Sunday, September 26, 2010

PR: Top Two

WHAT the...?


Darlings, the Disco Cupcake Fairy will soon be coming your way, ready to hand out cocaine-laced goodies for everyone.

Or, if you don't want to go that route, try this one: Jessica Fletcher stumbles across a murder mystery when a model, who is a friend of one of her thousands of nieces, gets murdered. This is what someone's wearing in the background while Jessica questions the photographer who may or may not have slept with the dead girl.

It's like a cliche of what people think high fashion is. Like something out of Zoolander.

Obviously, that probably wasn't Andy's intent. We think he's a talented and thoughtful designer with something to say.

But we also think he found himself at a loss for words and kind of defaulted to a "I'll do something over the top" position.

Christian Siriano used to do the same thing in the competition and things worked out well for him in the end, so who are we to criticize? Well, we're T Lo. We criticize.

Honestly, we don't hate it. We just think it's kind of silly looking and doesn't offer anything new. It's just the kind of thing the judges tend to respond to.


We think the styling - the hat, boot-pants, the makeup and hair - is what really excited the judges. For a makeup ad, all of this works well, we have to admit.

We don't get this look at all and we don't get the judges' praise for it.

It's a pretty damn basic dress and that glitter fabric isn't as interesting as they seemed to think.

In fact, it looked a little cheap.

It's not an awful dress, however. We like the shape of it quite a bit. We just didn't think it warranted the praise the judges heaped on it.

And ultimately, we think it was a bit far from his high end look. We realize the two looks weren't supposed to resemble each other, but usually one can expect some sort of design echo. This is just black and shiny. No pleating or red to be seen, no hat or boots. You would think since he piled on so many design elements in the high end look he'd have a more interesting RTW look.

Tim Gunn's Workroom:


Extended Judging:



Since we've already brought Jessica Fletcher into the conversation, we might as well go whole hog and lapse into fantasy. In the middle of praising this look to the heavens, the judges are surprised by our sudden appearance on the Project Runway set. "Alright, bitches," we say to the judging panel, "Time to put your money where your mouth is. Kors, Garcia, Klum, you're with me. Gretchen, grab your model and let's go."

Then we are magically whisked away to a photographer's studio where we force Nina, Michael, and Heidi to utilize this highly praised look to make an eye-catching modern-looking "advertorial" suitable for L'Oreal and for publication in a fashion magazine.

"Chop! chop!," we'll say. "Better get to it, bitches! You said you loved it, so it shouldn't be a problem for you, right?"

Tim Gunn happily helps out by locking them in the studio and ensuring they only get water every couple of hours. He will be impervious to their tears. "I am impervious to your tears," he will say with glee.

After they are all dead from stress, exhaustion, and starvation, we can rest assured our point will have been made.

Since Tim has made "crack-smoking judges" more popular than we ever could, we'll have to come up with something new to describe this phenomenon wherein fashion professionals open their mouths and say the most patently ridiculous and unbelievable things. We'll take a page from Rachel Zoe, who puts the word "fashion" in front of everything, and just call it "Fashion Tourette's."



It's like the poor things can't help themselves. Faced with an array of shitty dresses, their beauty-seeking fashion minds lock in on a couple of promising details - feathers! velvet! - and the next thing you know they're praising a shitty ren faire outfit like it's the second coming of Coco Chanel.

Then, having worked themselves into an orgiastic fervor, they turn their sights on a simple first year accounting associate who has student loans to pay off and a limited wardrobe budget and fall all over her as if Dovima herself has come down from heaven astride an elephant.

Puzzled, she responds to their praise, "But I just got this from Kohl's. At a fire sale. It still smells like smoke."

The judges will have none of it. "It has a slit skirt!" they cry. "Never before have we seen such a thing!"

Alright, we're being bitches. It's actually a cute enough outfit. We love the skirt fabric.

And it does move beautifully, although we want to take Gretchen by the shoulders and yell "NO MORE MULLET SKIRTS."



But come ON. It's pretty freaking basic.

And also doesn't seem to owe much to the high end design. Honestly, we don't know how anyone could have turned that 19th century fortune teller's costume into something you could buy off a rack, but hey, we're not the ones who came up with it.


Tim Gunn's Workroom:


Extended Judging:

[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com - Video Credit: myLifetime.com - Photo Credit: Barbara Nitke/myLifetime.com]

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