Project Runway: Miz Shoes Reviews

NOTE: I wrote this, and brilliantly, if I say so myownself, first thing this morning, and then closed the wrong window, erasing it all. Hopefully, version 2 will be just as pithy, scathing and entertaining.

We begin with the usual: Jeffrey complaining and being ugly. Then we move on to Parson's and the new challenge. This week the designers will be making an ensemble for a jet-setter. The twist is that they must each make something for themselves, as they will be the jet-setter.

This causes much twittering, as Vincent allows as he has never, ever made menswear, and Angela allows as she has no clue who or what a jet-setter is. Angela lives, she reminds us for about the same number of times that Jeffrey has announced that he is the most brilliant and talented designer in the litter, on an organic, totally off-the-grid farm in the middle of West Bumfuck, Ohio, where she apparently has never had access to an issue of People, Harper's Bazaar or Elle Magazine.

This is stupidity on a par with Bradley, the theoretically gay fashion designer having no clue about the ubiquitous Cher. People, people, people... just keep your mouths shut. It's better to be quiet and thought an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Or something like that.

The designers are given a day and all the spare change Heidi, Michael and Nina can shake out of the couch cushions. Really. Seventy-five dollars? Come on. They are also given about five minutes to design, just long enough to bring the car around to transport them to Mood.

Back at the work room, Jeffrey begins to ride Angela like a wild stallion, going on and on and on and on about how the dress he made for her mother was the ugliest piece of crap he'd ever run through a sewing machine. How it was the worst thing to walk the Project Runway catwalk in three seasons, and yet, he, the brilliant and under-appreciated Jeffrey was still here, still flapping his frito and dew hole, and still being the most odious creature ever to waste the electronic pixels on my tv.

Oh. Maybe he didn't say the last part: the part after the flapping his pie-hole. Maybe that was just me. When Angela points out that he's talking about her mother, here, he cops to only "talking about the challenge." Yeah, right. My Aunt Ethel. You're trash talking her momma, and you well know it. And Jeffrey just won't let it go, either. He's digging it in, and digging and digging and digging. He's working the needle just like a true junkie, and denying it every step of the way.

Jeez, I depise, loathe, hate, abhor, detest, that repellent little Shmoo.

Vincent wears boxers. This is a relief, because he is working in them, trying to cut a pattern from the Dockers he had on. I love Vinny, but if I had to see him standing around in tighty-whities, I would have had to kill myself right there on the sofa.

So, they finish and send themselves down to hair and make-up and Angela takes the opportunity to get her hair ironed. It does not help. Michael skips that, to concentrate on his work, which, true to form, he has changed completely from his first design after listening to Tim Gunn and reflecting upon his own ideas. Reflecting is perhaps too strong a word, because the guy has lightening-like fashion reflexes. Tim throws out a question, and Michael has reworked the design in his head before the question mark fades from the air.

I'm Too Sexy For My Pants

The designers come out, strut their stuff, and then answer the judges' questions. Questions like "Where do you think you're jetting off to in that outfit?"


Michael knows the answer to that. He is rolling to the Hamptons with Diddy. And he totally is. His ensemble is so cool, he's shedding frost all over the runway. He's made a crisp white architectural top with a pair of white on white seersucker trousers with a little bit of cargo styling. He has a touch of bling. He has Attitude. I think that Michael Kors is going to cry he's so in love with the look. As well he should be. Seersucker is the single most wonderful fabric in the world, and every man should have a summer suit made of it. But I digress.

Uli has made the same thing she's made every week except the last. A halter top with braiding. A tiered, hippy-hippy shake skirt descending from the empire waist. Color on color and pattern on pattern. I loved the colors she used this week, a deep, pure turquoise and a coppery brown. The judges all announce that the first five times they saw it, they liked it, but y'know? It IS getting stale. And unless you are jetting off to Rio, Miami, the south of France or LA, you really aren't going to look like you belong. So. There.

Vincent has made black trousers and a v-neck black heathered top. He's wearing flip flops. He's blown his hair out. The judges, in unison, say that he's too understated, too simple and too easy. Where's the pizzazz? Vincent says that HE is the pizzazz. I'm buying it, but the judges aren't. After seven weeks, they (the professionals) haven't figured out that Vincent's signature style is minimalist, sleek, pared down to the essentials? He's being true to his style, here, even if you think he looks like a stay-prest ninja.

Laura has listened to the judges and has made something completely new and different from her usual silhouette. It is drapey, and wrappy, and jersey, and in the most unfortunate color she could have chosen for herself: ivory pink, the exact same shade as her skin. She is wearing the most magnificent pair of chandellier earrings, ever. Talk about your Harry Winston's. I think that they are rubies and diamonds. As ever, the tailoring and fit are exquisite.

Kayne has made a NikNIk shirt by way of fat Elvis. He pairs it with bell bottoms and an iced-out belt buckle that says "KAYNE". In case any of us have forgotten who he is. He says that he envisions himself climbing out of his limo at the airport, only to be swarmed by the papparazzi. Michael Kors says that he can see that, and the subsequent feature photo under the headline "What WAS He Thinking?" Oh, God, I love you Michael Kors. So much that I don't care that you are the same color as the carrots in my vegetable bin.

Kayne, Kayne, Kayne. Sweetiedarling. Let me explain something to you before you go back to flyover country. White Trash is not good. It is not cool. Let's review. In "Breakfast At Tiffany's" the divine Miss Hepburn is precisely divine because Holly Golightly started out as white trash and has been transformed into something elegant and stylish. It doesn't matter what Brittney and K-Fed have been trying to convince America, White Trash is, well, ugly, cheap, tawdry, and ultimately, trashy. Don't aspire to it, aspire beyond it.

Who Let the Fleurchons Out

That would be Angela, who in the depths of her cluelessness has made a pair of copper brown linen/silk blend shnickers, an unholy marriage of knickers and shorts. She has made bad worse by quilting concentric ovals across the ass crack and cheeks, like some sort of built in bike-short padding. Just in case we forgot who SHE was, or how ugly THEY are, she has attached ginormous Signature Angela Fleurchons on the ass. There is a double-wide set of belt loops, holding up at least two different belts. The blouse is blowsy, and held up by straps of Signature Angela Fleurchons, which may or may not be attached to actual straps. The neckline is way too low, and way too loose, and exposes way too much black padded bra.

MK gently points out that linen is probably the worst fabric in the known universe for wrinkling, and so why would you make a travel outfit from it. I hear the crickets chirp.


And so I come, finally, to Jeffrey. The brilliant, talented (just ask him) Jeffrey, who reveals that, despite what he told Angela's mother in the last challenge: that one day is just not enough to even consider making a jacket, has made himself a dark purple (and wasn't that the color she wanted and he was unable to find anything suitable in?) faux leather jacket with a pinch back and Sergeant Pepper detailing (but in monochrome) on the sleeves. He's also made a stunningly original black t-shirt with a glitterized or bead-dazzled skull. He's finished his three pieces with a pair of black cigarette pants sporting an 8-inch crotch opening of large chrome hooks. The entire look can be summed up thusly: Gay Bondage Meets Hot Topix. The judges just oooh and ahhh and admire his very rock-star look. I puke. I also spend way too long pondering the issues Jeffrey must have about the size of his package to make an 8-inch chrome hook and eye crotch. (Where is MK's frightened exclamation now? The crotch in those pants is insane!)

But this is not the end of the challenge, they are now told. Before the winner can be announced, the travel clothes must be travelled in and they have one hour to pack and get to JFK.

Ça Plane Pour Moi

They go to Paris. Unlike America's Next Top Model, we are not shown an adorable purple plane animating it's way across the ocean, while little animated faces look out the windows. We see actual plane travel, and the always unrumpled, elegant and well-shaven Tim Gunn is there with them.

Brief montage of them driving around Paris, with Angela and Kayne going "Gol-leee" and Laura talking about how one never gets used to the beauty of the city. They tool up to Parson's Paris, where they are taken into a fabulous, high-ceilinged and large-windowed work room. There they meet somebody or another who is a fabulous female French designer of some reknown. I've never heard of her, but Angela claims to, and that makes me feel really stupid.

She will be the final judge and her scores will be added to the others from New York, and that will determine the winners. The designers must walk for her, and she'll decide how well the clothes travelled.

Uli, still rumpled, but good. Vincent, exactly the same as when he got on the plane. Ditto for pretty much everyone but Angela, who looks worse than ever, as though she travelled, not in first class, but in an overhead storage bin. The French designer makes that Parisienne noise that I only wish I could make. It's sort of a pheeew. With the lower lip pushed out in that French way. And instead of aspirating through the mouth, the whole thing kind of goes through the nose. Disdain has never been more palpable.

She announces that Uli, Vincent, and Kayne (but you can tell she wanted to Auf him, too) all get to stay. The winner is a toss up between the deliciously hip-hop Michael and the aggressively banal Jeffrey. The winner is Jeffrey. But what can I expect from a nation that idolizes the questionable genius of Jerry Lewis. Of course, the French also loved Josephine Baker. Tonight they went with Jerry Lewis.

This is killing me. Keeping Kayne around means that not only does Jeffrey-the-Shmoo win, but he gets to gloat about Angela leaving. It's a win-win for Jeffrey, and just as I predicted a few recaps ago, he is utterly obnoxious in victory. What a contemptible little turdblossom.

Angela is punished by having to wear that ugly schmata home on the next flight out. The viewing public is punished by having to watch Jeffrey gloat and preen and interview that it was about time he won a challenge, since he himself knew that there was at least one other that he should have won.