Homeward Bound

Darlings, if you're a long-time minion, you know how much we enjoy what we call the "homeward bound" episode at the end of every season. You can read our original thoughts on why we love it so much here. Basically, what we love most about it is that it fills in the blanks on these designers and gives us a glimpse into their "real" day-to-day lives. Plus, they look better because they got a full night's sleep and had time to do their hair and put on makeup.

Also, we get the high-comedy of seeing Tim driving a Saturn, a sight we once described as "about as believable as a scene depicting him making out with a woman."

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Case in point.

Sometimes the staging on this show gets awfully silly.

First stop: KortoLand. We have to say, we thought she looked utterly fabulous and we thought it was cute that she seemed a bit nervous about what Tim was going to think of her work. It must be strange for the designers. They got used to having Tim come in and critique them in the fishbowl of Parson's but to have him come into your home and personal workspace to offer his criticisms must be awfully daunting.

Korto honey, why didn't you just stop here? We don't fall-down love it but it's a hell of a sight better than the final product.

And God, how beautiful are those colors? She said she wanted a collection that was "ethnic but not too ethnic" and this peek shows that she's definitely on the right track.

He said "snapshot" you dirty birds. We refuse to believe that Tim would ever use the word "snatch" unless he was talking about grabbing something.

LOVED the drumming session. How awesome was that? Of course every year with every remaining designer, they attempt to paint some hardship picture. Witness Santino's homelessness. Jeffrey's addiction, Uli's black-and-white East German childhood, Jay's smalltown homosexuality, etc. But damn, "We had to leave Liberia during the civil war because they would have killed my entire family" is right up there with Chloe's Laotian refugee tale.

Is that not the cutest fucking thing you've ever seen? We got toothaches from it. Tim in a widdle helmet! We're dying here!

Like his visit with Korto, it came across to us that Leanne not only really values Tim's expertise and opinions, she also seemed to just enjoy seeing him and chatting for a while.

Tim responded to her collection exactly as we expected. Having seen it ourselves, if he'd been underwhelmed or too critical, we would have been VERY upset. Of course Daddy came through for us.

NerdLove is so cute, isn't it? Could these two possibly be any better of a match for each other? We met Nathan at Bryant Park and he's an utter sweetheart who reads the blog regularly. He's also, like our Alex, a cartoonist. Clap loudly and tell him you want him to submit a strip for us.

We have to say, we're not loving the goatee, which makes him look a little like Marvin Gaye. Not that there's anything wrong with looking like Marvin Gaye, but we thought he looked cuter without it.

Tim's critique was hard to watch because it was sorely needed and we could tell it was falling on deaf ears. We're all for designers being true to themselves but this is a competition and if you're not going to curtail your more out-there impulses in order to stay in the game, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

Yes, he introduced his SignOther as his "love interest," which we thought was pretty clever but some people seemed to think it was a little weird. We just think it was Jerell being Jerell.

His family seemed sweet and supportive too.

Maybe we're reading too much into it but Kenley seemed like she was a nervous wreck meeting up with Tim again.

We suspect being cast as this season's villain caught her way off guard and for someone who's naturally defensive under the best circumstances, the realization that seemingly 99% of the internet has negative opinions about her must have been pretty damn hard to handle.

Of course she immediately reverted to form and got defensive at the slightest critique.

Not just unattractive, it's plain weird.

And Tim, we're dying to know where you stand on the whole "ripoff" issue. Knowing what we know both about this show and about Tim, we wouldn't be a bit surprised that he brought it up but it was edited out so the judges could be the ones to tell her they've seen it before.

As for the little reunion in the hotel, clearly the producers wanted a blowup in the Wendy/Kara Saun manner, but none of these people are extreme enough in their personalities (not even Kenley) to pull it off. Instead we got a lot of immature passive agression that evaporated with one half-assed apology followed by alcohol for all. Oh well. Hopefully there'll be a fistfight in the tent in this week's episode.

[Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]

There was a little girl who had a lot of curls...

We said it last week: when Korto goes off the rails, she really goes off the rails.

At her best, she produces interesting, sometimes eye-popping, innovative designs, but in her quest to be different, she sometimes winds up with designs that aren't so much eye-popping as eye-searing. With Korto, it's either amazingly beautiful or insanely ugly. We think there's a reason for that.

We said that Leanne has an intellectual approach to design. When Leanne fails, the result is usually bland or boring. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Korto, who has not so much an intellectual approach as an emotional one. She needs to produce something amazing, something different. So when she fails, she fails badly but when she succeeds, the results are vibrant and amazing.

Unfortunately for her, she failed badly on this one. She wanted to produce a wedding dress that was different and unusual and she certainly accomplished that.

The end result was certainly different but it was ugly, overworked, and almost unwearable.

We're all for the idea of producing a wedding gown that goes against conventions and we love it when a designer or a bride goes for the nontraditional non-white gown. Unfortunately, this color is drab.

And the silhouette is just plain weird.

But the real crime is that it's way overdone. She worked that fabric so hard it looked like it was going to burst into tears of exhaustion at any moment. And is it us or are those ruffles on the shoulders uneven? There are way more on the left side than there are on the right. Not that symmetry is required, but going asymmetrical on a dress that already has so much going on was yet another bad idea.

The bridesmaid dress was at least a little better but we have to say it's somewhat notable that she completed this dress in the company of her peers and with the advice of a mentor. Much like Jerell, she may have needed the guidance to produce better work.

It's pretty. We think this one's also a little overworked but compared to the wedding dress it's the picture of simplicity.

We like the pleating in the bust but the two sides look a little uneven to us.

We like the fullness of the skirt and the layered hem. We also really like the belt but that's at least in part due to the fact that it's the only color to be found on either of these dresses.

Which brings us to our final complaint: the overall color scheme.

We got a little flack for saying that Kenley's dresses didn't look like they go together and Leanne's did. People mistakenly took that to mean that we thought the dresses should have "matched" somehow. What we meant was the dresses needed to look like they were going for the same feel. Both of Leanne's dresses had that ethereal dreamlike quality to them whereas Kenley's wedding dress was an over-the-top fantasy dress paired with a basic party dress for the bridesmaid.

We can at least admit that these dresses look compatible but the problem is with the color scheme. If you're going to put the bride in a somewhat drab neutral, it kind of behooves you to put some sort of color on the rest of the bridal party. Not only are both dresses colorless, they're virtually the same neutral tone. This would have been the most depressing wedding ever.

We would have been very upset if Korto had been auf'd over these dresses but we certainly would have understood why. The judges looked at the whole of their output and the potential for their runway show and decided that Korto had more going on than Jerell did. Having seen both of their runway shows, we have to say we agreed with them on that.

[Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]

Wedding Noodles

The judges' reaction to this dress was one of, if not the, most overwhelmingly positive reactions to a garment the judges have ever had on the show. At one point during the breathless gushing, Tom turned to Lorenzo and said, "Wow. They are totally moist."

And rightfully so. Neither the pics nor the video do this dress justice. In person, it is absolutely breathtaking. On video, it tends to look heavy and ponderous but in person it has a light, wavy, dream-like quality to it.

It has a somewhat strange silhouette that still manages to be flattering and beautiful.

And normally, we would find that little flap at the bust distracting, but it's crisp and the proportions are just right, so it doesn't bother us.

They had absolutely nothing bad to say about this dress and their compliments were, as we said, breathless. At certain points, they seemed almost speechless. We can't think of any other time - maybe Jay's Chrysler Building dress - where the judges were so ebullient in their praise.

And if we were judges, we would be too. This is definitely among the top looks ever produced on the show.

We're happy to see she ditched the original design completely because that dress was heavy and overdone. It looked like some sort of air filter.

Leanne has an intellectual approach to design and someone like that naturally responds well to constructive criticism. It's notable not only that she took Tim's advice about her wedding dress...

But she also took his advice about shortening the length of the bridesmaid dress. The floor length hem takes the focus away from the beautiful bodice and makes the dress look bland in comparison.

Turning it into a shorter dress keeps all the focus exactly where it should be. We think this dress is equally as pretty as the wedding dress and unlike a lot of the entries (all of them, really), this looked to us like a bridesmaid's dress.

The only issue we can see is that the petal pleats in the bust look a bit sloppy.

We suspect she simply didn't have enough time to execute them properly.

And it looks like she played around with the design a bit before deciding which way they should go. We actually like this version better.

They don't lay correctly and it does some weird things to her bust. It looks like her right boob exploded. Still, this is only a minor complaint. We got the idea behind them; we just don't think she had the time to execute them perfectly. The judges didn't seem to have a problem with them because they never mentioned it.

And she didn't use the bridesmaid dress in her final collection (although one of the dresses had a similar skirt), so she must have been less than thrilled with the results herself.

Still, despite that, these two dresses really were breathtaking and really did look like they belonged in the same wedding party.


[Photos: Getty Images - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]