Project Runway Australia – Episode 3

You know…the slow and deliberate way that Kristy Hinze speaks sort of bugs me.

It’s like she has to consider each and every word — which is annoying.

Sure, Iman does the same thing on Project Runway Canada, but it’s slightly more tolerable with Iman. She doesn’t come across like some plastic, life-sized doll.

Okay…end of bitch session.

For this week’s challenge, Kristy cryptically tells them that it’ll have more of an Italian feel to it — which leads Leigh to giddily joke that maybe they’re going to Italy.

“Are we going to Adelaide or something? As long as we don’t go anywhere near bushland…” Leigh says, somewhat sobering for a moment.

“We all know you don’t like bush, love — that’s fine,” Helen replies archly, which sends both Mark and Leigh pealing with laughter.

Dare I say it? I actually think the designers from Project Runway Australia are more fun than the designers on the current season of the original Project Runway.

My top two favourites at the moment from PRA are Mark and Leigh — mostly because they’re both so camp and over-the-top. I mean, a part of me suspects that maybe it’d be a bit much to deal with on a daily basis, but on the whole, they’re the kind of guys I’d wind up getting along with best because a part of me is a giant ol’ beeyotch, myself.

Plus — I really love what Leigh’s wearing. I love the jaunty way his forest green hat is perched on his head with a beige scarf draped around his neck. God, the guy almost looks like Faye Dunaway a la Bonnie and Clyde, you know?

When they arrive at the raceway where mentor Henry tells them they’ll be working in teams of two — which immediately sends the designers looking around to see who they want to be paired up with.

I hate that kind of shit — it takes me back to school, when you’d have a moment of pure panic, hoping to God the people you want to work with aren’t paired up yet and that you don’t wind up being the colossal loser who stands alone at the end.

Juli is excited and says there are a number of designers she’d love to work with — none of whom are Helen, who, upon seeing Leigh and Juli exchange looks, barrels over to Juli like some demented lunatic, clamping a meaty hand on Juli to lay claim on her as a partner.

“Out of nowhere, Helen came — it was like slow motion,” Juli says — and hilariously enough, they show Helen lunging forward in slow motion like an overweight Frankenstein, arms outstretched, reaching for the unsuspecting Juli, who’s still looking at Leigh.

Leigh cracked me the fuck up when he imitated Helen. (I fucking love this guy.)

Sophie and Petrova, the two quirky looking chicks wound up working together, while Leigh and Lui are partners as are Mark and Oren and the two tall white guys: Brent and Shane.

Henry tells them that it’ll be a double elimination this week — that it could be one team or two people from two different teams.

Henry tells them that each team has to have one team leader — and I think most of the designers have already watched Project Runway before. As Sophie says, whoever’s the team lead is usually under the firing line. True, that.

The challenge is this: to create sporty, racy separates made out of Fiat car parts materials found in the trunks of the Fiat 500s that are parked on the raceway, ready for the designers to get cracking on a challenge that needs to be completed by midnight that day.

“I don’t do cars, I don’t even bloody have my licence,” Leigh tells the camera.

Mark is in hysterics and cries, “This is so…butch for me now!”

Brent, however, seems happy with a more masculine challenge for a change and I can’t help but think that this is more up his alley, seeing as he’s a streetwear designer who has very limited experience designing women’s clothing.

When they get back to the workroom, I can see how Brent and Shane’s partnership on this challenge is going to really work because they both seem incredibly respectful of each other’s opinions and easily slip into a quiet rhythm of getting straight to work.

“It was a very easy process between Brent and I — I think we get along very well together, ” Shane opines. “Heading for a successful result, I think.”

I have to admit that both of these designers aren’t ones I’d naturally gravitate towards, but there’s something very capable and industrious about the way they get to work that I can’t help but admire.

Another team that works well together is Mark and Oren — Juli even thinks that they’re going to nail the brief because of the way they get on very well.

Leigh adds that Mark and Oren’s outfit is coming along really great and that it’ll look quite smart on the catwalk.

Mark, however, says that, in his mind, it’s clear that the weakest team is Juli and Helen — and right away, you see that Helen might prove to be a problem yet again.

Mark even says the shit begins to hit the fan when Helen discovers that Oren used Helen’s block to make the trousers. Infuriated over how setting up a block would normally take a designer 1 1/2 hours to do, Helen gets confrontational.

She admits that in the past couple of challenges, she wound up helping other designers (obviously stupidly forgetting that she’s in a competition), but it was different because she offered to help. It’s a totally different story when people just “take” things from her.

She’s almost like the Hulk — more like a slow-burning change into the Hulk, though.

She’s the worst kind of complainer — the sort that goes on and on, in that faux calm way, harping on the same point ad nauseum until you just want to fucking punch her in the face just to shut her up.

What annoys me beyond belief is how she doesn’t just come out and say, “Rip up the pants. Start over again.” She just fucking sits there, with that fake, patronizing look on her face while she waits for them to say they’ll rip them up and start from scratch.

Mark readily agrees, noting that Helen would have probably brought it up on the catwalk and they would have gotten into deep shit over it.

She repeatedly says that this is a competition for $100,000 — Oren is seething by this point and I think he has a point when he says that the repeated assertion that this is a competition for money just illustrates the fact that she’s not doing this for the passion. It’s about the money.

I admit it: because I’m not a big fan of Helen, I’m seething on behalf of the boys.

When she brings it up yet again to Henry — clearly not letting it go, Henry tells her that time is of the essence and in an indirect way, sort of implies, “Get the hell over it and just work.”

I love Henry, too.

That being said, it made me want to punch Helen in the face all over again.

Mark and Oren are really pressed with time because Oren has had to start from scratch again.

“You fucking stole my block!” Helen bleats.

Oh. My. God. Please — someone — someone please punch her in the face.

On the flip side of things, I love how lovely Leigh is, giving compliments where they’re deserved — and to the camera, away from the other designers’ ears, no less. I think that says a lot about him as a person.

I have to say that Leigh’s partner, Lui, flies under the radar for me — he’s so zen and calm that he seems almost comatose when he’s talking.

When Henry comes over to take a look at their work-in-progress, he admits that he’s not sure the red bell sleeves work. Because Leigh opted to take Henry’s critique into consideration in the past and won because of it, he and Lui are more than willing to rework their design a little.

The day of the runway show arrives and everybody seems to love Brent and Shane’s outfit.

Everybody is stressed out and they’re all pissed off when Juli and Helen go around the room, asking people if they think they should send their model down the runway with the hideous handbag that Helen spent hours working on.

Leigh confesses, “I just wanted to scream, ‘Would you just fuck off!'”

See…I think I would have actually said that out loud. It’s a competition, for Christ’s sake! Why should the other designers help them by throwing in their two cents when they’re so busy with their own work?

Mark and Oren face another setback when their model accidentally splits her pants.

Mark seriously looked like he was about to shit a brick when that happened.

At the runway show, guest judge Claudia Navone, the fashion director of Harper’s Baazar joins the panel.

Brent and Shane’s oufit in a word? Fantastic. I really love their handbag.

Claudia cites Canadian designers, D Squared, and says that Brent and Shane’s outfit reminds her of them. The judges all agree that the outfit made an impact and that the outfit looked “effortlessly made.”

Sophie and Petrova’s? Weird. There was a stupid spring sticking out of her head and the outfit looked sloppily stitched.

The model looks like she’s stepped out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Judge Jayson Brunsdon cuts Petrova down when she says some nonsense of how they thought someone wearing their outfit would be jetting off to the Grande Prix.

“Honey, if she was going to the Grande Prix, she wouldn’t be wearing that,” he says sharply.

Lui and Leigh’s oufit was actually really very cute. I liked it a lot, actually — though I loved Lui’s cute little t-shirt that he was wearing even more. It had these Mickey Mouse-like gloves stitched right onto the t-shirt. They were like pockets! I love it! Where can I get a shirt like that?

Lui and Leigh are the only team who’s told they’re safe and they giddily skip off backstage, sighing with relief the whole way.

Helen and Juli’s outfit was boring. I was surprised the guest judge says that she really likes the outfit — I was like, “Are you fucking serious? It looks so simple!” And what “attention to detail” is she talking about? There weren’t enough details to focus on!

Judge Sarah Gale says that this is a good example of how less is more.

While they’re standing there, I half expected Helen to burst into the whole, “Oren stole my block!”

Mark and Oren’s outfit looked…bad. The pants didn’t look properly made at all, though judge Jayson Brundson says the vest and top bother him most. Guest judge Claudia says the belt is unflattering and makes the model look fat.

Judge Sarah Gale, however, zeroes in on the pants and she and Claudia both say that it’s a fashion crime.

The winning team was Brent and Shane — no surprise there. It was well deserved.

I was tickled by the awkward, manly handshake they gave one another in congratulations.

Brent and Shane with their model

The designers being sent home are Sophie and Oren — Sophie because she was the team lead who allowed the outfit to veer off track and Oren because the pants were “over ambitious and poorly executed.”

Sophie and Petrova with their model

Oren and Mark with their model

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Thank you to kimmikimmileon.

~ by justj on July 23, 2008.