Hidden dragon.
Forget it, bitches. It's Chinatown.If we accomplish one thing before we die, we hope it's to show the masses the incredible entertainment value of adding "bitches" to classic move lines. Try it!
"After all, tomorrow is another day, bitches!"
"There's no place like home, bitches."
"Use the force, bitches!"
"Here's looking at you, bitches."
See what we mean? Gold! Grab a pair of scissors, some construction paper, yarn, and a toilet paper tube and make your own at home!
People sometimes complain about the team challenges. And we get the complaints, we do. The constant tension erupting into occasional arguments, the throwing of each team member under the proverbial bus, the restraints put on the designers so that they can't design the way they'd like to. All complaints with varying degrees of validity, we think.But the flip side of that is getting to watch two people who have virtually nothing in common and who you're sure are going to wind up crashing and burning spectacularly, turn out pieces that are better than anything either of them likely would have come up with on their own and yet they somehow individually manage to retain their particular design aesthetic. Anthony and Maya managed that trick rather nicely this week.
Model: Monique DartonIn some respects, it's typically Anthony: a fairly run-of-the mill cocktail dress jazzed up with an interesting embellishment.
What makes this look more appealing to us than, say, the Marie Claire dress is that this time, he came up with an embellishment that was more interesting than merely draping and folding fabric.
And for the most part, he executed it very well because a detail like that could easily look clumsy and inelegant. It does sort of look like he lost the plot somewhere around the shoulder, though.
Without the embellishment, this is, as we said, a fairly typical dress. He could have made this a stronger entry had he done some consideration for form, silhouette and color. A minor tweak in any or all of those areas and this might have been a winner.
Model: Lorena AngjeliMaya gets a little stronger each week, which makes her end fate all the more tantalizing in its vagueness.
We groaned a bit at Chinatown as an inspiration because we imagine it's very difficult to do without lapsing into horrific stereotyping or cliches. Let's face it, the average Chinatown has about as much to with actual Chinese culture as Sleeping Beauty's Castle in Disneyworld has to do with medieval French castles. It's a poster version of the actual culture, which makes translating it into another form a somewhat dicey proposition.
And yet somehow, she managed to make an outfit that really does evoke Chinatown (to us, anyway) with nary a cliche in sight.
In a lot of ways, Maya is like the recently auf'd Amy in that she has a lot of conceptual stuff that she wants to pour into a garment. She doesn't have Amy's tendency for bombast, though. Her embellishments and design elements tend to be more subtle.
Like this beautiful fabric used to make the top. Striking, but subtle and with a very slight Asian feel to it. It helps that she used it beautifully. The lines of the fabric are utilized perfectly to evoke shapes and produce a pleasing whole.
And come on, those sleeves are fabulous.
As was the skirt, with it's subtle hints of red giving it an even more Asianesque feel without lapsing into cliche. In short, we think this was as perfect as a look can be in this competition.
We would have given an individual win to Maya if we were in charge. Anthony's look was good and served as a perfect counterpart to Maya's look, but her look was head and shoulders above everything else on the runway. It kills us that Emilio's embarrassingly basic ball gown won over her far more intelligent and appealing design.Tim Gunn's Workroom:
Extended Judging:
[Photos: myLifetime.com - Video: myLifetime.com]
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Labels: Anthony Williams, Lorena Angjeli, Maya Luz, Monique Darton, Project Runway, Project Runway Season 7, Project Runway Season 7 Episode 9
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