Let's Have A Ball - Project Runway All-Stars (NO Spoilers)

After fighting with websites for most of the day, it was a relief to come back home to the "dramahhh" that is Project Runway All-Stars. The episode began with a trip to the countryside for designers to visit and tour "a castle". The challenge was to design a ball gown fit for a modern day princess. It's a very quick turnaround time and all of the materials for the challenge would be found inside the "castle". 

The Bouncy Castle the designers leaped around in was nicer than this
one and the balls were multiple colors, sizes and types. They had five
minutes to collect enough balls for their "ball gown". Most of them
didn't collect enough balls for a long gown, resulting in many shorter
looks this week. 

The castle, of course, was a bounce house filled with multi-sized, multiple colored balls. The designers entered into the castle with netted bags and had a limited time period in which to grab and nab their balls. They were going to need a lot of balls and their time was so short. It promised to be a really tough challenge. 

Do goofy materials make designers act goofier than usual? Here,
Helen gets her style on with a blue fascinator and a
pincushion bracelet. Such style! 

Unconventional challenges force the designers to operate outside of their comfort zone. Instead of being able to manipulate fabric and thread to create volumetric sculpture, they were using plastic and polyethylene materials usually over muslin, and counting on glue, molding, and melting to form the various pieces for the structure of their "ball" gowns. Any designer worth their salt knows how particular fabrics drape and form. Would they be able to translate that knowledge into different materials? That's the fun of this type of challenge. 

Project Runway All-Stars is vicious and extremely difficult. The designers were tearing apart beach balls, volley balls, hacky sack balls, basketballs and yoga balls. The workroom was an explosion of color and texture. Unusual and unplanned pairings were happening - at least two designers were working in rainbow colors, there were two choosing to work with blues, and two others were working in a metallic -looking gold from a volleyball. Most of the designers didn't even have anything prepared for their models to try on for the fitting session! Tick tock .... that clock wasn't stopping and tempus fugit. 

So who were the top three and who were in the bottom? I'll have the spoilers for you tomorrow, but I have to honestly say that unconventional challenges are among my favorites. This one wasn't an exception - I really loved the skill and design sense that walked down the Runway this week. Have a great Friday, I'll be back with the reveal on Saturday morning.