Another week, another Project Runway melange of the good, the bad and the ugly. The premise behind this week's challenge was all good, with designers tasked to create gowns for the Go Red for Women heart disease charity fashion show, to be modeled by the inspiring women who have dealt firsthand with heart disease.
Spoiler alert! Herein we discuss the winners and the losers, so proceed at your own risk.
We should start out by expressing our non-professional opinion that red is hard, man. It's hard to wear without looking, shall we say, fast, and we imagine the same goes for designing. Certain designers -- read: Jesus, the one that lost -- proved that and others, led by winner Amy, proved it wrong.
Amy's gown relied on its bright color to carry the entirety of the design challenge, with its silhouette prettily playing it safe. It made her model glow and worked her curves in all the right places, while somehow managing to billow and subtly ruffle around her. Jesus, on the other hand. Oh, Jesus. He'd been slowly walking this plank for the past three episodes as his discostick-divorcee numbers continued to horrify the judges. Ascribing the mad reds to his look was the straw that broke the camel's back, and he was sent home.
There was one little condition we'd forgotten to mention - not only did the designers have to make a red dress, they had to infuse them with Campbell's Soup branding, the charity's sponsor. It's a pop-art gimme, but Warhol references were non-existent. Seth Aaron wove a soup-can trim into a demure plaid-like pattern on a simple but sassy short tea length frock, while Mila stayed true to her ebulliently mod self and jazzed up an evening gown with a giant white star. Emilio's was pretty again, but we're growing a smidge bored with the repetitive applique, week after week.
Guest judge was Marchesa designer and (ahem) the wife of the show's producer, Harvey Weinstein, Georgina Chapman. Herself a goddess of blending Old Hollywood bold with childhood princess fantasies and high fashion, many times in wonderful red numbers, she was mostly kind in a clipped sort of manner. She was probably thinking the same thing we were, which was that she could have done much better.
A noble venture with the participation of some wonderful ladies and the sharing of inspiration all around.
