It’s the most wonderful time of the Project Runway season! It’s the unconventional material challenge and this time the designers are going to have to make entire looks from greeting cards. Let’s see who can be the most creative.
It’s a Hallmark
After the last elimination, all of the designers are surprised that Duncan was the one who went home. Ashley was sure he was her biggest competition but now she doesn’t know who else is going to be in the running. But she’s happy to have immunity for this challenge.
They all meet Tim and Amy, a Hallmark executive, at a Hallmark store. Tim tells them they’ll have two minutes to collect as many cards as they can to create a look in one day. There’s a mad dash for the cards and the most of the designers just try and focus on getting enough materials to work with.
Project Runway Season 14 Premiere Recap: The Designers Put on Their First Show >>>
Say it With a Card
All of the designers lay out the cards that they have and investigate what the others picked as well. It’s early enough in the competition that most of them feel comfortable sharing or bartering their cards with each other. Except Edmond. He’s keeping his cards and his ideas close to the vest. He’s even hesitant to tell the producers about it in his confessional, but he eventually admits to Tim that he’s making something bridal inspired.
Blake is completely lost and has no idea what he’s going to make. What’s even worse, when Swapnil comes in to tell the work room about the sewing machines, Blake makes an ignorant comment saying he can’t understand him because he “doesn’t know how to speak Indian.” Swapnil says he isn’t going to give racism any attention. He’d rather just block Blake out and completely ignore him.
But Blake doesn’t think he’s dumb or rude, he just says he’s “adorable” and has “no filter.” Not only is his attitude poor, but his design for this challenge is suffering. Tim says that it looks neither refined or sophisticated and he might need to re-think his glitter material.
Swapnil is making a polka dot and chevron dress inspired by Alice in Wonderland. He’s already an established designer in India, but he’s looking at this competition as an opportunity to gain more experience and expand his brand in New York.
Gabrielle’s dress already looks like it’s going to be stunning. She’s used making an ombre effect with red and pink strips of envelopes pieced together. Tim thinks it looks promising but she has a lot of work to do. She runs into some trouble before the runway show when she struggles to get her dress open to put it on her model.
Amanda is really inspired by this challenge. She found a paper that looks like lace so she painted it black and using it on the bodice. She wants to make a big skirt but she’s worried that she doesn’t have enough card material to cover the skirt.
Kelly is excited because she’s used to re-working materials. She spent her whole childhood making the best of thrift store finds. She’s crunching envelopes to create a fringe effect on the bottom and creating her own textile of multiple cards for the bodice.
For Candice’s look, she used the silver foil found on the inside of the envelopes as the main material. It has a sharp structure on the top and looks powerful and feminine. Tim and a lot of the other designers in the work room really think it’s a great look.
Tim calls Hanmiao’s look very conceptual. Up close, it’s simply envelopes patched together, but from far away it almost looks like leather materials.
David starts off making a top that’s made of pink cards to make it look like tweed. But after Tim gives him a terrible critique (he calls it “constipated,” among other things) he decides he needs to start over. So he paints some muslin and removes the words “hot damn” off several cards and pastes them onto the dress. It may look better (I’m not so sure if it does), but his fellow designers question if he’s using enough of the actual cards in his look.
While Ashley’s not worried about going home, she still wants to make a splash on the runway. She’s making a gold poncho made of cards, but she’s worried she won’t finish.
Merline isn’t completely in love with her look. And for good reason. The shapes are weird and it looks a lot like a craft project of construction paper pasted together.
Runway Greeting Cards
Joining Zac, Nina and Heidi this week on the judging panel is actress Ashley Tisdale. Before Heidi announces who’s on the top and bottom, she tells Ashley that she was lucky to have immunity this week. She said she didn’t follow the rules by using too much muslin in her look and she would have been on the bottom if she didn’t have immunity.
On the Top
Blake- All of the judges love the colors of the dress and Nina thinks it has a great presence. Heidi says it looks like a dress you’d wear on New Year’s Eve and she loves that it’s so sparkly.
Kelly- Zac likes that she used such interesting techniques on both the top and the bottom and says it’s a cool look. Ashley thinks the crop top is fashionable. But Heidi and Nina think too much is going on for one look. Nina doesn’t think it looks sophisticated.
Edmond- Nina loved that Edmond represented Hallmark so well by making a wedding dress, which represents a very special moment in a woman’s life. Heidi thinks the volume, proportion and fit are perfect and Zac thinks he nailed it.
Swapnil- The judges think that the black and white structured top paired with the colorful flowers on the bottom is effective and lovely. Ashley says it’s her favorite of the night and Zac says he is an amazing builder of textile and dimension.
Lifetime Greenlights Project Runway Junior, Renews Project Runway All Stars >>>
On the Bottom
Amanda- Zac thinks the textile is nice on top but the skirt is not great. He says it looks like a cleaning instrument and Nina says it looks like a pinata. Heidi says it borderlines on being silly.
David- Heidi likes David’s look but says he completely missed the mark by not using any cards as the base of the dress. She says it’s just bedazzled muslin and it’s not creative. Zac says it’s clear he’s a sophisticated designer but he took the easy way out.
The Results
Backstage, Amanda gets upset when she realizes she’s in the bottom two. She doesn’t think she belongs there, especially when some of the other designer’s looks seemed like they were about to fall apart on the runway.
Edmond is the winner of the challenge. The judges appreciated that he took a risk and his dress looked different than everything else on the runway. Edmond is overcome with emotion after all the time he’s spent trying to get on Project Runway.
The judges have no choice but eliminate David after he didn’t follow the guidelines of the challenge. He admits that he was lost on this challenge and the stress got to him, but he is the one who deserves to go.
Next week: The first team challenge! Let the chaos begin!
(Image courtesy of Lifetime)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
