Project Threeway .1

Challenge: The first challenge required the designers to grab whatever they could find in their apartment and construct a garment out of it. This challenge reminded me of the grocery store challenge from the first episode. It forced the designers to be creative, innovative, and forward-thinking. The last season allowed the designers to remain in their comfort zone far too often. I hope that won't be an issue this year. I give this challenge a 8.980743A on a scale of 2-11.


Winner: Keith Michael. Our first winner flat-out rejected Tim Gunn's advice to add excessive bullshit to the look. The chains looked like crap on the garment, and Keith made the right choice to remove them.

The dress by itself, while inoffensive, is a little boring. It's not exactly innovative or fresh. However, he benefitted by having the model with the perfect skin tone to complement the color of his garment. She can wear two pounds of wooden spheroids around her neck without turning the entire look into a Carrot Top comedy routine. The dress is a little too safe for my tastes, but the model and accessories add some delicious sexy irony to the entire equation. Good show, Keith Michael.



Loser: Stacey Estrella. According to her bio, she is a marketing executive at a high tech company. In addition, "she has an impressive education background...".

Yes, it's unfortunate that her impressive education didn't include basic machinery. She couldn't use an unfamiliar sewing machine, and lacked the cognitive ability to figure it out. I initially thought she seemed a bit like a dullard. That was before I read her biography. Now I suspect that she has Multiplex Developmental Disorder, a type of autism that would allow her to gain an impressive education background but prohibit her from learning common skills.

The dead giveaway here is the fact that she is a marketing executive at a high tech company. What's the difference between a crazy vagrant and a high tech marketing executive? Evidently just a diploma.

But this show is about her design, not her poor life choices.

Stacey lost because her dress was uninspired and boring. Basically it proved that she could wrap a sheet around a mannequin and trim the bottom. Every designer demonstrated at least a minor amount of skill beyond Stacey's. Unfortunately her impressive education in Powerpoint Slide development didn't prepare her for success on Project Runway.


My Contenders
So, let's take a glance at my three contenders.

First, we have Angela. (Her model looks a little like Sven Vath in drag, too.) This is an interesting look. The skirt is sophisticated and a little dangerous but the top says, "Hey, I was a placemat so I'm totally stain resistant." The Amazonian belt just ties the whole package together.

This week we saw that Angela believes in strategery. She packed up all the crap in the apartment, just to prevent anybody else from using it. Her strategy didn't work, but it is indicative of the calculating mind that lurks beneath her crunchy granola exterior.



Next we have Laura with her Faux Fur Bathmat GlamouRobe. This look is a lot of fun because it's fashion gauche. If it was made of expensive material, it would still be nine miles beyond tasteful. In it's current configuration, it's high fashion for the trailer park elite.

Is Laura still a contender? Absolutely. There's something about her that I find intriguing. She's like a cross between a drag king and a drag queen Leona Helmsley. This is a perspective missing in the fashion world IMO.




And finally we have Ulrike's submission. I like the color pallete featured with this look: soiled dishrag grey, mustard yellow trim, and lime sorbet. If this dress was electronic music, I'd file it under mushroom jazz. Unfortunately, we didn't learn much about Uli this week. Let's hope she isn't one of those designers that just gets lost in the background.





Overall, this was a good episode to kick off the new season. I can't wait to see what Catfish has to say about it.