Project Runway: Always a Bridesmaid

It’s a Peach Panic!
Holly Hobbie halter top
Sends the old girl home.

I can’t say I’m shocked or terribly sad from a design perspective that Peach will no longer be with us. I still love her cute little dress from the first challenge, and she turned out a stellar top last week, but she has made some whackadoodle crappery between those two high points. So on that side, it was time for her to go.

But on a personal level, I’m totally sad to see her go. I loved Peach. I loved her salty old aunt routine with the remarks about “good china.” I loved her unlikely seeming friendship with April. I loved the way she chipped in and helped Andy finish his dress in the party challenge because she could tell it was something truly special.

And in a season of sheer suckfaced assholes, she seems like one of the few people I’d genuinely enjoy being around; one of the few people who actually enjoyed being on the show while the others spend all their time whining and sniping.

So that’s the sad but understandable part of the episode. The enjoyable but baffling part of the episode? Michael C.’s win. Sure, it was amazing to see the other designers react to him winning AGAIN, and hilarious to see the judges shit talk his team for claiming he couldn’t sew last week.

But that dress? That cheap looking black plastic thing? That won?

What the fuck, people?

But we’ll get to that in time. Let’s start the show.

Morning! Atlas apartments! The boys reflect on how painful group work can be. Casanova is grateful that he has “immunity for nex’ challonje.”

In the misfit girls’ apartment, April and Peach dish about how Michael C. can’t sew.

Similarly, in the mean girls’ apartment, they talk about how they think he’ll go next.

Michael C. himself is scared because everyone threw him under the bus. We’re then treated to a montage of the aforementioned under-the-bus throwing, including Ivy’s bitchtastic “I don’t know if it’s laziness or just ignorance” comment.

Gretchen tells us she’s bummed out about “what transpired.” In Gretchen’s world, “what transpired” is code for “when Tim Gunn totally called me out for all the shit I pulled in front of the hapless sheeple I’d successfully manipulated.”

Ivy, her new found balls having retracted since last week, thinks Tim’s lecture will bring Gretchen back to reality.

Runway! Heidi walks out, congratulates Casanova on having immunity for this challenge, and tells them that they’ll have “new models…and quite a task ahead of you.” A bunch of bridesmaids walk out on the runway, each and every one of them wearing what I call an IHMF dress.
IHMF stands for I Hate My Friends. While bridesmaid dresses are never great, the ones in an IHMF wedding – and we’ve all been to an IHMF wedding – are deliberately chosen to make the bridesmaids look as bad as humanly possible. Now, you can be charitable about this (and yes, I realize what a bleak worldview I have for the next sentence to qualify as charitable), and assume that the bride just wants to make her bridesmaids look awful so that no one outshines her on her “special day.”

But the plain truth of the matter is, that woman hates her friends. She may not realize it, and she may not hate all of them, but there’s at least one person in that wedding party she’s deliberately trying to punish, and the whole group’s taking the brunt of it. The best friend who’s always been slightly prettier. The cousin who’s more successful. The sorority sister who married an ex in an incident everyone pretends has been long forgotten. Or, sometimes, an in-law she just flat out doesn’t like, but has to include to keep the peace.

Somewhere deep in her soul, the bride hates those people. And the second she gets the opportunity, she wreaks her terrible taffeta revenge all over their bodies in the most public way possible.

Anyway, the designers’ challenge is to turn this parade of IHMF into something that – as the bridesmaids were promised – they can totally wear again. The ladies introduce themselves, including one who tells us “I don’t know if you noticed, but I have a vertical bow on my chest." I like her.

The designers choose bridesmaids, with Casanova going first since he won last week. I’m not going to do a full breakdown because a) we’ll never see these women again, and b) I didn’t write down everything. But some highlights: Christopher chooses Nanda, a slightly Junoesque girl in a purpley dress. Mondo picks Amanda because he likes the color of her dress, then she turns around and he learns that. . .the back of her dress is white. Damn, her friend must’ve really hated her friends to shove them in something with an ass-widening white panel up the back. Anyway, Mondo now has half the pink fabric he’d thought he had.

The designers keep going, until the last two to choose are Valerie and Michael D. Valerie chooses the girl in the bright “Jolly Rancher” colored dress, leaving Michael D. with a bigger girl in a fluorescent dress. He is not thrilled.

Workroom! Tim Gunn bids them good morning, and tells them they have some “terrifying looking garments” to work with. They’ll also have $50 to spend at Mood, buying notions and 2 yards of additional fabric. He sends in their client/models for 30 minutes of consulting and sketching. Michael D. tells us “there’s not enough sketching in the world to save this dress.”

Tim then tells Christopher that his model got cold feet. So he gets a new client/model, this one wearing a terrifying lacey gold number. Her friend clearly wanted to dress her bridesmaids like Miss Havisham in filthy lace to emphasize the fact that they were all spinster failures who she was including in her party as an act of charity, despite the fact that she hated them.

Consultation! Casanova wants to give texture to his dress. April’s model has a lot of demands and isn’t open to April’s ideas. Michael C. is plotting another open backed garment, which makes me wonder if that’s this particular pony's one trick. Peach wants to show off her girl’s shoulders. She gives her model a quick walking class.

Michael D. is worried about designing for a “volumptuous” girl, but wants her to feel sexy and confident. Volumptuous is probably my favorite malapropism, as it’s so revealing – he’s trying to be nice by calling her voluptuous, but then “lump” sneaks in there, unstoppable. Commercial.

Back. Mood! We don’t get a whole lot of Mood time – and no Swatch, disappointingly – but we do see Michael D. buying upholstery fabric because he can get more yardage out of his budget that way.

Back at the workroom, everyone talks about how they don’t respect Michael C. and he has no talent. Again. Some more.

Gretchen video chats with her mom in an attempt to make us think she’s a human being and not the vile cunning succubus we’ve all seen her for. She tells her mom that she’s realizing life is more than fashion, and she wants to go home. Her mom tells her that she has more souls to eat, and she should suck it up and get back out there to create havoc and crappy sportswear.

Actually, no. Her mom gives her a sweet pep talk, and seems like a nice enough lady. But she did raise Gretchen, so clearly there was a dreadful misstep in her parenting or some rogue recessive genes for ghastliness that mucked up the works.

We’re treated to a delightful flashback of last week’s Tim smackdown, and then sweet dumb Christopher tells us there’s not a malicious bone in Gretchen’s body. And also his mistress demands a sacrifice. A horrible and bloody sacrifice. Clearly her mind control is still working on the poor lad.

Tim thru! Gretchen shies away from him, hissing, since like the demons of olde, she fears the wise man who’s looked in her eyes and seen the gaping abyss where her soul should be. But he tells her he likes the effect of her garment, though he does think it’s too athletic. Gretchen tells us “sometimes in life things happen for you to be reflective and a scar can turn into an open wound if you don’t let it heal.”

Satisfied with that bit of nonsense, she licks the blood of the innocents off of her invisible lips, and returns to doing her terrible works.

Tim wanders around the room dispensing wisdom. He tells Michael C. he’s got too much going on. He then tries to tell Michael D. that it’s a real honor and privilege to design something for someone who’s not a size 6. Which…argh. It may be an honor and a privilege, but in a challenge where everyone else has a model who’s closer to sample size, it’s also a handicap. I know I said this last season (and probably 6 times before that) but if they’re going to design for bigger ladies, then every. Single. One of them should have a bigger lady to design for. Not just one or two out of the bunch. If it’s a challenge, make everyone rise to the challenge; if it’s an “honor and privilege,” then spread that honor around.

Tim is crazy about Mondo’s. So am I. He talks Peach through uniting the two fabrics she’s using, then warns Christopher that he’s “making this fabric look like curtains.” We initially thought Tim said he was making the fabric “look like herpes,” so we had to rewind that bit three times to get it right. We were ultimately disappointed with the truth – fabric that looks like herpes is so much more interesting than fabric that looks like curtains.

Tim likes the bloussant effect that Casanova is creating. Casanova freaks out and basically dies because he can’t believe Tim Gunn said something positive about his work. Valerie is making a Cheerios uniform. Tim tells her to get through it.

Tim then tells them there’s a surprise – tomorrow won’t be a runway day, it’ll be a designer challenge showcase. They’ll get to show their garments to the public, who will vote on their favorite outfits. This will factor into the judges deliberation.


Tim sends in their model/clients for a fitting. Michael D. has essentially shortened his dress and put some sort of lace bra over the top of it. April’s girl won’t shut up, and wants her to remove the collar. April stays strong. Michael C’s girl demands sleeves. Peach’s skirt is fitting funny, sending her into a “Peach Panic.” She’s convinced she’ll have to send her down the runway in biker shorts, since she won’t have a skirt. Commercial.

Back! Once again it’s morning in the Atlas apartments. Valerie worries that her design is too simple. Gretchen says she’s being crazy. Gretchen thinks Peach is in trouble. She then slits the stomach of a New York subway rat and studies its entrails for her dark prognostications. Yes. Yes. The bowels of the rat confirm that Peach is in trouble.

In the other apartment, Peach frets that she’ll be in the bottom. She and April both love April’s design, but know that her model hates it. April is really growing on me in the last few episodes – I know I knocked her early on for being too student-self-assured (I have just graduated from design school so I know it ALL and I like morgues and aren’t I EDGY??), but she’s shrewd and amusing, which go over big with me.

Workroom! Their models enter to be dressed. April is glad she went her own way and didn’t cave to her model. Michael D. has turned his girl into an extra from Hairspray. Casanova helps Valerie sew the straps on her dress as her model wears it.

Public showcase! Each designer has a fishbowl, and every person who comes in will have a button they can drop in their favorite designer’s bowl.

Valerie’s dress gets good responses, but no buttons. Michael C’s dress, to borrow a phrase from Peach, shows the good china. But he still gets buttons. Ivy has made a dreadful outfit that Cindy McCain would wear while drinking Bloody Marys poolside at the Arizona Biltmore. Michael C. points out that Gretchen’s client’s “boobage” is hanging out.

Michael D. gets one button, which seems to come from a bigger lady saluting him for having made something for a bigger lady. Some dude tells Peach that she made magic. Mondo loves hearing the clink of buttons in his bowl, and apparently he’s hearing it a lot.

Ivy hears – from somewhere, it’s not clear where (but my theory is that it was Gretchen hissing it into her ear in her malicious, seductive Parseltongue) that Michael C. has been telling people that she’s the bitch of the show and they shouldn’t vote for her. I kind of feel like we would’ve seen this if it actually happened. Commercial.

Back! Day of runway show. At the apartments, Michael D. shaves Andy’s head. Ivy thinks Michael C. is “trying to pick my buttons,” whatever the hell that means. Michael C. tells us he never told people not to vote for Ivy. Since there’s no footage of this, I believe him.

Workroom. People make last minute adjustments to their garments. Tim tells them they have 2 hours for the usual product placement nonsense, and that Piperlime is giving a gift of jewelry to each of their client/models.

Peach worries about finishing her skirt. Michael C. confronts Ivy about what she’s saying. She chooses not to believe him because of his “character” and “track record.” Bitch, please. You do not have a leg to stand on talking about anyone’s character or track record. In addition to all the shad you’re throwing, do you think we forgot that time you made pants out of pants?

It’s hair and makeup time, which are dominated by Andy’s giant Mohawk. Gretchen bitchily coaches her model in walking. Valerie is nervous about being in the bottom. Mondo thinks Michael D. has handled his challenge with grace. By “challenge” he means “non-sample sized client,” and by “grace” he means “covering her in upholstery fabric.” Commercial.

Back. Runway. Heidi comes out in one of her typical dreadful dresses and does her usual thing of subtracting one from 11 to come up with ten. She also tells us Mondo's dress (left) got the most votes from the public. Yay, Mondo!

Anyway, the judges are Kors (hey guys), Nina (hello!) and Cynthia Rowley (HI!). Let’s start the show.

We open with Mondo’s black and pink mod-inspired asymmetrical number. I love it. Then we get Ivy’s dreadful white pants and lampshade top. It ages her model dreadfully. Val has made a pink, white, and black color blocked dress that my friend describes as being for a ‘drunk cougar.”

Gretchen’s outfit (right) is awful – a dirty looking white tank top with a shitty maroon and lace skirt. She looks like a streetwalker who got in a fight and rolled around in the dirt in the parking lot of the Denny’s on Van Buren (Phoenix, HOLLA!). Peach has made an awful green dress that is only made worse by her model’s awful walk.

Andy has made a black shorts outfit out of his blue dress. I am thoroughly confused by this. Michael C. has created something appropriate for a hooker to wear to an Italian funeral. Christopher has made an ok looking gold club dress. Michael D.’s is a Hairspray costume, plain and simple. Casanova has made awful teal pants with a fun gold top. He calls his look “unesspekted.” Finally, we see April’s, which is a black and purple suiting type dress (left). I think it’s my favorite.


Heidi tells April, Ivy, andy, Gretchen, and Casanova that they’re in. In an entirely unpredictable move, they go back to the green room to bitch about Michael C. Commercial.

Back. The judges start the interview with Michael D., who tells them he wanted to make a “cute cocktail dress” and use the chiffon to dull the color. Kors tells him he took the look “from bridesmaid to Bat Mitzvah.” Heidi says it was better before, and Nina tells him that the fabric looks like mosquito netting. Cynthia Rowley tells him she can kind of see his idea, but it doesn’t work. His model backs him, saying she likes it and it feels comfortable.

Next they move to Christopher. He tells them his model wanted something sexy. Kors says it feels like 2 dresses that have been glued together. Cynthia Rowley says it looks like a bridesmaid dress that’s been taken apart and reconstructed. Which.. .it.. .is. Nina likes the top, but thinks the bottom is too short. Heidi says “I like it short,” and Nina laughs about how they really should pay her more to sit and listen to this tacky bitch way after week.


We next go to Peach, who talks about highlighting her model’s angel tattoo and great shoulders. Kors tells her that the girl’s hair looks great, but that’s it. He hates the “Holly Hobbie halter” and the “avocado dinner napkins tucked in at the hips,” and thinks it looks like something you’d wear to a “church bring a pot dinner.”

Ah yes, the great American tradition of the church bring a pot dinner. I hear they have them often in the Center West, where they eat huge amounts of Kugeled Noodles and Casserole of Tuna.

Anyway, Heidi piles on, telling her the dress is “like some bed skirt ruffle fest.” Nina thinks the color is boring and the design is “weird and old.” Rowley agrees that it’s “oddly uptight.”

For some good news, we go to Mondo’s dress. Nina likes the asymmetry, and thinks it’s a good transformation. Heidi likes it too, and Cynthia Rowley congratulates him on having made it sleek and cool. Kors says he’s made a hot dress on a hot girl.

Kors then turns on a dime, telling Val she turned her gown into “like a nursing grandmother dress.” Ok, ew. Nursing grandmothers? Just ew. Rowley hates the proportions, and wants a smaller top and longer skirt. Nina says it makes the girl’s chest look massive, and Heidi doesn’t hate it as much as the rest of them.

Finally, we go to Michael C. Heidi finds it really edgy and hip. She thinks the lace on the top is great so it’s not “boobs ah out, legs ah out, everything's out.” Her accent goes pure Ah-nold while she’s saying this. Kors tells us the proportions are right on her body. Cynthia Rowley likes the pocket and “almost too short” length, and Nina praises the detail.

Green room. They rehash what the judges said for the coven of horrors (and April) lurking back there, giving Michael C. the perfect chance to rub their faces in his success. I don’t like his dress, but I like the effect his success has on that group of harpies and their emaciated ringleader, Gretchen.

Deliberation. Heidi says Michael C. made a “supermodern, chic, sexy dress.” The judges all laugh about how the team last week kept insisting he couldn’t sew, and wonder who did all his work if that was really the case. Heidi likes the bustier top on Christopher’s, and Nina thinks the idea was good. They feel that Mondo’s transformation of the dress was great, but Nina says his styling was pure “Jersey Shore.” Kors agrees that it was like “Snooki and the Flintstones.”


God help me, if they ever made a cartoon spin-off of Jersey Shore called Snooki and the Flintstones, I would watch the crap out of it.

Moving to the bad designs, Kors hated Val’s bad tennis dress and crazy proportion. Rowley thought it looked like a weird cartoon character (perhaps someone from Snooki and the Flintstones?). Michael D. made a bad dress worse, and Peach made a disaster that Kors compares to a secretary from 1987.

We cut back to the greenroom, where the top and bottom designers are heading back out to the runway. As the door shuts behind them, Gretchen lurches madly up from the couch, skeleton arms flapping. “What show are we fucking on?” she demands in her pale banshee howl. “I feel like I don’t even know why I’m here now!” She flaps her arms some more, and scuttles madly about the room, looking for more souls to suck. Commercial.


Back. Heidi tells Michael C. that they loved his look, and it was sexy, sophisticated, and expensive looking.

. . ..the hell? Does it just photograph like a hooker funeral outfit out of a bag at the Halloween superstore, then? Does it look a LOT better in person?

She also tells Mondo that his look was popular with the public and the judges. But Michael C. is the winner, and has immunity for the next challenge.

I’m both perplexed as crap by this and loving how much it’s going to cheese that awful bunch of puss-faces off. Michael interviews that he “don’t want to win no more,” which is an odd thing to say.


He goes back to the green room where the bitter lemon faces make bitterer lemon faces at him. Gretchen thinks that he didn’t deserve to win, and loftily interviews that “craftsmanship isn’t as acknowledged as I thought it would be.”

Bitch, please. You made a dirty wife beater. I’d tell you to get off your high horse, but you’re so utterly lacking in self awareness that you don't even realize that that horse? He threw you 6 yards back because he couldn't stand listening to you anymore. You've been sitting astride a cholla skeleton ever since...which explains the giant fucking stick you have up your ass.

(Man, I am all over the Arizona references today for some reason. If I wasn't so disgusted with the governor, I'd think it was time to go for a visit. As it is, perhaps I'll just invest some time in making enchiladas this weekend)

Back on the runway, Mondo , Christopher, and Valerie are in. So Peach and Michael D. are on the bottom for having made their dresses worse. Peach’s proportions were off, and Michael’s wasn’t in the least bit flattering. But Michael is in.


Peach is out. She tells the judges that she’s had the time of her life. April is sad that Peach is out. Mondo also interviews that he loves Peach and is sad that she’s going home. Peach and Tim hug. They look weirdly natural together – like an old married WASP couple who’d be a lot of fun. I want them to be my back-up parents.

Peach thanks them all for letting her be “22 for 6 episodes.” Aw. Bye, Peach. We’ll miss you!

Next time! Create a resort wear look! They’re on a boat! Two hats! Crazy energy! Your construction is awful! You still threw him under the bus! Is that not throwing him under the bus?