Either You're In....

“In fashion, either you are in or you are out…and you’re out.” I could not wait to hear those famous words spoken again with a thick German accent by Teutonic superbeauty Heidi Klum. Forget the anticlimactic ending to America’s Next Struggling Model. This is the REAL THING!

Last year I sat rapt week after week watching upstart fashion designers sew, sweat and claw their way to the top of Heidi Klum’s IT list on what was the best show I’d seen in years, “Project Runway”. The premise is simple: take fashion designer wannabes and promise them a showing on the prestigious world stage of Fashion Week runway shows in New York and watch them go at it in hysterically difficult time-constrained challenges. They lose it, they diva out, they sew their little fingers off and the result is a mini runway show every week displaying their collective talents. The show is also an avenue for upstart models. They get picked every week by the sixteen (and dwindling) designers to showcase their fashion creations and one is eliminated each week as she is not picked. Last year we had a lunatic who wore one of the designer’s outfits to a night out and ripped the skirt before the show. It was genius!

I can’t help but miss last year’s contestants- they were such characters! In the premiere episode of this season’s Project, we had them return as panel judges in the preliminaries. Wendy Pepper was witchy as ever, Kara Saun still has that arrogant air about her, winner Jay McCarroll showed he’s on King (or Queen) of the World now that he’s had his career launched, and Robert Plotkin was his typical lothario self. Then there was Character Numero Uno- Austin Scarlett! He was coiffed to within an inch of his life and as usual, he’s one wax job away from being a girl. I liked his lispy eye-rolling ways last year and loved the way he served Jay as a model (he’s got the lithe frame for it) when Jay’s model disappeared.

This year we have the return of Daniel Franco—last year’s first reject. He’s out to prove himself and in the first challenge almost blew it. Déjà vu hit when he nearly got cut first again but lucky for him, there were two more terrible designs and out went Atlanta sweetie Heidi Standridge, whose optimism maybe doesn’t match her design talents. Also cut was chubby queen John Wade. He admitted to only spending eight hours on the project they had a week to complete: prior to being themselves shipped to their new digs in New York, they had six yards of muslin and twenty dollars with which to create a design that would wow judges Heidi Klum, Michael Kors (designer), and Nina Garcia (Elle Magazine Fashion Director) into keeping them around for the show. Those two cuts made, the show progressed into its second hour or second episode and a new challenge. Fist, the contestants were tricked into going to a party. So they got dressed to impress. Nothing fancy, mind you—they just wanted to portray their individual style. Well, little did they know that at the end of the party they had to go back to their rooms and deposit the clothes off their backs into a bag to use as material for their next design challenge.

The first episode’s winner (of the muslin challenge) was Santino and let me just say I DON’T LIKE THIS GUY. He looks like one of those nasty little hippies you see in San Francisco who have the whole city stinking of BO. And he’s talented and likes to use “third world” design techniques but he is so full of himself and so ambitious! He makes no bones about wanting to be a billionaire. Anyway, the way they go about letting you know who’s in and who’s “out” is they call a number of designers onto the catwalk. Last week the ones who were safe were called and the others (and the winner of the challenge) remained. This week they flipped it on us and the ones called were the weakest (and winner). Santino was among them. Well, the winner was Chloe Dao because she did a cute dress out of hardly anything as what she wore to the party was a jersey dress she’d designed (and it was kind of simple so not a lot of fabric) and a jacket. She had very little to work with, in other words. Santino was not eliminated and was in fact praised for his design using his favorite vintage leather jacket. But when he went back into the room where the others were waiting he says, “They just didn’t want to give me two wins in a row.” They show Chloe eyeing him angrily. What a jerk!

Eliminated was lawyer and self-taught designer Kristen Ehrig because she had plenty to work with as she wore a t-shirt, jeans, jacket and a scarf but turned out a tight skirt with a tacky top. The top was her t-shirt reworked into what looked like a halter but it was like “a bad Guns ‘N’ Roses” concert design according to Kors. She refused to use the scarf, she said, because it was a family heirloom.

Anyway, when they play the sad tune they do every week as the loser packs up, I can’t help but to be transported to last year and Austin and his drama and Wendy and the way everyone hated her. This year promises to be great because the concept is great but so far no one stands out too much as being worthy of being talked about. Some are nice, some are super annoying like Santino (he’s Wendy and her arch-nemesis Kara Saun in one tall stinky package!) but where is the Austin Scarlett? Where is the effervescent Jay, my favorite and winner? We’ll see….