Is Bravo sabotaging Project Runway? Wednesday’s premiere of Season 5 of the design-on-a-dime fashion series (jumping to Lifetime network in the fall) introduced a cast of bargain basement rejects. Not a Christian Siriano, Santino Rice or even a Wendy Pepper among ’em. Certainly nobody with the quiet verve of Jillian or the bumptious humility of last season’s Chris March. This new bunch isn’t just weird—the worst of them look like scrofulous junkies. Even the one with a clean face and real talent, last night’s competition winner Kelli, boasts more tats than a merchant marine.
The show was a tired retread from the start, rehashing the Gristedes grocery story challenge from Season 1 that had the budding designers doing a supermarket sweep for $75 worth of outfit materials. “Mop heads! Mop heads! Mop heads!” declared contestant Terri, who then wove a terrible “crocheted” bustier out of the strings.
Most of the designers wimped out by grabbing tablecloths and shower curtains and whipping them into boring sundresses and one-shouldered paper schmattas. Kotoro, who wears a cloak of anger in every shot, made her yellow tablecloth into a voluminous belted muu-muu. Except for the necklace of kale and cherry tomatoes, it looked like something Aretha Franklin might wear—wait, she’d probably enjoy snacking on the veggies if they came with a handbag full of ranch dressing—and it was so huge it made the model wearing it appear to be queen-sized, too.
The workroom sequences, which in recent seasons have provided the show’s best moments of frenzied hilarity, were a snooze. Tim Gunn said nothing new (make-it-work-Bluefly-Loreal-Tresemme-blah-blah-blah) and might well have been sleepwalking. Disturbingly wacked-out contestant Blayne, who in his intro announced he was “addicted to tanning,” uttered the word “girlicious” like a mantra, trying and failing to make it this season’s “hot tranny mess.” His outfit, made of placemats woven with…what? maxi-pads?...sent his model onto the runway in a look that can best be described as “dead car hop in a diaper.”
Among the other designers were a guy who glued macaroni to a paper skirt—fashion a la Vacation Bible School crafts!—and one who made a tight sleeveless sheath out of a blue-and-white tablecloth and then sewed bits of dog-poop-bag all over it, thus making his own editorial statement about his own design. And there was Stella, who affects a heroin slouch, wears crazy-ugly pants and who chose as her “fabric” a box of flimsy garbage bags. At the last minute she draped some of the bags over the model’s boobs, whipstitched them up the edges and tried to pass it off as rock’n’roll. When the model hit the runway, Nina’s eyeballs rolled like fruit on a slot machine.
Garbage bags! Mop heads! Where are the lacy cornhusk cocktail dresses? (Thank you, Austin Scarlett, who dropped by from Season 1 for a brief cameo this week.)
Auf’d from the runway first was Jerry, who wrapped his model in a white shower curtain “raincoat” over some pale lilac swatches of bandage (or something gauzy), stuck yellow rubber gloves on her bony hands and white rainboots on her size 12 hooves, only to hear judge Michael Kors whisper to Nina Garcia that it was an outfit perfect “if you were going to kill someone.” Jerry, humiliated by being the first one thrown off the show, was last seen donning his own creation to commit career suicide.
Winner Kelli managed her triumph by burning some coffee filters into a bra-top and attaching it with a belt of thumbtacks to a pleated skirt made of vacuum cleaner bags. You could say she dusted the field on a season opener that really sucked.