Screens: Lifetime
'I Always Dread The "Avant-Garde" Challenge For The Way It Gives The Designers License To Do Whatever Weird Thing They Feel Like'
Sea life inspires some of the designers to compelling, fashion-forward work, and leaves others gasping for air.
Our Players
Hello, I'm East Coast Editor Sarah D. Bunting.
Hello, I'm West Coast Editor Tara Ariano.
The Talk
Everyone had a pretty good week on PRAS -- including Alyssa Milano! Liked her dresses fine, loved her sparkly midi rings for the runway, and the hair wasn't too Lucy. Solid B-plus!
They did, but I have to say, I always dread the "avant-garde" challenge for the way it gives the designers license to do whatever weird thing they feel like. And alas, Justin -- whose looks are normally very wearable -- fell victim to his wrong ideas about fashion-forwardosity. Now we know: you put a girl down the runway in a dress that makes it look like she got shot in the chest with a rickrack cannonball, you're going to get cut.
THAT dress sounds awesome, to me, but you know how I feel about rickrack. And about the avant-garde challenge, to wit: I agree. I don't think the show knows exactly how it's defined, so we always end up with aggressively unflattering styling and squishy judging that doesn't address the challenge. Certainly I don't understand how Dmitry's look is avant-garde, or the winner, given that we've seen it from him a hundred times.
And, I'm sorry, I love him, but I was not getting seahorse from it all -- and given that I visited a seahorse ranch less than a month ago (really, this is a thing I did), I feel like I'm an expert on the subject. Whereas even if you didn't know that Jay's inspiration was a lionfish, looking at his dress made it extremely obvious. (Could his resortwear dress last week ALSO pass as a lionfish-inspired dress? Sure. But that's beside the point.)
I love him too, but the production wanted to give him a win, so it was happening regardless of how loosely he interpreted the challenge brief. Meanwhile, Fabio's seemed to me to really push the boundaries of how we think about the garments, but everyone's focused on the hideous pink -- which is hideous, but someone noted that maybe he uses these smarmy pastels to bring the feminine into outfits that he's using to mess with gender perceptions. That's a solid rationale and very intellectual, but then he almost goes home. ...I don't know, I don't think it's fair to clock him for color at this point in the life of the show when everyone knows this is how he does.
I actually thought that colour was really pretty; I mostly wished the fabric hadn't been so stiff, and that his model had done a better job selling it, because her hands-in-pockets runway walk just made it look affected.
As for Michelle: I thought the dress was cool, but the whole "resting bitchface" discussion...okay, you know how Richard Lewis claims to have coined the phrase "the ___ from Hell" but really has no way to prove it? That's me with resting bitchface and I swear I never heard anyone say it before I used it to describe what's wrong with Diana Krall. I AM NOT A CRACKPOT.
I'm with that. And Michelle's Native-American name is Resting Bitchface for sure. I had the same response to her dress the judges did, though: my first reaction was that I loved it, but the more I looked at it, the more shit wrong with it I found. Her color combination is on point, though; I liked that it implied a sportsy story but the shape was the opposite.
I almost hate to bring this up knowing your feelings on the subject but...I didn't hate Helen's look. And even though the whole sketching-in-the-shark tank thing was overblown in terms of its danger or threat, I admired her for being the one to step up. She's trying!
I hated it initially, but it grew on me a little bit, though I'm kind of with Michelle's "high priestess outfit for some vanilla planet" assessment. That wheige is tough. Helen herself I was okay with, though. She has her moments.
I liked how geeked she got at the nail art consultation. Clearly, that is her area.
I don't like her nail "story," but I do admire that she can do close work with those talons.
For real. I have to keep mine short or risk scratching...myself.
Same. I open too many Diet Coke cans to get too precious with that. Speaking of which: Sonjia. I was surprised that was safe, because I liked it, but it seemed very literal and crafty.
I guess generally I feel like this is the week that nobody should have gotten sent home. Yeah, Justin's is not great, but it's not awful, either.
Well, at least now his model is free to go back to her job at the lemon-sucking factory.
