Friday, December 2, 2016

Project Runway - Final 6 - Avant-garde

We're down to the final six contestants, the final two challenges before Fashion Week, and this week was the Lexus Avant-garde Challenge. The clothing had to be a mix of fabric and metallic materials from found materials provided by Lexus. There were some really bizarre designs this week.

Four designs made the top looks:

Rik worked with glass tiles, aluminum dog tags with hooks, leather neoprene and a metallic fabric onto which he sewed individual beads that he made from cut metal pieces, to make a really lovely dress. It was borderline avant-garde, but I thought this was one that would sell right off the rack exactly the way it was presented, for one season. Then it would be found at the local charity shop.


Rik's design would have felt at home in any kitchen
with the tiles over the shoulder and across the back. But
what I liked was that it was pretty. I also loved the
different textures in each of the panels. 


Roberi used aluminum and bronze sheets that he cut into swoop shapes and sewed over a metallic-thread fabric with exposed seams making a futuristic look. I really liked most of it. He also created a face shield that really worked and made the design even more unique.


Roberi's outfit was a bit of "Mad Max" mixed with
"Robo Cop", but in spite of that, it actually worked
really well. It was the mix of metal colors and the
wonderful fabric with exposed stitching below that
gave the dress its character. 


Erin chose to design a dress the way that paper doll dresses are made - with tabs folded over the shoulders and body to hold it on. She made the paper doll dress from embellished chicken wire netting and put it over wide straight pants, all in her signature bright yellow. It was an interesting concept, and even though I wasn't super happy with the execution, the design was unique. The judges seemed to like it. Nina called it very editorial and Heidi just loved the dress upon close inspection. Erin ended up as the winner of this challenge.


Does Erin have any other colors in her palette except
canary yellow? But in this case, it worked. The bodice
of flowers glued to chicken wire actually covered really
well, and all the sharp ends were glue-protected. It
wasn't my favorite, but it was the most avant-garde
design on the runway. 


Laurence did a beautiful look as a little, short black dress. She took metal HVAC tubing that she cut apart into strips and painted black. The judges, correctly, pointed out that she should have pushed a bit more and gone for more color and pattern in her signature style. She said she couldn't speak well for her design in English, so Heidi told her to speak in French. It was lovely to hear her speak her native tongue.


No photo available of Laurence's dress *sigh*. 


Unfortunately my usual photo source messed up their picture with two of Cornelius' outfit and no photo of Laurence's dress. A twenty minute search of images still yielded nothing, so I can't show you her stairstep dress, but it was rather boring with her same square shoulders in basic black. NOT very avant-garde.

On the bottom this week were Mah-Jing and Cornelius.

Cornelius designed "Dune" Tube Worm meets model with the addition of pictographs diagramming her interior organs. Ooof! He had one tube coming out of the model's uterine area, another around the shoulder and a third from the shoulder down in the back. It probably was avant-garde, but no - not a win in my opinion.


The tubes, the color shapes, it was a disaster, and I was
really surprised that it wasn't Cornelius who was sent home. 


Mah-Jing used his denim to make a basic strapless dress and shaped metal mesh and thick copper wire (or tubing) to weave in and out of it. He likened it to coral and how coral twists in and around itself. He formed a busty top and panniers of this mesh, but they were heavy and the model had difficulty keeping the strapless gown up with the weight at the hips pulling it down. I loved the strip of metal he had for a belt, though. Mah-Jing was the loser for the night.


The judges felt that Mah-Jing's design didn't integrate
the two materials, rather that he made a dress and then
embellished it with the metal overlays. In essence, they
were right. Add in the fact that the metal pieces were
heavy and his model kept almost falling out of the
strapless dress and it was a FAIL. 


So there you go, now there are five. I'm rushed today so have a wonderful Friday. I need to plug in the pictures and hit the road.

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