Project Runway: All Stars was back for another week of missing Tim Gunn, being glad to see the exceptional designs and watching the weird, Heidi Klum-clone who hosts the whole thing. Plus, of course, seeing what outfit-reminiscent-of-boyhood Mondo Guerra would wear (this week it was shorts and knee socks. Weirdest part? He lives in Denver.).
This week, their challenge brings in Badgley and Mischka, two fancy fashion designers, to introduce the designers’ challenge: a night at the opera. They have one day and $350 to design a haute couture gown appropriate for no night of the opera I’ve ever seen. A night at the opera in the mid-1950’s perhaps, but nowadays, people mostly just wear slacks.
Regardless, the designers think little about opera, and think more about red carpet. Austin Scarlett is the master of haute couture gowns, so he feels pressure to win this one. With his painted-on eyebrows, mascara, manicured moustache and pathos, he is completely adorable. We want him to win.
At the runway show, it isn’t hard to pick out the tops and the bottoms. At the top is Scarlett, with his beautiful gold lame and black tulle gown. It has a modesty that the judges aren’t used to seeing, and they tell him so. Also in the top is Anthony, for a tired white Grecian goddess gown with a cut-to-midriff slit that would make any old society lady swoon. Michael Costello also makes it into the top with a jersey, body-skimming dress with a bejeweled-and-feather collar. It’s nice, but certainly not appropriate for the opera.
On the bottom are Sweet P, Kara and April. Sweet P makes a high-waisted babydoll dress with a vintage-flowered bottom and poorly constructed peach top. It looks inspired by a pregnant woman in summer, and even though everybody loves her, she deserves to be sent home for it. Kara picks an unfortunate, 1950’s-white-and-flower print, but the dress is too boring to discard Kara for it. April makes a dress that would have been cool in another context and if she’d had enough time—a red and hand-dyed black silk “corpse bride” gown. Kenley should have been on the bottom over April for her Pepto Bismal-pink chiffon puffy prom dress. It was an old-fashioned eye sore.
In the end, Austin preserves his haute couture legacy, and Sweet P is sent home. Have you been tuning in to Project Runway: All Stars?