‘Project Runway’: Everyone looks back in anger

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I’ve been so busy getting upset over who hasn’t gone home yet on ‘Project Runway’ that I failed to even think about who should make the top three. I think Althea Harper put it best when she said it should be her, Carol Hannah Whitfield and Irina Shabayeva, yes? Moving on.

The challenge on tonight’s episode was for the contestants to create a companion piece for a winning piece they designed earlier. Althea wanted to play with the proportions from her ‘What a Woman Wants’ design and created a pair of bag-tied jodhpurs along with an oversized flowing sweater. Irina initially wanted to create a ‘work’ version of her Aspen-inspired look but was drawn to a brocade-type fabric for a tight dress with another big sweater to go over it. Gordana Gehlhausen aimed to incorporate the technique she used in the divorcee challenge into a jacket. Christopher Straub wanted to turn the cute little dress that won him the first challenge into a much bigger, similar-looking dress. Logan Neitzel hasn’t won a challenge yet, so to be honest I don’t even recall really the silver-and-black dress that he was to work from (I didn’t care for it that much to begin with) and so his aim was to add more zippers to the new look. And finally, Carol Hannah needed to make a pared-down version of her Christina Aguilera dress.

In the midst of this the designers all sniped at one another. Althea was convinced that Logan stole her zippered-collar idea. Irina was convinced that Althea was stealing her sweater idea (and just basically was a jerk to everyone in general). Althea called Carol Hannah a one-trick pony for her dresses and Logan said that his grandma had better taste than Gordana. I’d rather see out-and-out fighting than this behind-each-other’s backs complaining.

On the runway, the judges loved Carol Hannah’s light, youthful black dress, and Heidi Klum informed Althea that she wanted to wear her outfit, despite Irina calling Althea out for alleged copying. Nina told Logan his high-collared zipper-top and bubble skirt looked like a project from a student, and guest judge Nick Verreos called it ‘80’s’ and ‘Judy Jetson.’ Personally I agreed with Nina Garcia about the tight-fitting material on Irina’s dress looking cheap, but the judges otherwise liked it. Then things went south really fast: The styling with Gordana’s jacket (which would look nice in, say, a Garnet Hill catalog) was rather drab, but Nick took it a step further and called the model ‘an office worker in Warsaw’ (no pirogies for you, Nick!). And Nick’s dress, especially the white goopy underpart, looked like more like a low-rent costume than design: Heidi claimed that it looked like a bed skirt.

It made me happy to see Irina look irritated with Althea’s eventual win. Lucky for Christopher, who has been escaping elimination all season, the judges hated Gordana’s piece more than his. Lucky for HER, they hated Logan’s more than hers. Of course, Logan just rationalized that his clothing was not for 90% of the population anyway. So he just needs to figure out how to sell clothing to that 10% and he’ll be golden.

-- Claire Zulkey

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Catch all ‘Project Runway’ coverage here. Photo: Lifetime