Project Runway 405 Recap: "What's the Skinny?"

***SPOILER ALERT*** 

I wasn’t happy when Chris went home last week. As a friend said to me, Chris is big and gay and fabulous, and there’s just not enough of that on TV. But that unhappiness was nothing compared to the how I felt this week – and it has nothing to do with who won or lost. In fact, it has nothing to do with design at all.

The challenge began very promisingly. Heidi Klum, wearing a trouser-pleated black and white houndstooth-checked skirt that she will, upon seeing this episode, burn, introduced the models. And onto the runway walked a group of women who had lost large amounts of weight, wearing their favorite “before” clothes. The designers had to make a new outfit for each woman, using the fabric from the old outfit that the client could wear in her everyday life, but that still reflected the designer’s unique individual view. The budget? Ten bucks for extra fabric or those pesky necessities like zippers and buttons. And, as it turns out, glue.

I had to wonder if the models knew that the designers were going to be making “everyday” clothes, because one of them was wearing her wedding gown – white, polyester satin, trailing on the floor, and crusted with beads and acetate lace. Another was in a dark green velvet evening dress. These are not fabrics that spring to mind when I say “everyday wear” unless you’re … well, who exactly does wear dark green velvet or white poly-satin every day? No one.

The model assignments were random, and poor Steven got picked for the wedding dress. He looked glum, and voiced over that “It felt like death on a stick.”

Kevin was ecstatic: “I was like – game on. I love this. I love making clothes for real people.” I love designers who make clothing for real women, so perhaps I love Kevin after all. I’ll have to think about that.