Project Runway, Season 12, Episode 6: Zip Line to Nowhere

Greetings, Project Runway Fans!

This week, our designers got out of the workroom for some much needed R&R.

"Let's go 'glamping!'"

What the hell is 'glamping?'  I'm not exactly sure.

I looks like tent camping with fancy decorations hung in the trees.

Maybe cots instead of sleeping pads?  Gourmet dinners served on china instead of canned chile in plastic bowls?

I mean, I know from camping.  I do.

These were my accommodations at my son's Scout Camp this year. 

When I think of luxury camping, I don't think about tents at all...

This is how we roll.

I'm not kidding you.  The last RV park we stayed at in our little trailer had cable TV hook-ups.

So our intrepid designer contestants had some fun in the great outdoors.

Rafting

Zip line

Roasting marshmallows and plotting their escape....

Whatever they did out in the woods of New Jersey, it really improved the runway by leaps.  This was some of the designers' best work.  I know...most of you in flyover country didn't even realize that New Jersey has woods, but it's nickname IS "The Garden State" and yes, there are trees.  Nice ones, too.

Alexander

Note the subtle veining of the black tree branches on top of the navy gown, meant to mimic the trees in the woods at night.  The effect, at least from the ankles up, on the runway was breathtaking.  The fit was impeccable.  It was the best thing he's produced to date.

However... with everyone producing their best work and Tim cajoling everyone to push themselves, Alexander felt the dress needed some edge.  So he tacked on a black, leather train.

"The train 'grounds' the dress like roots ground a tree."

Maybe not so long, however.  Maybe those raw edges could have been trimmed up a bit, too.  I know Alexander was going for a contrast between perfect tailoring and organic finishing, but the organic finish looked like a tacked-on afterthought.  Contrast that with the very neat and precise leather trim work on the neck and shoulders.  Even the branch detailing was very neat and precise.

Jeremy

This was a conventionally beautiful dress that any woman would want to wear.

Bias fit, beautifully tailored, yet conservative.  Well done.  Jeremy upped the emotional ante, as he is often wont to do, by writing a love letter as a fabric pattern all over the white silk.

Bradon

Bradon was due for a design meltdown and his occurred this week.  He just couldn't dig out any clear inspiration from the challenge or his fabrics.   He began by machine embroidering a trim in aqua and gold that he had planned to use on the neckline and, perhaps, the waist.

"It looks juvenile, Bradon."

The consensus in the chatroom, however, was that it looked too much like 1960's upholstery.  Frankly, there are times when Tim's critiques are helpful and then, there are times when Tim's critiques can completely derail a designer.  This was the latter.  The attempt on the dress model was not the worst thing being conceived in the workroom that week.  A simple caution to Bradon to mind the proportions and to remember that he is known for his fit and styling would have sufficed.  Tim clearly concentrated on the wrong trim work this week, as we will see later.  

Bradon: "I thought it flowed nicely on the runway."

Toilet paper on the heel of a model's shoe would flow nicely.  Nice flow is nice, however, the dress looks like it is exploding above her knees.  Luckily for Bradon, there were far worse things on the runway this week.

Ken

Ken talks a good game.  In fact, Ken simply talks too much.  A lot of what he has to say is very mean.  Meanness would be one thing if he could follow through with a winning design and nail a challenge.  But to date, he has fallen short every time.

His instincts were right to go short where everyone else was going long.  However, he decided to develop a sculptural dress, choosing bullet-stopping fabric.

Sophia Loren called and wants her 1969 hair back.

Kate

Kate's idea of 'glamping' would be a tent of tulle with a rain fly made out of shiny, patent leather.

The ideas here are all good, just not all put together in one garment.  The patent leather overlay could be better fitted.

Dom

Dom continues to be a solid sender, week after week.  The print was clearly evocative of water.  The neck covering gave it a stylish edge.  The fit was beautiful.

Miranda

No pencil skirts this week!

Had she managed to work the leafy appliques further up the skirt of the dress, maybe in a spiral pattern, this might have been given more consideration.  All in all, it's a dress with a lot of potential.

Helen

Even Helen stepped up to the plate and started to show us a little bit more of what she was capable of doing.  She tried the strip technique in an earlier challenge but seemed to do better with it this time.  However, I'm beginning to think she's shot her wad.

Karen

Karen needs a waistline intervention.  Look at her.

She can't even accentuate her own waist.  To date, she has yet to present a garment on a model that accentuates the model's waist, either.  I'm beginning to think she has serious waist issues.

This was supposed to be an homage to a camping tent in the morning sunlight.  It was successful on that score, but not attractive in any other way.

Alexandria

You may disagree with the judges this week, but you have to admit that it was very satisfying to see Alexandria win after the drubbing she took from Ken last week.

Yes, that's a dropped crotch pant.

Zac: "Poopy pants!"

"Tummy eye?"  "Poopy pants?"  Can we talk like an adult and not a three-year-old, Zac?

"I was re-invisioning camping wear for a modern age." 

Chambray and spandex are always on MY camp packing list!

Seriously, what a load of bull crap.  It was different, however, I'll grant her that.  I will also say that the droopy pants worked particularly because she used a jersey material that, when at rest, looked like a skirt with leggings.

I think the top was way over-designed.  There was just too much going on with the back.  But the judges loved it and thought it was fresh and clever.

There you go.

Justin

Poor Justin.  He had what seemed like a great idea.

"The Popeil Glue-Trim Factory, only $12.99..."

And he produced yards and yards of glue gun trim.

Justin: "Look at my glue gun trim!"
Tim: "Normally, I tell designers to stay away from the glue gun, but in this case, I'm intrigued!"

Tim should have asked some basic questions, like, how will you affix this to the garment?  To what kind of garment will you be affixing this?

The answers to both of those questions bolloxed Justin this week.  For some reason, he could not easily sew the trim onto the garment without it completely disintegrating.   It's a shame.  I liked the idea, too, and kept wracking my brain to find some way he could have affixed the trim.

This was the dress, which was sort of a split corset with a chiffon skirt that had a side slit.  It looked one of the Pussycat Dolls tried to glue gun a skirt to one of her spare corsets.   Perhaps he spent so much time trying to get the trim on the dress that he didn't have adequate time to put the dress together in an attractive way.

It was horrible.  It and Justin deserved the auf this week, but he didn't leave. Tim executed his Tim Gunn Save and Justin gets to stay.

QUIZ TIME!

Tim used his Tim Gunn Save this week because:

         A.  Justin is the first deaf contestant in Project Runway history.

         B.  Tim felt guilty about telling Justin to carry on with his glue gun trim.

         C. The producers told him that it doesn't matter how many people are in the next challenge so this week is a good one for a save.

         D. The producers ran each designer past a focus group and Justin scored the highest.

It is clear from Lifetime's Rate the Runway page that America likes this dress better than Karen's.  Producers can smell a fan favorite when they see one and Justin is a fan favorite, so he gets to stay until he clearly embarrasses himself.

Just note that he hasn't come close to winning any challenge yet.

Nice guy, to be sure...he's just not shining in this competition for me.

Project Runway, Season 12, Episode 5: The Pursuit of Imperfection.

Greetings, Project Runway fans!

Can't you just see the excitement?

We can't, either.

This episode was really hard to follow.

First, the designers got picked for teams of three.  Then, they were given a car that was pre-programmed to take them to three different places.

The three places were a housewares store,

a wallpaper store, and a grocery store.

Each team was to choose at least two of the stores for their supplies.  They had one day and a suggested budget of $1,500.

The teams had to present three cohesive looks drawing some sort of inspiration from the car.

Whatever.

"What do you mean, 'Whatever?'  This is a very important part of the challenge.  Our luxury car company is putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into this TV show that you watch week after week."

Nice try, baldy.  Once the producers decided that the third unconventional materials challenge was going to be a team challenge, it wouldn't matter how many silly rules the designers had to follow.  The team dynamics would predominate the bulk of the show.

And the producers knew that, so they threw the three most annoying and difficult people to work with together in the same team.

Ken, Alexandria and Sue

Tim: "I sense some tension here."

Alexandria is passive-aggressive and Ken is just plain aggressive.  Sue, on the other hand, would like lots of time to hand sew her pretty dresses, please and thank you.  It's hard enough for her to sew material, let alone unconventional material.  The parachute challenge practically made her cry.

So Ken decided to bully the other two.  Sue broke down and Alexandria clammed up.  The result was horrendous.  Sue didn't finish her dress, so the model locked herself in the bathroom with a needle and thread and made the producers wait until she felt she could emerge with her dignity intact.  Somehow, the producers have gobs of time for Ken's silly diatribes and no time to show what I'm sure was a nervous Tim pacing back and forth in front of the bathroom saying, "This is an unprecedented situation.  She needs to emerge from the bathroom this instant!"

The costumes for the Japanese 80's New-Wave Revival Band are in!

Why does everybody think that in the future, women are going to be piling hair on top of their heads?  For all we know, in the future, women will be bald with head tattoos.  In the future, we can be pretty sure they won't be wearing placemats duct-taped to their bodies.

In the end, it was all about the choices each team member made.

Ken chose to spend his energy and time arguing and berating his team members, rather than try to work as a team.  In the end, it worked out for him, but barely.  At what cost, you may ask?  Alexandria hates him.  Sue is nonplussed.  What if she returns to help at a later date?  Ken has burned some bridges.

The other designers probably don't trust him either.

Furthermore, at the end, he found himself duct-taping the skirt together because he had run out of time to sew it.  Since he said, half-way through that he was going to do his own thing and not help anyone else, what he spend his time doing?  Talking smack in the confessional room to the cameras?

"I can sew...in my own way."

When Sue said that on the runway, Heidi rolled her eyes.  Zac stifled a giggle.  I could have swore that I saw Nina mouth "Like hell!"  In any case, I'm done with the whole "I don't know how to work the commercial machine" storyline.  As I said previously, this is NOT selling Brother machines, which should be the whole purpose behind sponsoring the show, right?  Ask the bald guy above who markets  luxury cars.  He'll tell you what moves product!

The luxury car featured this week led everyone to believe you could pre-program destinations before ever getting in the car.  Maybe, the car even drives for you.  I'm not sure about that, but it could happen.  What I do know is that nobody got into the car and said, "Ooo....a LUXURY car.  How do you start this thing?"

So let's remove that stupid handicap.  Run the designers through a machine tutorial before the show starts.  Have the manuals lying around.  "I never worked a commercial machine before, but this one is pretty easy to figure out, once you get the hang of it!"  THAT will sell Brother machines.  And if a designer wants to be intentionally stupid, have another designer wave the easy-to-read manual in front of his face and yell, "Read the damn manual, you stupid oaf!"

Sue's bigger problem was that had she stayed, she would have been destitute.  She spent close to double every suggested budget in the competition and ran her team's bill up unnecessarily.  Now that she's auf, maybe she could spend some quality time with Frugal Timothy, who could teach her a thing or two about economy.

Sewing skills aside, Sue had another big problem.  She was on the show to "show people what she could do."  That's not exactly how you are successful at Project Runway.  In the end, you have to answer the brief put before you.  You're not in your own little world trying to make your statement pieces.  You have judges to please.

But what swamped this team was that they were so caught up in their drama that NOBODY MENTIONED THE DAMN CAR!

That was the worst sin of all.

Kate, Karen and Jeremy

I didn't see a lot of cohesion in this collection, nor did I see a lot of good workmanship, either.  It's as if the judges were scoring the teams over the individual designs.

Nina: "This team took their inspiration from the luxury car that is sponsoring our show.  This may not be important to the casual viewer who can't keep up with our silly, complex rules, but it is important to our producers me."

OK, Nina....I believe you can really see the inspiration for the car in the outfits.  And I also think that if you lied down for a few minutes with a cold compress on your head, those hallucinations would go away.

That's a pretty pedestrian offering from Kate, this week.   The side panels were embellished, clear shower curtains.  I think it borders on tacky.   Perhaps Nina saw the side windows of the luxury car.  As a matter of fact, those look like my side windows after a 12-hour trip in car with my kids in the back seat.

Karen has yet to meet a waistline she cares to accentuate.  Why start now?  The judges raved on and on about this sack dress to which al sorts of seeds and rice had been affixed.  Come to think of it, this does look like the back seat of my car after a 12-hour trip with my kids....

Jeremy's dress had cups that were as poor fitting as Helen's were two challenges ago.   The peplum is off and the stuck-on glitter and whatever else it was looks pretty cheap.  This, however, is the winner this week.  Why?  Who knows?  My car is grey and I've got that same strip along the bottom, but it's not stuck-on glitter and who knows what else.  It's actually a combination of bugs and road tar.  I really should get my car washed.

Bradon, Melissa, Alexander

Melissa's entry, while a bit staid, is very well fitting.  Also, note how Melissa simply explained to both of her teammates how to work with wallpaper so that it was sewable...and then offered to quilt the fabric for everyone!  That's how you do teamwork.

Alexander upped the ante by attempting pants.  considering that these are made out of wallpaper quilted to muslin, these are amazing. I'm sorry.  Let me repeat myself.  It was an unconventional materials challenge and HE MADE PANTS THAT LOOK PRETTY GOOD.  The judges used to give points for effort.  Not this time, I guess.  Perhaps if he had fashioned the collar to look more like a hubcap...

Bradon's dress made out of packing material and wallpaper was pretty spectacular and the most outstanding outfit on the runway.  Why this team didn't place first is beyond me.  Maybe if they had affixed grilles to the front of every outfit... or explained that the square print in the wallpaper was to mimic the maps that you would no longer need now that you have a luxury car with a next generation GPS navigation system that can drive you to where you need to be, whether you know how to get their or not.

Helen, Justin and Dom

They really tried and of all the looks out there, these had the most potential to me.

Justin made pants as well.  They had an unfortunate fit.  The other unfortunate thing was that they chose a white material to compliment the red wallpaper.  The result fell flat for all the looks.  Except for the interesting hem shape and the fitted waist, there's nothing interesting about the top.  The hot pepper trim (I sure hope the model --and Justin for that matter-- did not get contact dermatitis from the peppers) looks more like jewelry and less like a trim.  perhaps if he had been able to trim the hem of the top as well....nah, never mind.  The judges were on snorting new car fumes back stage or something.  Maybe the bald guy from marketing was off stage with a bullwhip.....  They would have never noticed this team.

Dom's dress featured interesting stalactites that she said were inspired by the sporty lines of the affordably priced luxury car.  Those are berries around her waist.  I'm sure the model's elbows were pink by the end of the day.  Those were likely inspired by the crevices in the back seat of my car, which are now filled with gummi candies from a 12-hour trip with our boys.

And Helen was clearly inspired by the airbag technology that has saved so many lives on the road.  The little berry/flower embellishment is a tribute to those lives lost before airbags were put in cars.

Actually, I don't know what inspired Helen to make this outfit and she didn't say.  Perhaps this was the only thing she could do with the weird material.

What have we learned, if anything?  In the challenge, always remember who's sponsoring the show....and I need to clean out my car.

Until next week, thanks for stopping by!

Project Runway, Season 12, Episode 4: What Knot to Wear....

Greetings, Project Runway fans!

This week's theme: bow ties.

They're essential for the well-dressed man.

Or woman, for that matter.

Just wearing one makes you appear more dashing

and respectable.

Bow ties can be politically complex...

Satirical...

....or just whimsical.

So enter Jesse Tyler Ferguson, star of Modern Family.  He's taken an essential element of a man's standard wedding outfit and turned it into a political campaign to support gay marriage.  He designs and sells bow ties and promotes the conversation about marriage equality on his website, Tie the Knot.

Now before you rush off to the store to buy yourself a pinstripe suit and and order that striped bow tie, you should know that these men are sartorial professionals.  You might sprain yourself trying to make that look good on you.  I will note, however, that next time Tim Gunn wears a tie, he should try one a little less wide and maybe a bit fuller.  I think he might find that more flattering.

The challenge this week was to take bow ties from Ferguson's collection and use them as both material and inspiration for an outfit.  There was no particular guidance on whether that outfit had to be red carpet worthy, avant garde or ready-to-wear.  Usually, when there's no guidance like this, historically, designers that decide to do conceptual art pieces are going to get the axe. That almost happened here had it not been for someone's unruly temper and complete misunderstanding of the judging and competition process.

A little bit about that.

First of all, Sandro was really struggling with the criticism he got from Zac Posen in the last challenge.  Almost to a judge--Tim included-- the main critique was that there were too many design elements in his garments.  He needed to focus on one or two key things and do them well.   So rather than explain what judges usually mean by the concept of "editing," Tim did Sandro no favors by telling him to "be himself."

"I call you 'Top Gunn' ok?  Not like that nasty Zac Posen."

So Sandro sent out this outfit

and was safe.

Digest that for a moment.  He. Was. Safe.

Safe.

"Listen, before I leave, I have question.  My dress, is it 'too much?' What do you think of it, Mr. Zac Posen?"

You know, at first I thought that this could be sort of an interesting tactic.  What would happen if more safe designers just mutinied and asked for some helpful critique so that they could gain an edge in the next challenge?

"Frankly, I thought it was overworked, referential, and poorly constructed."

Sandro honed in on the word "referential."  Plaudits to Sandro, by the way, for his incredible comprehension of fashion English, which is really some of the most ridiculous English ever concocted.  He snapped.  All of a sudden, he started to compare every copy of anything that anyone has ever done, any inspiration or homage, to what he was producing, week after week.

Really?  You think that highly of the schlock you churn out in less than a day on a shoestring budget on a contest show?

Here's how design contests work.  You try to produce good work with one hand tied behind your back and the judges will critique you as if you had a whole studio of assistants.  Do they not have these kind of impossible TV contests in Russia?  Can't you just be thankful that you're not standing in the middle of a circle of flame while the judges tell you that your garment sucks?

Apparently not.

Sandro is number one!

Which leads me to my favorite part of the Bunim-Murray coverage of the Sandro meltdown.

"Do you not believe I'm NUMBER ONE?"

Not only do we get the Lifetime Modesty Pixelation....

....but they have to pixelate a close up.

For whom, exactly, did Bunim-Murray think they were producing this show that they needed to zero in on a close up of Sandro's finger?  Is Weinstein Company planning to issue some uncensored, "Pay Per View" event?

In any case, he walked out.  In the exit process, he ripped down a curtain, pushed aside some editors, threw stuff around and hit a camera.

Do svidanya, Sandro.  Less talented and capable people than him managed to make it further along in Project Runway.  They had something he didn't: control of their emotions.  I'm not exactly sure what Sandro's problems are, but I do hope he overcomes them.  Fashion does not need another crazy hothead.  There are plenty.

The producers have been hyping this meltdown for weeks.  The show opened with his heated argument with the other safe designers.  In fact, the entire narrative of the show was constructed around this meltdown.  What was lost, was the point of the challenge, which was to highlight marriage equality.  I'm sad for Jesse Tyler Ferguson and all of the intelligent discussions that occurred amongst the designers on this issue.  Had it not been for someone's egotistical meltdown, the producers could have created a very moving show that opened with the tie as metaphor, closed with "tying the knot" as personal narrative, with some powerful personal testimony in between.

But all of that was lost in the Sandro Shuffle.

Chasing that Emmy?  Sandro walked off with it.

As for those that remained in the competition, I was highly disappointed.

Helen

The way Helen explains it, should she receive any criticism at any time from anyone, she completely falls apart.  She had an idea, Tim gave her some advice and all of a sudden, she had no idea left.  If her creative process is so fragile, she'll be gone soon.  It's hard to invest much time and interest--in the context of this show--in someone so unstable.

Alexandria

Her work is very cerebral.  It's just not grabbing the judges week after week.  The fit on this is really weird and unflattering.  There are some good ideas here, just not the best ones this week.  Furthermore, in a tie challenge that presented some colorful and whimsical options, this seems kind of bland.

Justin

I am profoundly disappointed in Justin this week.  This is a gorgeous dress.  The lines are very flattering, including the side panels that flare out the skirt.  It's a tie challenge, however.  Ties are that pop of color and style that can elevate a plain suit.  Why, then, create a plain dress that fades into the background?  It should have been a canvas to showcase the tie material in an eye-popping way.  Color would have helped.  Perhaps a wider band of material as well.  He was safe because he was boring, which is sad, because the dress is so well made.

Karen

Let's ignore the pants and the migrating top for a minute.  The first thing that hit me was a flashback to Melanie Griffith in Working Girls.  Unfortunately for Karen, the fit of the pants is off and what should have hugged the model and kept the top in place, began to repel the top completely, leaving a mess of wrinkles around the midsection.

Ken

Ken spent the most time lecturing Sandro, as if Sandro was capable of absorbing a lecture on "respecting the judges" in the emotional soup in which his brain was stewing.  That wasn't his only fool's errand this challenge.  The other was this dress. He made the same mistakes as Justin this week, but with a much less flattering dress.  He used the tie material as piping in the seams of the leather dress.  Unfortunately, he paired it with the fabric top, which makes it look cheap and cobbled together.  I know that right now, millions of women are walking around in a dress that has a jersey neck and shoulder piece attached to the rest of a dress made out of other material.  It's a way for the industry to sell us half an expensive dress but still charge us for the whole expensive dress and look ridiculous in the process.  It looks like an upcycled dress you can buy on Etsy.

Alexander

Believe it or not, this was not called out with a low score.  Perhaps it was because it reminded them of the tie display at Macy's.  She looks like a clown in an ill-fitting, black jumpsuit.

Jeremy

Jeremy's husband's grandmother died during this phase of the competition and he was unable to attend the funeral.  These life events are sad, indeed.  While he seemed so broken up about something that was happening to his husband we were presented with very little context.  Did Grandma raise his husband like a mother?  Were they really close?  Did she come to family dinners?  Was she supportive of his marriage when no one else was?  We don't know these things.  Perhaps they were lost in the digital trashbin in favor of the drama, which is a shame because the whole show was supposed to focus on marriage equality.  What better way to promote marriage equality than to show that real life gay marriages are just like real life straight ones?

As it was, Jeremy's tribute to his husband's grandmother ended up making the model look like Jeremy's husband's grandmother.  Heidi, in particular, wasn't pleased at all.

Zac: "I'm especially offended that with an outfit that is supposed to be more mature, you show her belly eye."

Zac, grow up.  It's called a navel.

Sue

"I put together the ties into an exoskeleton."

I'm not sure Sue grasps the concept of exoskeleton.  A skeleton is a supporting structure.  Exo- means outside.  If this were really an exoskeleton, it would have provided support for the dress in some way--through boning or seaming.

This was an overlay.  It would have been more successful had it been more sewn together.  The shape of the bow tie lends itself to sewing the fat pieces together and playing with the negative space.  Had Sue done something like that, she would have been safe.  Instead, it was attached a bit in the front, a bit in the back and a bit toward some of the bottom pieces.  It was barely constructed and had no visual purpose.  The model looked like a black tuna caught in a seaweed net.

Miranda

Third suit in a row?  It's not a bad suit at all, it's just that Miranda is pigeon-holing herself.  The point of the challenge was to showcase and pay homage to the bow tie.  I think I know what Miranda was trying to do.  She picked the houndstooth fabric because it looks like little bow ties.  Then, she was going to make a blouse that featured the bow tie in a looser way.  The trouble is, that houndstooth fabric has a tendency to read matronly.  By picking such a strong pattern, she is then limited to using the tie material in the blouse so the blouse is forced to be the edgy element.  I think she should have stayed away from the houndstooth and stuck to a more neutral suiting material.  She could have then showcased the tie fabric in the suit itself (pocket, lapel and sleeve details) playing to her strengths and she would have struggled less with the top.

Kate

Kate cleverly played with menswear this week.

The ties form the strapping materials.  In the back, she used brace straps.  The leather in the pants forms a bow tie shape.  Had the top been a little less flowy and more fitted and visually tied-in with the pants, this could have won.

Dom

No doubt, this was a very well constructed, fun dress.  I supersized it so that you could see the details of how she put the stripped material together.  I was really disappointed with the slapped on tie mess in the front.  Had the ties been actually incorporated into the dress construction (in the center horizontal strip in the front and back, for example, some of the pieced detailing in the front, and even the shoulder caps) rather than slapped on, I would have been cheering from the cheap seats.

Bradon

"And in the front I used a technique called 'faggoting'

to join the pieces together.  It's kind of a play on words."

"That is so brilliant!  I don't know if you're a good designer or not, but I do know that you're clever enough to write for Modern Family!"

Bradon made a funny!  He also made the most beautiful piece on the runway--that top.  He did the exact opposite of what Miranda did.  He made an arresting top and paired it with a pedestrian suit.

Unfortunately for me, the suit material was so heavy and weirdly colored, that you couldn't see that he had detailed the pockets of the shorts with some of the tie fabric.  I would have preferred a lighter material.  Nevertheless, he was the winner this week.

Totally caught up in the moment, he proposed to his partner on live taped two months ago television.  Then he told his partner about it over Skype right afterward.  Coinkydinkly, it happened to be the VERY SAME DAY the Supreme Court struck down California's Proposition 8.

Again...the whole unfortunate Sandro meltdown turned a tender, heartfelt ending into tacked-on treacle.  It was the television version of Dom's dress--so much potential had the elements been better integrated.

When the show focuses on the wrong things--the drama in this case--it loses perspective on the important things.  The producers are not that different from the designers in that respect.  Perhaps they need a Tim Gunn in the editing room to help them focus on what is important.  Then, maybe they will win that Emmy.

Next week, despite what Heidi says, it's the THIRD unconventional materials challenge this season and this time, in teams of three.  Tears abound.