“Project Runway” — Fashion Giant
I don’t think that necktie is fitting properly.
Suits! Being my first go-round with Project Runway I wasn’t sure if menswear was something the show has ever tackled. So I called my friend Kim to ask if this is something they’d done before, to which she said, “Um… not sure. I don’t think so though.” Good enough for me. Either way it was to my great enjoyment this week the challenge was not only to make something for a guy, but to make something for a specific guy: Tiki Barber — who only Kevin (the straight one) seemed to think was cool. The use of male models, however, well that had the rest of the group pretty damn excited. More after the jump…
I don’t know a damn thing about fashion, but feel like (generally speaking) I’m pretty good at building things. There is no way I could ever design, say, a dress, but I’m fairly confident if I had a pattern I could put one together. The opposite would have to be true of a suit. I mean, I put on a sport jacket every damn day and yet I have absolutely no idea how one would even attempt to make such a thing, let alone make it fit properly (which might explain why so few of my clothes actually fit in the first place). Either way our contestants seemed utterly baffled by this challenge as so few had ever done any designing for men (in a way I find this kind of astonishing, but then again when it comes to design, there really isn’t a lot of ground to be broken. Men have been wearing some form of “the suit” for probably the past millennium and perhaps part of the charm of this lies in the rigidity of the design. Dresses, on the other hand, there is a whole lot more room for creativity).
Strategically, this was one of those episodes where you don’t want to win, but instead complete the assignment as simply as possible so as not to be called out. The thing is, even if it ends up looking boring at least your model will be fully clothed, which ultimately sent Carmen packing (but not packing her knives, that would be a different show). Kevin was the only person who turned in a complete outfit (outfit?) and did so with a very specific stylized look (did his un-gayness allow this to happen? Well that or perhaps some of the magic he is inevitably hiding in his crazy beard fell out onto the cutting board). Unfortunately for him it was perhaps too stylized for Mr. Barber who prefers to be more conservatively dressed (and who, just from my observation during football press conferences, enjoys wearing neck ties with knots the size of casaba melons — which I believe is actually the mysterious Quintuple Windsor).
I will say I’m glad Sweet P and her mostly awesome tats didn’t get eliminated, and it was nice to have an episode that wasn’t wholly focused on Elisa’s batshit insanity (though I find it suspect/hilarious/huh? that she refused to look at her model in his underwear. What did she think would happen? She designs clothes for crying out loud. Is she aware that people don’t continually add layers to themselves for all of eternity, but instead choose to shed one layer in favor of another? Curious.
And of course, the line of the week had to be when Christian saw Tiki’s wife and said, “Asians are fierce.” Yes, Christian, they certainly are.
Tags: Bravo, Project Runway
