually I think the petals and leaves are wrapped in the mesh somehow. Layana: sleeveless top, in beige, and a skirt that is bell-shaped made out of vines or string or something. There are pastel petals over the skirt, but they fade out so you can see the construction of the skirt strings or whatever. The top is fine. Layana looks really smug. This team’s collection looks much more cohesive than the other one, but maybe Team KIR has higher highs. Lower lows, too, though.

Heidi says that all the looks were “so beautiful” they don’t have a losing team. They have a winning team and “an almost winning team”. Sounds like winners and losers to me. Dream Team wins one! They had more cohesion. Team KIR heads to the Scrap Bin. Heidi says there’s nothing on the runway today she doesn’t like. They all had fun and it’s whimsical, and you can tell they had fun. Everyone gives out praise but it’s all generic. Stanley’s leaves and artistry blew away the blogger. Samantha did put the greenery between layers of mesh, and the judges like that she used the mesh in such a unique way. Nina praises Layana, which is too bad because Layana’s head is pretty big already. The white in Ben’s garment was the fabric he wove himself, and when Heidi asks who should win they bring that up. Matt and Tu are also named. Matt used rope and a mop for his bodice, which looks really cool.

Loser time. Team KIR pretends they all planned their designs with these decades in mind. I guess it’s better than nothing, but the judges look dubious. Heidi says she likes Patricia’s look, and Zac says “pow-wow chic”. Yes, that is what that looks like. But more random. Are we going to tell Patricia her crazy ideas are great and then one day decide she’s too crazy? Sigh. I just don’t like it. Heidi really goes down the line talking about how she likes everything. That doesn’t help pick someone to eliminate. Joe says his look is usually oversized, but that doesn’t work for this “experience” (I guess this show) and then he says something about a jacket. They don’t get that. It doesn’t look enough like a big jacket. The mesh is also set up in horizontal lines, so it just looks wide. He says something about how he wants the future to be a place where unconventional shapes are OK, which is kind of cute. Heidi wants to know who should go home. Richard says Amanda. He loves her though. A bunch of them agree, because I guess they all secretly resent having to help her get her shit together. Joe says she’s been working in the real world too long, so she’s not creative anymore. But this isn’t an avant garde challenge, so shush. Everyone piles on, but I wonder if once Richard named her, everyone agreed just because it wasn’t them. You know? Nina tells them that whatever happened yesterday, they can’t see it in her dress. But who does Amanda think should go home? They never ask her, or they don’t show it. Stupid.

Back in the Scrap Bin, Michelle tells the other team that anyone could go home. Amanda corrects her because they all just threw her under the bus, so clearly she is in danger, and interviews that she doesn’t remember being such a burden to everyone yesterday because they were all still working on their own stuff. So they must be lying. I was with her up until the “they’re lying” and the self-righteous head nod.

This was Ben’s strongest piece yet. And he made a loom. They like Layana's stiff but feminine dress that is dreamy. Samantha’s dress was super modern, though. Both are light. Layana’s is slightly better finished, says Nina. Everyone feels bad for Amanda, because her design wasn’t even that bad. The execution was slightly off, and Zac thinks her proportions were off. Nina doesn’t like Joe’s outfit, and it’s not flattering. Zac thinks it wasn’t big enough, if he was going for oversized. That’s true, they had Kate’s to compare it too. Bette agrees with me that maybe the whole team piled on Amanda just because it’s contagious, but maybe they thought that dress was not worth the drama. Nina doesn’t think Amanda stood up for herself, but I thought she did. I recall her disagreeing with people as they stood on the runway. Also why is no one mentioning Patricia’s hanging garden mess?

Samantha is the winner! She is clearly surprised. Dream Team can all leave. Kate, Daniel, Patricia, Michelle, and Richard are all in. Amanda needed a lot of help. Joe’s silhouette was not flattering. Joe is out. Joe says his clothes aren’t for everyone, and he’s alright with that. He seems in a really good place.

Once Joe leaves, Tim says there is still “business” to deal with tonight, so be on the runway in ten minutes. Huh? To be continued?

Next time: design for Miranda Lambert, Matt is screwed, Ben is screwed, everyone is failing right and left, what is this “business”?