The second episode of Project Runway set out for the countryside last night, tasking the remaining hopefuls to create beautiful party dresses from burlap sacks.
The whole down-home hot started wtih a bang with Karl Lagerfeld's haystack-romping models on his spring/summer 2010 runway in Paris, and last night, with a trip to a farm upstate and the fresh-faced All-American Lauren Hutton guest-judging, Project Runway has jumped on the haywagon.
It's early in the season, so the episode opens with bright eyes and bushy tails musing on potential far out New York City challenges in a charmingly un-jaded manner. Well, they went far, but with distinctly non-urban burlap sacks that would have to (in 24 hours) look beautiful in the city.
Results, of course, were varied. In a nutshell, we saw a range between Ping's too-short skirt, Jesus' burlap sack dress that didn't actually incorporate any burlap and Mila's sexpot potato sack and lots of ladylike tulip skirts.
Jay was named the winner with a slinky tank dress with ruffled feather drop-hem fluttering high above the knee. That's right, he made something seem slinky and almost athletic from a burlap sack dyed black. We loved, but we've also seen it before. Pamela, on the other hand, produced a bland strapless shift reminiscent of a JC Penney clearance rack, whose one redeeming quality was its excellent dye job. But even that was set in the wrong context, adding to its general tackiness. The dress warranted some real zingers, with Michael Kors wondering if a plain burlap sack would have looked better, and Heidi questioning Pamela's taste level.
Meanwhile, Ping, whose sublime draping landed her in the top three last week, created a dress whose deconstructed silhouette just didn't work and, AND, was so short the model's entire tush was showing. Our shock turned quickly to pity when the show's resident spaz started crying. We still want to see more from this one.
Other standouts included Mila's body-con (yup, body-con burlap) mini with sexy neckline and metallic accents, and Amy's richly dip-dyed volumous skirt and cowl-neck cocktail number.
And lastly, the Tim Gunn quote of the week:
"I want those judges' socks to go blowing off their feet!"
