5/12 NATURE CALLS, NO ONE ANSWERS

Yay. Boo. Once again Project Runway judges, who tonight included Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman -- her dramatic evening gowns virtually rule the red carpet these days -- could not make a decision. It’s déjà vu all over again – remember last season when they couldn’t auf Chris March?

So here it is Runway followers: Jerell, Leanne, Korto and Kenley will all make final collections (we know this because we’ve already shown them to you), but one of them will be out before the show at New York Fashion Week. We always feel sad when someone goes…but you gotta make a choice and that should have been tonight.

This show did nothing to enhance our opinions of any of the designers. As Michael Kors noted, “I don’t think this was their best moment.” The challenge was to create an evening gown inspired by flowers at the New York Botanical Garden. They had a budget of $250 and two days to work their magic. And honestly, if this had been last year’s crew, Rami, Jillian, Christian and even Chris, it would have been a total wow. But instead it was mediocre at best.

Jerell won the challenge with an empire gown of plums and purples that was badly constructed though somewhat interesting. Trust us, anybody with more than A-cup would have had to figure out another way to harness the girls. Leanne came in second with a lavender and blue job that had a pleated embellishment. The judges thought was soft and pretty but again, not well made (as in what the heck was the blue dust cloth aka bustle hanging off the model’s rear?) Korto’s gold and lace number seemed inspired at the start but turned out to be what Kors called a pageant dress, not even good. Kenley, who refused to take any mentoring from Tim Gunn, created an old-fashioned siren dress of snakeskin fabric with leaves hanging off the bottom…the Muppets meets creepy.


The underlying theme of the night? Hate-fest. Leanne, Korto and Jerell ganged up on Kenley, whose nasal whine, annoying cackle and inappropriate defensiveness almost, but not quite, made her deserving of their abuse. She’s an easy target, and we would hope that since they’ve all fought their own life battles (they all cried at one time or another), maybe they could have shown a little restraint in the meanness department. That said, she is hard to like. She behaved so horribly on the runway that Heidi chastised her, and Michael wondered allowed, “Imagine if a buyer says, ‘I don’t like that sleeve. What will she do? Take out a knife and kill them?” In the end, Kenley broke down too and you had to feel a little bit sorry for her, like when all the finalists had a group hug with Tim…except her. She sat in a chair by herself and watched them. Fashion can be pretty ugly. – Anne Bratskeir