Mood:
loudTopic: Project Runway Canada II
As Canwest Global fills the news outlets with stories of impending bankruptcy, their own airwaves are filled with previews of their one bona fide international hit. This week's challenge on Project Runway Canada Season II is a spectacular red carpet dress for an international supermodel. Also -as the non-stop previews tell us -the mean girls are ganging up on Jessica. This season has almost caricatured heroes and bad guys defined in broad brush-strokes; they are mean, they say mean things and we are told they are mean. Between the broad characterizations and all the advance hype I am reminded of comic books! The heroes are good because we are told they are good, the bad guys are painted in broad strokes with few nuances, and the hype is over the top. It's so over the top it's like when Marvel or DC releases special comic book series that you know will be re-released as a special trade paperback graphic novel someday. Even the challenges title reads like it's a comic book. So we shall treat this episode like it's a special series of comic books: Part one: The Return of The Challenge!
Opening panels: day dawns over Ottawa and the city slowly wakens as it always does, unaware at the festering troubles in the Designer's mansion. Tensions have been building (see last issue! ed.) and some are close to breaking point. (see issue 4,5 6 and 7. ed.) The designers are waking and breakfasting in the increasingly empty designer's mansion, Kim is upset because Jason is gone, everyone else is talking about Kim being upset because Jason is gone, and Kim decides to take out her hurt feelings on Jessica because that's what mean girls do: take out their negative feelings on people who were never responsible or involved in the first place. Character development takes three panels, plot development takes four panels.
The designers head to the studio, take their seats and Iman makes her entrance. She's in a leopard print bustier and basic jeans, if by basic you mean 700$ Gaultier five pocket selvage jeans. There's a theme to Iman's entrances: in the beginning she's dressed in casual denim fashions and on the day of the show she's wearing something that best exemplifies, interprets, and demonstrates the week's challenge. The babies stop bawling, I mean the designers stop whining long enough to pick their models. To the surprise of absolutely no one they all keep their models.
The challenge is return of the Superhero...no "The Return of the Supermodel" The designers must create a spectacular red carpet outfit for this week's "It" girl Coco Rocha, who will wear the dress to a red carpet event during New York Fashion Week. Their muse is waiting for them and she gives the designers a briefing on her personal style and what she likes.
She likes feminine and sexy. She doesn't mind exposing her legs and her back, but she doesn't want to feel undressed and doesn't want excessive exposure. This is fashion week in New York so the dress must be cutting edge, chic and sophisticated. She also says she's quite enamoured with Tudor, Victorian and Elizabethan era clothes with ruffles and volume, but she doesn't want a costume. She wants something that will make her stand out from the crowd.
The designers are given a budget of two hundred dollars and thirty minutes to shop. There's the usual flurry of flying fabrics, grabbing at notions and unrolling of bolts. It's all quite fascinating to me, but likely boring to anyone not obsessed with fabric stores. They show Jessica unrolling yards of reddish-plum taffeta and they focus on Adejoke, whose is neither excited nor enthusiastic about the challenge; indeed her spirit has been broken by being in the bottom two lest episode. We break for a commercial and the little coming up bit makes me think of comic book style lettering saying "Next ish: When Mean Girls attack!!"
The show returns after commercials in which I run and get a skirt that I am in the process of covering in sequins. The skirt will be heavy, but it will be spectacular. One can never have too many sequins on a boho skirt. They seem to be focusing on Kim. Once again she whines, complains, bitches and snips up everyone while not focusing on her own design. Genevieve also whines and complains. Jessica has dropped all of the act and is focused on the challenge, what it involves and what it means. We switch to the sewing room where Sunny is doing his best impression of Crusty the Clown in an attempt to lighten the mood. Jessica confesses that she is mortally terrified of clowns. She's obviously more freaked out by Sunny's Crusty the Clown laugh than she is by the attack of the mean girls.
Brian, also know as The Galactic Guardian, arrives for a bit of wise mentoring. He has yet to come up with anything as memorable as make it work, but he tries his best. He knows what to say and when to say it, and he knows when to reign in an overly exuberant designer and when to let them go design-crazy. His comments are as follows:
Genevieve: He likes it so far, but tells her to keep the skirt drapery under control. My television sees her skirt fabric as khaki/sandy silk. That's a little bland and not a stand out colour.
Jessica is told to be careful about the fullness at the hips. She seems to be making a taffeta prom dress with a pleated cross between a tulip skirt and a bubble skirt. It's not bad, but it's not overly original.
Kim: Brian does not like the hip detail and he says the proportions are a bit off. I love her rich black and white brocade. It's obviously a costly fabric and she doesn't seem to have much of it. If I were Kim I'd discard the hip detail, make a pencil skirt on a skinny darted bodice and add plenty of crystal organza details and trims in black and white, maybe adding some well placed ruffles and frills, like the Elizabethans did.
Adejoke needs a wise a kindly mentoring. He tries to build her enthusiasm while telling her that her dress is a bit to basic and needs jazzing up. He want her to go a bit more over the top. She gets a bit more of a pep talk.
Sunny: ???? No Sunny? Obviously he doesn't need Brian's help, or the producers want his winning design to be a surprise.
The designers have two more hours and we are given close ups of everyone at sewing machines. I can here the whine of Adejoke's 20U motor in the background and Jessica is hunched over the CG590. Kim is intently sewing on a domestic model Singer. To me it symbolizes their abilities as designers. The two best -Adejoke and Sunny -use the industrial 20U. The less adept but still professional Genevieve and Jessica use the commercial grade machines. Kim has confessed she's less technically skilled as the others uses the much easier but far slower domestic Singer. You can buy this machine anywhere, the CG is available only at dealers, and you need an speciality dealer for the industrial.
Designers, tailors, dressmakers, and dry cleaners prefer industrials. Fast industrials make sewing anything fast and efficient. They hold fabric far tighter and there's no wiggly seams and no fabric slippage. If you adjust the presser foot lighter you can use the feed dogs to ease a sleeve cap into an armhole with no advance gathering or ease stitching. You can do a 2:1 ease with no puckering or problems. It also has more needle varieties than anyone could ever use, and mine can be set up for free motion thread painting embroidery.
While the machines hum Mean Girls Genevieve and Kim plot, plan, conspire and whine about Jessica. They return to the mansion and as the night grows dark around them Kim and Genevieve continue to hatch nefarious plots against our good guys. They still continue to pick everyone apart as the scene goes dark. Change font to comic book lettering: Coming next issue: Genevieve's nervous breakdown! Kim battles the wiggly seam monster! And the return of Brian, the Galactic Guardian!
Morning dawns and the designers are hard at work finishing up. Jessica now discovers her prom dress is too tight to fit over her dress form. She goes back to her worktable and Brian enters with the models.
Kim: she has fit and construction issues and rather than concentrate on her own problems she focuses on Jessica and what she's doing.
Genevieve is very intense, her eyes are once again doing the popping out her head thing.
Sunny has a very good black chiffon thing over a black under-dress. It's quite chic, has ruffles and doesn't have a corset top. He looks like a winner as his model gets her hair and make-up done.
Genevieve continues to freak as her zipper malfunctions. This leads to a complete meltdown. Brian tells her to sew her model into her dress using a whipstitch. She looks at him like he's speaking Klingon.
Adejoke is still looking defeated and says that the challenge sucks.
Coming in Part Three of our superhero supermodel limited edition stand alone series available only in special comic dealer shops: The stunning climax! Will Will Genevieve's dress fall apart? Will Jessica's model be able to walk? Will Sunny win again? Will Adejoke's broken spirit be made whole again? All will be revealed in out next exiting issue! Excelsior True believers!
It's time for the show and Iman introduces the judges. She is wearing a black and white dress that's short, draped and would win the challenge. There's Shawn Hewson, he's our lovable but bumbling second banana sidekick, there for laughs but he has no real impact on the outcome of our story. Next is Rita Robot. She looks human from the outside, but she has a deep dark secret that is hidden from all who know her: she's really a robot from the planet Braniac. Next we have the star of our comic book, The SuperModel! She returns in the next to last issue to Save The Day!
Genevieve shows and white top and sandy/khaki draped taffeta skirt. It's a bit plain and we've seen her do the same skirt before. This time it's a bit more sack like on the bottom
Sunny shows a sheer black chiffon dress over a black satin minidress under. the under-dress is a bit too short, but the chiffon overdress is wonderful, it has ruffles, gathering and it looks chic and original
Jessica shows her prom dress. It's not bad, but the back should have been lower, supermodels don't need to wear bras so there's no need to cover that part of the back. The bottom is a bit clunky. It looks a little familiar. Didn't we see it in issue 6 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series The Doll House worn by Rose Walker? Or did we see it in Le Château last prom season?
Adejoke: For a broken spirit, she did pretty good. The fabric is nice, the construction is good, the front is nice, again with a lower back it would have been quite special. Second or third place?
Kim: Love the luxe brocade fabric, hate all the bulky pleating at the hips. The fit is a little off at the sides. her model's torso is a straight tube, not a cone tapering at the waist, so the under-bust is too wide. This is a common problem as pattern making books assume everyone is a cone from shoulder to waist. Some are tubes, not cones.
One awkward film splice/panel transition later the designers are on the runway defending their designs.
Supermodel likes Jessica's until she sees that the hem band is too narrow to walk in. Models need walking room. I know I have seen this shape before. If this were Project Runway USA Nina Garcia would haul Jessica's butt to the carpet over the old lady colour choice. Nina Garcia has called that dark red old lady looking every time she's seen it used on the US show.
All the judges love Sunny's design, calling it sexy, witty, flowy, they too would have liked the under dress a bit longer, but Iman is sold on it being perfect for New York Fashion Week.
Adejoke's dress is a moderate success, They like the top part but they thought she could have taken the design elements further. The think it's cute and Iman loves the streamlined look of the dress.
They think Genevieve's dress isn't fashion forward, not red carpet worthy, a little plain, and far too heavy on the bottom and too much like everything else she's done.
Kim's dress is called clumsy, heavy, rich fabric but poor fabrication, Iman says it isn't fashion week worthy. The designers are dismissed as the judges deliberate.
They quickly decide they they love Sunny's dress in spite of the fact it's too short. They keep mentioning that over and over and over. They thought Jessica's dress fell a little short of the mark. They Liked the Victorian feel of Adejoke's dress, but hated the back. Not quite perfect. They decide Genevieve is too one note, her dress was over-draped and looked too much like a pageant dress and not enough like a fashion dress. Someone said "the skirt was bunchy for the sake of being bunchy" They all thought Kim's dress was droopy, bulky and not well made. my comment: she needs to spend more time on her own dress and less time snipping at everyone else. Coming next: The final issue! The Judgement! The Winner! The Loser! And: Is this the end of The Mean Girls?
We're back after a brief commercial break. I'm tired of sewing sequins. I've gone through one pack of 300 and that's enough for one evening. The designers are once again on the runway and the winner is announced. Sunny wins with his witty and sophisticated black dress. Jessica is second, and they say she and her dress were "safe" which is a bit of an insult, safe is sometimes considered "bland" Adejoke is third and I cheer loudly. Remaining are The Mean Girls. The mean girls, together where they belong. the camera lingers lovingly on the two of them as they prepare to be punished for their crimes against the viewers who have had to suffer through this nonsense for several weeks. They tell Genevieve she's made too many dresses the same, and they tell Kim her dress suffered from messy execution. In the end Mean Girl Genevieve is gone, and Mean Girl Kim is in. Mean girl Kim is now lonely girl Kim, and if the others gang up on her it's her own damn fault.
In the confession booth Genevieve tells us she's still a fabulous designer and this won't break her spirit, while Kim tells us she's sad. Kim has done nothing but stir up the hornets and now she's stuck alone in the nest with angry hornets and no allies. Nor does she have a can of Raid. You can't do what she's spent all her time doing and not expect some type of denouement. Karma's bitch and will bite you in the butt every time.
They show Coco Rocha wearing her dress on a very windy cold evening going into some night club. Then come the previews for next week: The remaining four are shown with backpacks and tents. CAMPING! Talk about a Made in Canada segment! I love camping! After so much stress that would be so peaceful and relaxing and inspiring! I love being out in the forest with the wild animals, wild flowers, and eating wild mushrooms! Yummy! It looks like chanterelle season, they are sweat and delicate with a slight fruity flavour. Sleeping outside listening to the insects chirping the the frogs trilling and the owls hooting is so relaxing, the sound puts me into a deep and dreamless sleep. I love the outdoors, nothing phases me, not even the lack of flush toilets. Just direct me to the nearest shrubbery, give me some birch bark and we have nature's bathroom! In addition, two previous contestants are returned which makes sense as two contestants dropped out in the first episode. I wonder which one hates camping, the outdoors and everything associated with the great outdoors. I'm sure at least one hates camping!
