Stop Staring at that Box, You'll Ruin Your Eyes

This season of Project Runway is okay. I wish that it was more than just okay. I wish that the location change from New York to Los Angeles hadn't diminished the credibility of one of the few remaining legit reality shows on television, or brought on a slew of "Why are they there?" celebrity judges (Eva Longoria-Parker? Lindsay 'Trainwreck' Lohan?). However downhill it has gone, I'm still watching. I think I'll be on board as long as Tim Gunn is.

This week's challenge was to create an outfit out of newspaper. It's the kind of challenge the show is famous for--asking designers to think outside of the box with construction and materials as well as designs. I'm sort of upset that this wasn't the very first challenge, I mean, what kind of a throw away was the "Red Carpet Challenge"? What they produced was good, bad and ugly.

THE BEST

Althea created this body-contouring cocktail dress which Parker-Longoria said she "would totally wear". It does look like something that most fashion conscious women would put on and the pattern--created entirely from layering pieces of graphic on pages--is as visually appealing as it is creative. I think that Althea should have won but suspect that the judges didn't want her to win two weeks in a row.

I generally think that Christopher's design aesthetic belongs in a prom store in the mall rather than NY fashion week, and that includes the concept of this dress, but the execution of the design and the juxtaposition of the hard and soft (getting paper to sway like that was genius) deserved acclaim.

THE WORST

After a lot of crap talking, Nicholas ended up in the bottom two with a dress that made my boyfriend say, "It looks like a beetle". The judges, too, thought that it was insect inspired and annoying, emo Nicholas almost went home.

Johnny's awkward paper craft project dress got him the boot. And good riddance after he made some BS reason as to why he threw his first dress away (yay for Tim Gunn calling him out!) and used the rest of his time doing a freaking crossword puzzle.

THE WINNER

In the end, Irina won for this trench. I'll give it to her, the look is visually stunning and looks like a trench coat. But it appears costume-y to me. It's as if she's a set designer assigned with the task of creating real-world clothing in an alternate universe where only newspaper is available. Sort of the point of the challenge, I'll admit, but a little to literally responsive to the task. You shouldn't be able to tell that it's newspaper. And the fact that Tommy Hilfiger could see the scotch tape? Unforgivable.