by Todd O'Dowd
Two more episodes to go my friends until we find out who will be the winner of the 10th season of Project Runway. But first a slight pause for some major PR news…
This week Lifetime announced the cast for the new season of Project Runway All Stars and I have to say the cast ranges from awesome (Uli! Andrae! Kayne! Laura!) to head-scratching (Peach? Suede?) to annoying as hell (Ivy and Josh, I’m looking at you two) to a truly shocking casting choice (the return of Wendy Pepper?!). I’m planning on watching but I surely hope this isn’t a glorified way of giving a win to someone who was “robbed” of it during their season (as the last two All Star challenges have been). Also, I really wish that they had taken a page from RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race (which premieres on October 22 – and YES, we’ll be recapping it) and casted it with strong talent from top to bottom. Alas, I fear that this cast might devolve into a bunch of screaming babies.
Which leads us back to this week’s challenge, which falls under the “free slave labor for Heidi Klum” challenge…
This week, the designers are taken to Babies”R”Us and are tasked with making an outfit to be produced as part of Heidi’s Truly Scrumptious kids line, with half of the designers working on girls and the other half on boys and the winner from each side will have their look produced as part of the line. While I can understand the frustration of the designers, this in and of itself isn’t a bad idea for a challenge. Like I said last week, any challenge that puts constraints on the designers and forces them to work around a problem usually leads to good results.
But then, they had to take it just a little too far in two ways. First, by forcing the designers to have to work while having to take care of pretend babies that constantly cry was comical but wholly unnecessary. Then came the second part of the challenge: having to make a complimentary outfit for the mothers of the baby models to walk the runway in. Frankly, if they were going to throw this into the mix, it should have been a factor in the final judging.
And speaking of judging, Hilary Duff was the worst kind of judge to have on this show: all of her opinions were bland and had no thought behind them.
Staring in the upper left:
Christopher (Winner – Girl’s Outfit): Frankly, Christopher benefited from Heidi’s input during the walk through. And while it is a cute dress, the detachable flowers are impractical for any child in terms of keeping clean and wearability over and over again.
Elena (Eliminated): It’s a shame that Elena got eliminated this week. Her outfit wasn’t the worst, in fact it was one of the better ones in terms of what would work for a toddler. But Michael Kors was on point with his critique that it looked like sample sale pieces in the fact that they didn’t go with one another. And it has to be said, her outfit for the mother was fantastic.
Melissa: If I had to pick on this challenge who should go home, it would have been Melissa. Everything about this look – from the cropped jacket to the mini-dress that exposed to much diaper to the appalling construction – was a mess. The reason that Melissa survived was because her output over the entire competition was stronger than Elena’s.
Dmitry: While I get Nina Garcia’s critique that the boy looked like a crayon, I personally thought that it was cute and had those touches that mothers go ape over when shopping for their kids.
Fabio: Not only was this one of the better outfits this week, in my mind it was the clear winner overall. It was cute, stylish, easy to wear, and best of all, by making it a onesie it had a practicality to it that put it head and shoulders above a lot of the other outfits down the runway this week.
Sonjia (Winner – Boys Outfit): As much as I loved Fabio’s look, I can see why Sonjia won. She created fun, fashionable looks for both the child and the mother that had a true sense of funky style about them. And what sealed the deal was the fact that her model was so darn cute on the runway that you could see all the lady judges swooning.
So as we approach the final three episodes (Tim’s home visits, the reunion, and the Fashion Week finale), I have to ask: Who do you think is going to win it all?
