New York Fashion Week Spring 2011, Day One

DAHLINGS -

So, yesterday was the first day of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week* in its new location at Lincoln Center. In the service of the God of Retail, most of the trees in Damrosch Park were chopped down, lest someone important in peeptoe platform boots trip over a root or something.

In any event, the main impression the central gives is HEIGHT. There is no central organizing entity, such as the Bryant Park fountain. So the room sprawls quite a bit. But it's a comfortable, well-lit sprawl. Your faithful correspondent was suitably impressed.

AND THEY HAVE FINALLY ENTERED THE COMPUTER AGE! NO MORE AGONIZING WAITS WHILE SOME POOR INTERN THUMBS THROUGH PAPER SHEETS TO FIND YOUR NAME! Some may think that barcodes render the event less human. Dahlings, it cuts down the amount of time and pretentiousness ("Don't you know who I am? I'm on the list!") by at least half.

The first day, I was more interested in exploring than in attending the shows. However, the Christian Siriano show was a MADHOUSE! I couldn't even locate my BFF, Tim Gunn! Some of it must have been spillover from the Project Runway show earlier.

The Project Runway show, for the record, showed TEN designers! That means TEN runway shows, and ONE HUNDRED LOOKS! I think I would have crawled out on my Max Azria clad knees, babbling incoherently.

In any event, after the spectacular show Christian put on last year, this one was a slight disappointment. From a young new designer, one hopes for a new young point of view. But this collection was rather safe, playing to well-worn fashion tropes and sillouhettes.


For instance, this lovely evening gown bears an eerie resemblance to the evening gowns he has done before, both on the runway and the red carpet.




This white dress is pretty, but a tad ho-hum.




However, I did rather like this suit. But if you look past the material, the construction is quite conventional.




It is this writer's guess that the reason Christian's clothes are so popular is that they are so wearable. For this collection, what it lacked in inspiration it more than made up for in "hanger appeal."


Speaking of Project Runway:


I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY GOT RID OF CASANOVA! I HAD FINALLY BEGUN TO STAND HIM!

Why not that annoying, bossy little Ivy?


And I cannot remember who won; only that it wasn't Andy or Valerie, who should have.


Until tomorrow,

Ciao,
Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog


* If they hear you calling it New York Fashion Week, you are severely punished.

Photos courtesy of Getty Images

Tim Gunn Takes Us Behind The Scenes of Ep. 3

DAHLINGS -

Here is Tim Gunn opining about the "Unconventional Challenge," Casanova, and so much else. He is a true delight, and I cannot BELIEVE he will be going on hiatus until the Emmys!!!




I would have very much liked to write up a review of Episode 4, but to honest, it's beyond me right now. However, I am certain many other bloggers have interesting things to say.

Ciao,
Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog

Woolly Animal Balls, Project Runway, Ep. 3 Part Two

DAHLINGS -

Again, the show was so long I needed two posts!

Tim Gunn (my BFF) is overwhelmed, in a good way, when he walks into the workroom. He stops at Kristin’s table, and picks up a package…he announces it’s labeled “Animal woolly balls,” and loses it completely, as does Kristin and nearly everyone else in the workroom. Why, Tim! He picks up a bag marked “Real balls.” “I prefer the woolly balls,” he manages to choke out, crying with laughter. Oh, God, I worship at Tim’s shrine. (One is sure there are a lot of shrines to Tim Gunn out there).

Valerie is making a dress entirely out of black and white napkins. As for being in the Top Three twice and losing to Gretchen, she said, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” Get over it, woman, it’s only three episodes in.

Besides Casanova, there is a little man, Michael Costello, who is CONSTANTLY alone on camera, bitching everyone out. I had no idea who he was until I looked at the website. Again, fodder for the reunion show! Speaking of Casanova, he and Tim have the inevitable clash because CASANOVA WASN’T LISTENING when Tim said “no tablecloths.” What did this stubborn idiot do? Bought boatloads of tablecloths.

We had glimpses of other people working feverishly, including Peach, who was really sweating this one. Gretchen is being foregrounded, as the Evil Bitch. (Rumaki started being thrown by my guests whenever she was onscreen. Thank God for the plastic over the flat screen.) Obviously she is being set up as the Bad Guy, ‘cause, as we all know, everybody hates a winner.

Then, the inevitable Twist: just as the designers are completely exhausted, their models enter carrying goody bags of detritus such as ribbons, cupcake holders, etc. The poor designers have to make a smashing accessory to go with their outfits. The screams can be heard across Manhattan.

Andy is making an impossibly complicated dress out of ribbon. Peach and April, their garments done, come to help. That is so sweet. Tim comes in to get everyone after the “Garnier hair salon and L’Oreal Paris makeup room.” He is still riding on the high of “woolly animal balls.”

On to the runway. Heidi is glowing; I’m guessing she found someone on the crew to suck the lifeblood out of. Her eyes have the feral gleam of a cat about to pounce on an unsuspecting rodent. But all is forgiven, because BETSEY JOHNSON is the guest judge! Perfection! “Who IS that?” asked one of my guests, so I threw a deviled egg at him. Forgive me, the Cosmopolitans had reached their level. Please forgive me if I cannot remember what the dresses were made of.

Andy’s dress was an unqualified WOW. He made black ribbon look like finally tooled leather, accessorizing it with a black half-glove made from…balloons.



A.J.’s dress was a disaster: a Bizarro world child’s party dress, with crotch fringe. If he has ever watched the show prior to this, he should know that crotch fringe=very unhappy judges. Betsey Johnson tried to make him feel better about it, but to no avail.

Ivy’s dress is a beautiful compilation of petals. I cannot believe she did not make the top three.



Michael Costello, as much as he irritated all of us, sent an amazing red flamenco dress down the runway. The photo does not do it justice. It moved fluidly.



Gretchen sent down an…odd combination. The skirt was gold and silver tinsel, the top a cropped black jacket made from paper bags. It looked like two different outfits, neither of them particularly good. Betsey Johnson pegged it as “Dreamgirls on the bottom, Mad Men on the top.”



Speaking of flamenco dresses, Casanova sent yet another unmitigated disaster down the runway. Words fail me, but a picture will suffice, one hopes.

Sarah had struggled with a palm tree she had cut up, and ended up sending a rather bland little dress with unfortunate cardboard cutouts on top of it.


Casanova, A.J. and Sarah were in the bottom three; Valerie, Gretchen, and Andy were in the top three. Gretchen was preening, expecting to win. When they were all back in the waiting room, she bitched out A.J., sending a flurry of caviar at my flat screen. Really, if it hadn’t been for the bartender cleaning it off, I doubt we would have seen the end of the show!

Andy was the winner! Gretchen looked, let’s put it politely, miffed.

I was so afraid for poor little A.J., because I knew Casanova wouldn’t get the auf. So it turned out to be Sarah, mostly for lacking enough charisma.

At the end, poor Ivy caved in to all of the pressure and had to be taken to the hospital. Ah, well, that's show business.

Ciao,
Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog

Project Runway Season Eight Premiere, Part Two

DAHLINGS -

There is simply so much to cover in this season premiere, it had to take two posts!

When we last heard, there were 17 designers instead of the usual 16, and they had five hours to create a garment out of someone else's piece of clothing. And this was considered an audition for the show itself; it was guaranteed that one or more of the contestants would be going home. And you just finished packing and had that big going-away party. Bummer.

We watched them sweat, freak out, etc., the usual workroom scenes, except for the small amount of time. I'm guessing that Jason isn't going so much for a signature look with that idiotic bowler, he's probably bald.

Now to the interesting part: the runway. What a delight to see that the Bright Orange Oracle of Fashion, Michael Kors, was in his rightful place! Next to him was Nina Garcia, who has actually started to sprout a personality. (I love how Heidi pronounces her name with a heavy inflection, the way politically correct folk in the 80s used to pronounce Nicaragua "Nee-haw- wagrah".) Heidi was actually wearing an age appropriate dress for a change. Are the Four Horsemen here yet?

The special guest judge was actress Selma Blair. Not to worry, nobody in our viewing party could place her, either. She resembles a squinty Katie Holmes.

When Heidi came out and greeted the designers before the execution--er, runway show--the contestants were wetting themselves even more than usual. She rattled off "you're in or you're out" in rote fashion before the show began.

A side note: the models tonight were terrible. The way they clumped down the runway, they would make a Dior look bad.

Valerie made this eye-bleeding monstrosity from, I believe, Casanova's Dolce & Gabbana trousers.

Afghanistan hooker dress, made of combat material w/ false blood for added piquance.

McKell fashioned a cute little number from a blue button-down shirt.

Ivy took a pair of flowered, matronly pants and transformed them into--flowery, matronly capris! Along with a sloppily made silk top that was supposed to match in some way not meant for this universe.

"Oh my God, there's a sale at Pathmark!"

Unlike the judges, I liked Nicholas's long gown, made out of a pleather bomber jacket, using the bottom rib trim for the neckline.
April "deconstructed" a tuxedo jacket by...well...deconstructing it, which consisted of turning it inside out. Mighty Goth there, dahling!

This dress is for when Wilma Flintstone wants to get down with her bad self.

Gretchen sent out a glamorous dress that moved well on the runway, with small beaded fringe on the shoulders. Don't ask me what she made it out of, because I don't care.

Jason's dress was made from a black kimono. Although impeccably styled, the actual garment looked like a monk's habit hastily pulled on backwards by a monk fleeing a medieval monastery.

Casanova's "dress", if you can call it that, was made out of a small blue blouse. Tim had tried to talk him into making something halfway less acceptable. But Casanova stuck to his guns, describing his creation as "sexy but not vulgar." According to my notes, my first reaction was: JESUS!

Since I usually only use that word when I am actually addressing Jesus when he stops by, you can see how shocked I was. The judges agreed, and I simply cannot top the Duchess's assessment: "a pole dancer in Dubai". I love that neon orange bitch! Casanova's English is terrible, so we actually got the treat of listening to Nina speak to him in Spanish. I wish she would do all of her critiques in Spanish, it's so much more expressive. Then we wouldn't have to hear "questionable taste" and "chic" repeated in every show.

During the commercial break, I knew that Bunim/Murray had calculated who would not go home, regardless of talent, because they are perfect reality television personalities.

Casanova ? Check. He won't get the boot if he sends a dress made of cat turds down the runway.

Peach? Check. Not only did she make a lovely dress but she is also a lot of fun, rather like Paula Deen would be if she were sane.

Jason? With that hat? Of course. Check.

In the end, Gretchen won.

"I won, bitches!"

Poor little McKell was auf'd. But at least I don't have to look at those dreadlocks any more.

One more thing to be grateful for: no more Models Of The Runway! If I wanted to listen to skinny ninnies babbling about nothing, I'd watch Kathie Lee and Hoda.

Ciao,

Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog

(all images courtesy of mylifetime.com)