Stella & Keith

Staggering toward the finish line. Let's knock this shit out.

Another diva choice we never would have predicted. Oh sure, some of the designers just didn't have much in the way of the choices; we're just a little shocked that on the whole, they all made such poor ones.

"These broads aren't classy. Most of them wear really tacky shit on stage."

Stella, Luisa Verde's gonna beat your ass for that one.

And she looks like just the gal to do it. Although she did get in one of the best drag lines of the night:

"I look like Liz out of rehab." When a drag queen says that, it's in the tone of voice normally reserved for little girls who get ponies on the birthday.

As for the dress...

Ugh. No.

From a basic design point of view, it's not awful, but from a "dressing a drag queen" point of view, it's a big fail.

The whole design emphasizes how big and broad this broad really is and does nothing for the illusion she's trying to create.

Plus, it's poorly executed. Those sleeves look terrible.

And the fabric looks cheap. We do like the split skirt, though.

On a much smaller, much younger and probably much more anatomically correct girl, it wouldn't be bad. We could see Gwen Stefani in something like this.

Problem is, Luisa ain't no Gwen Stefani. On the one hand, we want to congratulate Stella for once again applying her aesthetic to the challenge. On the other, we have to admit that she missed the mark.

See, now this would seem like a good matchup.

Sherry's a pretty girl with a hard edge and that seems about right for Keith's style.

Unfortunately, she came off looking like the member of the Snuffleupagus family that no one wants to talk about.

But before we get to that...

Yes.

Oh, yes.

They couldn't claim the air conditioning was broken just to get him to take his shirt off? PR producers, must we think of everything?

Anyway. The dress (and we use that term loosely):

Honestly, what are we supposed to say? It's awful.

Keith, that shredded swatch thing you've got going on just ain't as interesting as you think.

Which isn't to say it couldn't have been interesting, but you would have had to make better choices.

Cheer up, Sherry.

Instead of these drab grays and blacks, wouldn't it have been a lot more fabulous with some wild pops of color?

And wouldn't it actually look like a dress if he'd shaped it somehow? As it is, it looks like a bunch of mopheads.

It's just shapeless and lifeless and those are two words one should NEVER use when discussing a drag queen. He's lucky Daniel did something boring again because this looked like a losing entry to us.

[Photos: Barbara Nitke/Bravotv.com - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]

Leanne & Jerell

We kind of thought Leanne made a strange choice in Sharon Needles. Sharon comes off a lot harder-edged than Leanne's "Judy Bernly in the 21st century" aesthetic.

How were we supposed to know she'd pull out a "Judy Jetson in the 21st century" look? And do it well?

Although we still maintain that Sharon wasn't the best choice for the look.

Leanne likes her pleats and ruffles and she did a good job of taking that signature style and applying it to an over-the-top drag dress.

Instead of noodles, we got an origami-inspired space age look that's miles away from what Leanne normally does, but still maintains a certain Leanne style to it.

We loved the bodice and the skirt - especially the use of shiny contrasting fabrics to give the look some glam.

We're not super-crazy about the collar, though. It didn't quite come off the way (we assume) she wanted and looks too bulky and distracting.

Still, it was an interesting, eye-catching, semi-glam look and that alone is to her credit since it's not really her thing and she did it fairly well.

Here's another choice we didn't quite get. LeMay said she loved vintage fashion and we assumed Kenley would have been all over that, but instead Jerrell picked her.

Then again, Jerrell did that "Bo Peep in the '40s" look for the Olympics challenge, so we figured he might have the chops to do something crazy with a vintage flavor.

And he kinda-sorta did, didn't he?

It's a flapper dress with a weird, sort of sci-fi collar to it. The problem is, the combination just didn't work.

To be honest, we thought the judges came down a little too hard on him, especially in light of some of the other looks walking the runway. We actually really liked the colors he chose. They weren't the cliched neon and candy drag colors one normally thinks of, but they were shiny and they did in fact evoke a vintage feel.

It's the collar that really screws up the look.

You don't draw attention to a drag queens broad shoulders and squat neck. You make them look smaller and longer. It's all about the illusion and Jerrell didn't quite get that.

The overall effect just kind of flattened her out. She looked a little dumpy despite the sequins.

And the fringed hem was kind of blah, although we didn't hate it as much as the judges did.

It wasn't a fantastic entry by any means, but we didn't think it was worthy of the judges' ire, either. To us, it would have been a middle of the pack look. We suspect that judges were really counting on Jerrell to bring the whacky and he just let them down.


[Photo: Barbara Nitke/Bravo - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]

Not Quite and Just Right

To be honest, we were a little surprised that Kenley picked Farrah Moans (and we're embarrassed to admit it took us half the episode to "get" her drag name) as her diva.

Far be it for us to cast aspersions on a sister, but she wasn't exactly the prettiest girl on the runway and we would have thought that Kenley would pick a more traditionally feminine-looking gal.

Now, we admit we're probably reading too much into it - hey, that's what we do here - but Kenley seemed a little discombobulated by the whole drag thing when the ladies walked out on the runway. We're gonna go out on a limb and say that she probably didn't have a lot of first-hand experience with drag queens.

Granted, she wasn't seen much this episode, but when we did see her, she seemed like she was just a little off her game.

As for the dress, it's really only just alright. If you read our interview with Hedda, we said that we thought this dress looked like a bit of a cliché. Like something a not-too-imaginative film or television costumer would whip up for "Drag Queen #3."

It's like she checked certain drag attributes off a list. Shiny? Check. Feathers? Check. Slit up to here? Check.

It's fine, but it's the quintessential middle-of-the-pack entry. Not bad enough to get called out on it but not good enough to be considered for the top.

It's just very basic and kind of boring, frankly.

And while we're all for putting feathers on a drag queen, from a technical standpoint, they didn't look so hot. They looked like they were literally just jammed down the back of the dress.

And the dress wasn't fitted as well as it could have been. Drag clothes are all about creating the illusion of womanly curves and this just barely does so. From certain angles, it looked like it was about a size too big on her.

Korto deserves big props just for her choice in Diva. Whenever there's a non-model wearing a designer's entry, the designer who gets the biggest girl usually frets over it. Not Korto, she went right for that.

Granted, rarely has there been a big girl client on the show as fabulous as Sweetie, but still. It was a risky choice to make.

We chose to rip Kenley and Korto's dresses in the same post because they're comparable on a lot of levels. Kenley could have taken some fit advice from Korto...

... because Sweetie is a BIG girl and Korto seemed to instinctively understand how to create the illusion of curves. Sure, the proportions are insanely over the top, but that's what you do with drag.

You give a big girl with no hips a big goddamn skirt et voila: an even bigger girl, but one with curves. It's like Kenley used what she knows about fitting a woman when what she should have been doing was trying to fit a man to make him look like a woman.

Korto made no such mistake - and the removable skirt was a fabulously theatrical touch.

Although once again, we think this skirt is an inch or two too short. Too many of these designers saw "drag queen" and thought "tranny hooker."

And the hem was oddly fucked up. We're surprised we never heard from Nina on that.

Then again, this dress was a masterpiece of distraction and the ingenious sequined flames drew the eye straight to Sweetie's face, which is exactly where a drag queen wants the eye to go.

It really did look amazing and you could tell Sweetie loved it.

A lot of people thought Terri got robbed, but Korto's got reason to pout over this one too. If we were sitting in those judges' chairs, it would have come down to her and Joe and frankly, hers was more creative. Joe just had the prettiest model.


[Photos: Barbara Nitke/Bravotv.com/Farrah Moans' MySpace Page/Sweetie's MySpace Page - Screencaps: Projectrungay.blogspot.com]