Runway Jury: It's Over, Johnny

August 02, 2024

PWEVIOUSWY ON PWOJECT WUNWAY: Blah, blah pretty dresses, crazy dresses, auf, auf, auf, Irina, Carol Hannah, Althea.

We open in the golden light of the girls’ apartment, where Carol Hannah tries to brush her teeth while Althea and Irina gossip about her over breakfast. Althea informs Irina that “Carol Hannah got really sick last night” and Irina says, “Really? Why?” Because she’s SICK like she was YESTERDAY, you self-obsessed twit.

They meet up with their aufed minions in the workroom — Logan gives the rocky and barfy Carol Hannah a hug and interviews sympathetically about her situation; Christopher is kind to her as well. The designers go to hair and makeup.

The one and only Collier Strong meets with Irina, who shows him the helmety mohawky cloches she’s made for her models. She wants dark shadows.

But wait! Althea wants dirty” glamour — “almost, like, smudged,” as Collier digs out ye olde kohl pots again. Carol Hannah wants soft and pretty, because she’s made of unicorns and rainbows and kittens.

COLD, HARD STEAL
Back in the workroom, Tim Gunn comes in to look at Irina’s 13th look and her crazy little hats. (Which are kind of chic. So help me; her stuff looks pretty great.) He asks after her makeup choices, and she moves in with the “muddy, dark” look.

But wait! He visits Althea’s 13th look, with finely tailored khaki paints and a dramatic leather jacket with bold shoulders. She’s also really excited about the makeup, which is going to be a bit “messy, smudged, like she slept on it for a day.”

“That sounds like what Irinia was telling me,” Tim muses. “Is that true?” Irina’s all, wha? I dunno know (thief thief thief). Tim Gunn knows it doesn’t really matter, even though he worries the girls will look as if they came out of the same factory — but, “This will resolve itself,” he says. Irina takes the opportunity to say, “That’s Althea” with a bitchy little shrug while Tim is talking. Irina invented the smoky eye, y’all! That girl is a genius.

Tim then visits Carol Hannah’s 13th look — a gorgeous dusty blue gown with asymmetrical draping from one shoulder.

“Work hard; get some rest!” he advises them oxymoronically.

RUSH TO THE FINISH LINE
We see them working hard but not getting any rest. There is panicking, fussing and sewing. Irina pushes Gordana around, breaking the poor woman’s spirit. “I know you saw me walking with coffee,” Gordana mewls. “But I really am working.”

You owe her nothing, babe. The only option is sabotage — go to Collier Strong and tell him Irina wants all the models’ makeup unsmudged. Mwahahaha!

Panic in the dressing room. Zippers break and models gape as Tim Gunn urges the designers to get their ladies dressed and in line. It seems none of these broads are ready to start the show, and Tim has veritable smoke coming out of his ears as he helplessly urges them to dress their freaking models and get them out on the runway.

URBAN WARRIORS, FUTURE CHICKS AND FAIRY TALES
Heidi emerges in the shocking pink tight shiny suit that’s been horrifying us “PR”-haunters from the time the pics of her at the finale were leaked while the show was held hostage. She introduces iconic American designer Michael Kors, the lovely and beautiful Nina Garcia “and Suzy Menkes.” Wow, way to dismiss one of fashion’s most influential figures, the fashion editor for the International Herald Tribune.

Althea comes out with her dumb Valley Girl voices and frumpy boots, says she was inspired by sci-fi movies from the ’50s and ’60s and how they saw the future, and wants to show what the woman of today would wear tomorrow. It’s a cool idea; if only her talent was on par with her vision.

Sloppy sweaters that look hella cozy, skinny leather pants, a close-fitting black dress, those khaki pants with the leather jacket, which looks great. She works in grays, blacks and whites, throwing in a shiny white pantsuit — she’s doing really fun things with proportions of her trousers — and everything looks like of tough and modem, if not science fictionish. The palette is broken up by one charming green knit dress. The final look is a milky-coffee sheath that’s really nice. A surprisingly strong showing from Little Miss Stickyfingers.

Carol Hannah looks really pretty in a blue dress over leggings that mimics her 13th outfit. The first look is a nude pleated satin dress with bold is-that-velvet? strips and a skirt parted and draped like curtains. There’s a crazy black tutu thing with a black turtleneck, a deep violet square-neck tunic with Santinolike rope braiding all over, over skinny black pants, the same dress in a gown version, a gorgeous black cocktail dress with lampshade-like proportions. Her most controversial and, I think, most interesting look is the lampshade dress done in a cloud of fluffy gray that shoots out over the hips and narrows in layers toward the knee. She does another, clown-car version of in black that’s devastatingly sexy. The blue gown is a hit, as is a beautiful pale-gold strapless cocktail dress with a brown velvet ribbon belt. The final gown — a version of her Getty Museum dress — looks a little student-project amid all that fabulousness. Really, really nice, overall. But it’s a bunch of pretty dresses.

Irina drones, “This collection is about New York home is where the heart is,” and then starts whining about how hard it is to survive in this city as a woman and it’s about comforting and shielding yourself and just going at it. Huh? What happened to the woman arrior? Then she gives that atrocious little laugh that says, “Isn’t it cute how inarticulate I am? I know! I am so cute.”

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So this foul, unprepared intro ushers in an astoundingly strong collection, alas. Almost everything is black, from knee-high boots to huge, protective sweaters with leather touches everywhere, including bags and accessories. She’s got a great top cut in a wide square neck that’s really sexy; even her cocktail dresses are tough and cool and look great with the hats and high, sleek ponytails. I’m not crazy about the T-shirt (she ditched her stupid “Conney Island” shirts — seriously; that’s how she tried to get around the copyright issue — and used text from New York magazine, which smells just as illegal — but Irina seems to understand the market, and she’s working sportswear as well as clubwear, couture and, in the case of her lovely, ominous final black gown, formal as well.

MOMMY ISSUES
I’m afraid that Carol Hannah is this year’s Chloe Dao, but the show has decided that, after forcing the designers to do week after week of pretty dresses, that winning the show is not about pretty, saleable looks, but chic and marketability. And any other season, I would applaud that decision. Jay deserved to win Season 1; Santino sent the most interesting collection down the runway in Season 2 (and lost to Chloe).

It’s funny, the judges natter on about cohesiveness and point of view, but their own criteria are not consistent from season to season, or even episode to episode.

The problem is twofold — I like real working designers to emerge from this show. I’ve given Emmett McCarthy‘s EMc2 line a good chunk of my dough. The fact that they often flounder after their season ends is disappointing, but I suppose makes the outcome moot. Jay McCarroll has a dorky little line of T-shirts and hippie bags on his Web site; Santino Rice has a blog; Laura Bennett is on sale at QVC; Chloe went back to her shop in Houston with a shrug. They go from hardworking designers to famous-for-being-famous, judging on other reality competitions and popping up at fashion shows.

The other problem is I frackin’ hate Irina.

JUDGE NOT — OH, GO ON AND JUDGE
Kors points out to Irina that the idea of the warrior woman isn’t new, but Suzie likes the coherence of the story. Which is an excellent point. She’s very gracious, that Suzy Menkes. She’s the new Fern Mallis. Heidi thinks the collection looked very finished and expensive for the budget ($9,000) — that’s because ace seamstress Gordana did all the intricate work. Heidi, of course, does not give Gordana one thimbleful of credit, even though she knows Irina’s execution can be wobbly. They take her to task for creating an entirely black collection, and Nina points out that all-black clothes, even with texture contrasts, are an editorial liability. “We talked about this,” she warns Irina, who smugs, “Mm-hm.”

Carol Hannah says she wanted to play with volume, and boy howdy, did she. Nina loved the amazing first look and calls it “spirited”; Heidi loves the blue gown and is impressed that it was run up in the last two days. Suzy homes in on the V-shaped gray cloud as interesting and technical. But Heidi and Michael aren’t seeing a point of view.

Althea rambles about her futuristic vision, but Kors loves that so much of the collection is sportswear and separates. Nina dug the knit green dress. Heidi wants to own the tacky metallic strapless top, but Kors pulls it back to the great khaki jodhpurs and casual leather jacket. Suzy once again cuts to the chase — there is no futurism in the actual clothes.

DADDY ISSUES
Carol Hannah is out, and she is ever so charming and sweet about her experience on the show. Her lovely family give her hugs. Then it’s down to the Sisters Steal. The judges don’t bother with Althea, just hand the win to Irina, who cries. Or pretends to cry. At this point, I don’t believe she has a single real emotion, just a monstrous cry of “Me, me, me!” Oh, and, “Daddy, did I do enough to please you this time? Did I?” So maybe she was really crying. Who cares? I can’t wear leather pants anyway.

In her outgoing interview, she graciously agress that she “deserves a pat on the back.” But in the end, Daddy comes through, so I guess all her selfishness and bitchery was worth it. Good job, Dad.

NEXT JANUARY
What, you didn’t know? Season 7 is in the can and is waiting to be unleashed on an increasingly uninterested public. But first, Heidi has to lose 20 pounds. Can’t wait to see what real-women challenges look like next season.

See you in the New Year, poodles!

Photos courtesy Lifetime

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