Sunday, August 21, 2011

Who has time for a plan B in this business?

Okay, so most of you probably haven't been sitting in front of a person whose opinion you value, showing them your hard work and creative output. This basically feels a lot like opening up and putting your heart on the table in front of them and hoping they don't choose to stab it with a pen.

It's especially hard if it's something you are really proud of, that you poured yourself into. And when they look at you and they make that face and they say, "Oh, is this it?"

Man, that is a moment where you have the potential to just LOSE IT.

Which is my way of saying that the second that Nina first said, "Do you have a plan B?" I felt so much for the designers she was talking to that I wanted to reach through the television and throttle her. It hit a bit of a nerve.

Which is my way of saying I hated this episode. It's no secret I don't tend to particularly agree with Nina either anyway, so yeah. Not a happy camper.

Anyway, dresses and jumpsuits and possibly a coat!





Anthony Ryan

Okay, the whole "two designers chose the same fabric thing" really fizzled so I won't really bother with it. Though I like Becky's better, which I'll get to, this one is still a nice top that I would really love to buy and wear with a completely different bottom.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the skirt, it's just not my style. And I seem to remember it not moving well on the runway, but it looks fine in the picture. Anyway, I feel like it doesn't compliment this top as well as it could. Not sure what I would do instead though.

But really, still a very solid garment from Anthony Ryan, I'm telling you, he is going to do something amazing very soon.





Anya

I have to admit, I don't really like this at all. Although I also have to say it would have been terrible in that original mustard color.

Can you even imagine? Could somebody photoshop that please?

But anyway, I just think this is the type of garment that doesn't do a woman's body any favors. It doesn't even make this model's body look all that great, it just sort of falls...I don't find it particularly tailored, so I'm surprised how much the judge's loved it.

This is my major problem though: Anya's reaction to Nina's criticism of the color. I know, I just said mustard was the wrong choice. But at the same time, the entire point of the show, no matter the challenge, is supposed to be to show off YOUR design aesthetic within the confines of the challenge. It's about who you are as a designer. At your core, what do you think YOUR fashion is?

I don't know how it really goes in the high fashion world, but it would seem to me that if I was going to hire a designer to make a dress for me, I would be hiring them because I already believe they have a great point of view and I'm interested in what THEY do, not because I want them to conform to ME and what I tend to buy/wear/whatever. So part of me really wanted Anya to look at Nina and say, "I'm going to make you believe in mustard, because I am going to make something wonderful with it."

There was this episode of Top Chef where the chefs all were supposed to make a dish that reflected their family and history. Tom Colicchio, (the head judge if you don't watch the show) apparently has said before that he hates okra. One of the chefs chose to make okra because it was something her family made, and she was convinced that she could make it well. And when they were at the judge's table, Colicchio had to admit that he had loved it, because she made it well.

Now, I don't know if I think that Nina actually is open-minded enough to be converted like that, and like I said, the mustard WAS a bad choice in the first place, but wouldn't it have been great, just once this episode, to see a designer say, "trust me, I'll make you love this." Where's Santino when you need him?





Becky

How much do I want this dress? I don't have any idea if it would look good on somebody of my body type, but if I saw this in the store the first thing I would do is start looking for it in my size, and THEN I might look at the price tag.

I think that this actually is a much better use of the fabric than Anthony Ryan's, but only because the overall garment is better and seems to be working off of the print more than making the print work for it. They're both good, but this? This I want to own. I want to find that fabric and make one of these for myself. I'm still amazed it wasn't top three, though I suppose it wasn't Nina's style.





Bert

Blah. That's all I have to say about this. I mean, it's classic, and well done I guess. But it's just a boring black dress. It doesn't say anything, it doesn't do anything. I'm sure he could sell it to a department store and they'd sell a ton of them, but after a woman wore it out, nobody would every remember what she had on that night, just that she must have been clothed or something.





Bryce

I'm going to admit up front that I have a bit of a vendetta against Bryce because I'm still convinced he deserved to go home last week and that it was a bit slimy of him to blame that atrocity on Fallene.

Plus, he was snooty. I don't like snooty.

That said, this dress looks like something I could make. Actually, it looks like several Halloween costumes and cosplay outfits that I _have_ made. Because I don't actually sew that much and I'm a bit impatient, so my seams are never QUITE as straight as they should be, and my fabric almost always ends up puckering, and my hems take three tries to get them right.

Seriously, WHY was this not in the bottom? Not only is it super boring, but it's made like somebody that hasn't even started fashion school, let alone graduated.

Okay, I'm done being bitter and cranky.





Cecilia

I actually thought it was evident from the casting episode that Cecilia really didn't have the right personality for this, and she wasn't going to get far. She wasn't even a good choice if you were looking for a villain, she was just...uninterested and unimpressed. I don't know, she hasn't really struck me as anything and I keep forgetting she's even on the show.

This dress, for the record, is terrible. I'm not even sure what I can say about it because it's just so evident from looking at the picture. She gave up, she picked up the wrong stuff at Mood (which I still don't get, she's not the first designer to say something looked different in Mood...you would think a fabric store would have great lighting, but anyway) and instead of mustering up her own ingenuity, she gave up.

I don't really want to see any more of her.





Danielle

The judges ripped this apart pretty well, and I don't think they said anything I particularly disagree with. Though I do want to point out that they LOVED the exaggerated and comical shoulders on Viktor's outfit and yet couldn't stop pointing out the only slightly larger than average ones on this shirt. Yeah, that made a ton of sense.

Actually, a lot of what the judges said this week bothered me, because they were clearly making decisions based on previous performance and they're always saying that it's just the garment in front of them that they are judging. Listen, you and I both know that has never been the case, but they keep saying it, so shouldn't they at least TRY to do it? And seriously, if that's the case, they should have put Bryce on the bottom again just for being Bryce.

Anyway. I actually think this color could have looked great, but Danielle had the same problem Anya did only in a different way. She didn't stand up for herself enough, but she TRIED to hang on to herself, and what she ended up doing was a mismatched mess.

I wrote this script once, for a class. I wanted it to be about a certain thing, and my teacher heard the pitch and decided it would be better if it was about something else. He didn't change the specifics, but it was originally a comedy about cooking, and it became more of a drama about a dysfunctional family. There's more to it than that, but I don't want to bore you.

Because I had only just started grad school, I was under the mistaken impression that he knew better than me, and I did what he said because well, he must really KNOW, right? But part of me held back, and didn't do it right because it wasn't ME, it wasn't what I wanted to write, and it wasn't what my story wanted to be.

The script I ended up with was junk. Only the bare bones of it were salvageable. And it was because I didn't say, "No, this is MY work, and if nothing else it needs to be what I wanted to write." If Danielle had gone out on this, she couldn't have proudly said, "I at least accomplished what I set out to do."

And that's got to be the worst way to go out, IMHO.





Josh

I don't get this dress. I understand nothing about it. Okay, I take that back, I actually like the color combination if there was a LOT less of the orange stuff. I think grey with that orange accent would be great. But really, what is this?

I can say that unlike some of the other garments that went out this week, this one really made the model's body look better. Something other than the orange and I might have loved it, just because of how it fit her.

But as is, it kind of reminds me of those bulky night-shirts with a skinny woman's body printed on them.





Julie

Oh, Julie. I actually loved Julie, and I can't even explain to you why.

I don't hate this as much as everybody else seems to, because I see a lot of potential in it. The collar is weird, yes. But I kind of like the asymmetrical hem (because it looks done on purpose, rather than bad construction like Bryce's).

I mean, honestly, the more I look at it, the less nice things I have to say about it. Maybe liking Julie is messing with my judgement. But I think maybe it's just that I like the fabric choice, and I'd love to see a cute little trench made out of that color combinations. With less orange.





Kimberly

I think if this top hadn't been made in this gold, I would have adored it. But the gold made it a little much for me.

I don't think I could rock this (in another color) but I'd love to try. It's fun, and it makes the model look fantastic. It was a well earned win. Though I never in a million years expected Nina to like it.





Laura

I honestly don't understand the first thing about this dress. It doesn't look like it fits well, the sheer bits on the skirt go way too high up, and the sleeves just look constrictive and odd.

It wasn't bottom of the list material, since there were at least four that were worse. But I expected more from Laura.

It's a good color though, I'll give her that.





Olivier

This was was pretty boring too. But the thing that gets me is that it also seemed poorly made, and that confused me a lot. I don't really have a lot to say about it other than it's puckering all over the place.

Although I do have to say this was another set of good color choices. But a pop of color might have made it feel less boring.





Viktor

I just...I can't...What IS THIS? Why did everybody love it? Did they really think that a woman could wear this outside of a runway and not keep bumping her shoulders into things?

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but at the same time, those are some seriously weird shoulders and I don't understand fashion. They don't look as bad in this picture, but on the show I couldn't really figure out what was supposedly so wonderful about it. The model also wasn't really doing it any favors either, she seemed hunched over the entire time. Why this was in the top three instead of Becky, I don't know.

Like I said, I don't know fashion, apparently.

I'm cutting things a bit short, I've got a shoot coming up next weekend so I'm kind of frazzled. I'll probably be a little late with next week's recap too because we're running Thursday-Monday on the shoot. See you later!