Project Runway: Driving Miss Unconventional
October 20, 2017 10:57 AM - Season 16, Episode 10 - Subscribe

An unconventional materials challenge...

... in which it's made blindingly obvious that the Tim Gunn Save will be preserved until You-Know-Who is about to be auf'd. Zac couldn't have made it more apparent that he is to reach the finale, no matter what.

Six designers were left, so all were up for judging. The winning look was stunning, and thoroughly deserved to win. I was also very glad to see that one designer who sometimes doesn't seem to have the confidence of the other contestants made a LBD that the judges really loved, notwithstanding construction/zip issues with it.

I thought the wrong designer went home this week. The other bottom look was much worse, in my opinion.
posted by essexjan (10 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I really enjoyed seeing Ayana just go to town with being unconventional. I love that for the last two challenges (the shopkins thing and now this) she's gone completely overboard and made it work. I'm enjoying seeing Ayana come up with completely wacky stuff. Modest designs =/= boring.
posted by Elly Vortex at 12:04 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I remain unimpressed with Brandon and kind of wish everyone would stop sucking his dick every episode.
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:11 PM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah, the Brandon Obsession is lost on me as well.
posted by Elly Vortex at 12:33 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I also do not understand the Brandon love. I feel this is Ayana's or Kentaro's to win but Brandon is getting the same kind of edit that Erin got. Like...gushing obsession by the judges, and then one week she falls from grace, Tim Gunn saves her, and she goes on to win. I can sort of see that happening now and hope it doesn't....

Kentaro: Terrible. Fit, style...everything. He didn't transform anything and the whole Native American vibe was problematic. He seemed oblivious to how that would come across.
Ayana: Loved it.
Brandon: Boy, I guess so. I didn't like it one little bit.
Kenya: I loved it, construction flaws and all. Hated that hat though, a hot mess.
Margarite: I disliked it but there was imagination used so...
Michael: It was terrible and he didn't transform anything. The bungee cords were still bungee cords.
posted by the webmistress at 1:10 PM on October 20, 2017


Well deserved win for Ayana, that gown was spectacular and styled perfectly.

This is the first time the Brandon love irked me. We haven't seen such tongue-bathing from Zac Posen since Sean was the chosen one. He made a saucer top and bottom and the model was in danger of exposing herself every time she moved. It wasn't flattering. And it had the fricking strap.

I liked Margarita's bodice a lot when she and Tim were discussing it, but then she added the blue helmet pieces and it started to go all costume-y.

Kentaro, he absolutely would've gotten the Tim Gunn save and I was expecting it just for the drama because after eliminating two last week, they have a pass. He hit the wall, not unexpected since they are all exhausted and unconventional materials is a tough challenge. I think it's better when they schedule it earlier when the designers are fresh and when it doesn't count as much. What did Nina say, Project Tailoring? Well, he made a pleated skirt out of a fire hose and that's pretty impressive no matter how awful the rest of the outfit was. Also bullshit: asking the model if the fiberglass was itchy.

Kenya is the one who should've been in the bottom with him and Michael. Do not get the praise her outfit received. I liked the hip silhouette but that was the only design element in a fairly standard LBD. The fascinator made it look cheap and that alone should have sent her off.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:10 PM on October 20, 2017


Kenya's silhouette must have gotten her enough points to make a serious gap between her scores and what I imagine were very very very low scores for Kentaro and Michael. I liked that she painted the belts, and I liked the shape, but it wasn't quite there yet (for me).

No one in that room took Kentaro aside and said "Dude, maybe you haven't been in America long enough to realize this, but your styling choices are going to make things so much worse for you"? Interesting. Have we crossed the rubicon from friendship to competition?

I am so over Brandon. I loathed that top's shape and persistant peek-a-boo. The piecing of fabrics and pseudo-fabrics was fine, but I have to wonder if he realizes that women are real life active people who do more than stand around and being decorative?

Margarita. Margarita. Margarita. Learn to stop. The helmet shoulder pads were terrible. The skirt was fantastic, and the occasional reflectors were nice, and then you kept adding and adding. It was too much.

Loved Ayana's garment. That skirt was particularly fantastic (and I had doubts in the beginning), and I like the confidence streak she's on and her willingness to go big and own it.

Michael. Michael. Michael. Putting a bungie strap across the breasts should always get you kicked off, even when your fellow low-pointer puts out a terrible juvenile Hollywood-Primitive version of appropriation outfit that is at once unimaginative and cringe-inducing.

If you were going bondagy, you needed to do it with more class or elan or some form of technique. 18 bungie cords is not it. Seriously, he could have used several to create a belted section beneath his bralet, letting the ends hang at different levels over the skirt, with 1 or two hitched up in weird configurations, and his scores would have been automatically better. People have done bondage-y on this show before so much better.

Instead he wove a cargo net, put it on a fit woman, and declared it sexy.
posted by julen at 2:55 PM on October 20, 2017


I thought with Kentaro that Tim screwed him over in the critique and put him on the wrong path of adding stuff. I think Kentaro heard "Put more stuff on it", and, I'm imagining based on how I tend to react to feedback like that, stuck a bunch of ugly crap on there half out of spite and half out of not knowing how to implement something that doesn't feel right to you as a direction, design-wise. Then with the various aspects like the fringe, the silhouette, the triangles, the styling, and perhaps culturally not knowing that even though this is a motif it's not considered ok to do, well this is the inevitable result.

Zac even said the outfit would have been fine without that other stuff so I was sure Tim was going to use his save due to having given him bad advice.

During that critique I thought Kentaro would take Tims advice to incorporate more parts of the hose that he cut up. I think as mentioned above, them being tired is a huge factor. Aren't usually the unconventional challenges early in the season.
posted by bleep at 6:58 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's the second unconventional challenge this season. There's absolutely no way we need two of them.

My eyes were rolling when Margarita was trying to spin her outfit as a reflection of the Lexus brand. I know she was just attempting to play the game, but boy was that explanation bad.
posted by sardonyx at 8:22 PM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I kind of liked Margarita's top, though without the shoulder things, but her perma-fuming is really getting on my nerves. Her mouth is writing a lot of checks that I think her sewing machine is gonna have trouble cashing, or something. And her criticism of Ayana's look made me genuinely dog-head-tilt confused.

Speaking of Ayana's look, it was dope. I even liked the hard hat hijab (which people on Reddit seemed to hate despite liking the look overall 🤷).

Kentaro will always be my precious cinnamon bun but Liris was 100% right, the outfit was weirdly linebackery, and the styling combined with the decoration was downright offensive. It was the worst look, and if this were Season 1 he would have been auf'd (well, probably -- Michael's was pretty bad). I'm hoping as bleep said that it was some kind of fatigue-induced aberration.

Also I... kinda like Brandon's sorry not sorry. I think his stuff is actually consistently good and I don't mind that he's a little repetitive (reminds me of Rami with his Draped Everything on S4). It's just annoying that he sometimes comes out with B/B+ looks and the judges still act like he invented circle skirts. It's very Anthony Ryan.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:32 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I hate the unconventional materials challenge. Same for the avant garde challenge. I don't know or care enough about design to be able to see how "beautiful" they are, and almost all of them look like craft projects. I mean, it's cool that someone can make a dress out of seatbelts or whatever, but I feel like the judging is so arbitrary in these challenges.

Except Kentaro. That was just terrible no matter what. But again, if Tim didn't say "you're using fabric and that's not enough" maybe he wouldn't have made those decisions. I mean yes it was fabric but it was fabric surrounding a firehose.

I thought for SURE Michael was going to be aufed and then get the Tim Gunn save, since in the beginning of the episode he said something about how no one should get the save because they're all great designers and you shouldn't need the save.
posted by lyssabee at 11:21 AM on October 22, 2017


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