Project Runway Recap: Shred to Get Ahead

We are halfway through this season of Project Runway, and we have reached a challenge I am really excited for: the unconventional-materials challenge. Now, is using paper towels a little lackluster compared with last year’s Abbott Elementary crossover challenge, where the contestants had to use school supplies? Sure. But I liked this challenge for pushing the contestants in two ways: creatively, in terms of how they dyed or manipulated the white paper towels, and technically, in terms of how they treated them like fabric for their looks. A two-tier challenge, with two days to work? What luxury! What opulence! If only all episodes were like this!

Oh, and Law and Tyra get in a major fight during judging. And of course, the producers had to mix up some drama by having each designer call out another as the weakest competitor. But still — a solid episode of Project Runway in its current incarnation. At least we didn’t get models rubbing bronzer all over clothes, you know? Small victories.

Good-bye to Aaron, who unfortunately was clearly going to go home when Law called his look “disgusting,” and who struggled to bring his heady, academic approach to fashion into the clothes he was actually putting on the runway. Again, Project Runway isn’t about being the best designer; it’s about being the best person who can sew a look in a day and sell it to the judges. Guest judge Willy Chavarria says as much: This show is now as much about gassing yourself up and using strategy to announce yourself as it is about the actual clothes, and I understand some people don’t like that, but that’s what the show has now been for a number of years. The pivot hasn’t come out of nowhere. So, sorry to Aaron, and hello to Viva Paper Towels, who is putting up $20,000 for the winner of this challenge. Finally, some money on the table!

The challenge is pretty simple: Use the paper towels for at least one garment that can be worn for a “night on the town.” (The designers can also buy fabric at Mood, with a limited budget.) The designers get one hour to experiment with dyeing the paper towels, which are presented to them in yard-wide uncut rolls. Naheim immediately homes in on making the paper towels look like denim with various shades of blue dye. Anna, whose specialty is unconventional materials, thinks she can weave the paper towels into making a knit top. (Christian is skeptical, as am I.) Bi thinks his tailoring skills will be useful here; if he can make a top and pants fit his model well, it will camouflage the paper-towel material. But Elizabeth and Bobby are most confident. They both gas up their textile design: Elizabeth is spray-painting over lace to create patterns on her paper towels, and Bobby is dip-dyeing the paper towels to create a Missoni-style pattern. IMO, though, I think Jeffrey has the best idea — he’s using black dye to create an ombré effect on scallop-edged strips of fabric, which he’s then sewing into ruffly rows on his top and pants. I love it.

Who’s struggling in the workroom by the end of the first day? Joseph has now made it further than he made it last season, but he’s frazzled by Law calling him arrogant. His cropped, boxy jacket design looks stiff and unwieldy, and he shares his past of getting an electrical-engineering degree to please his family while feeling uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s worked hard to feel confident, and he wants to show it. Christian does help Joseph by trashing his frumpy halter top and encouraging him to give a jacket another try, and look, I don’t like Joseph that much, but understanding more of his history is helpful. Other designers are pivoting, too. Anna realizes she can’t knit her top, so she’s redoing her dress design. Bryan was ruching green-dyed pieces of paper towels and attaching them to the top of his dress, but everyone — including a laughing Bi — says they look like lettuce, so Bryan makes the pieces bigger and more overlapping. Meanwhile, Bobby’s dress has a really lackluster circle shape, but she refuses to take Christian’s advice to change it.

In the minutes before the runway show goes down in an abandoned warehouse space (why were they there?), Elizabeth and Bryan both have construction issues. Bryan realizes there’s a huge hole at the bottom of his dress, like maybe his model inadvertently stepped on it; he cuts the hole out, but now that portion of the hem looks like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Elizabeth’s situation is worse: The fastener on the back of her dress just totally rips apart. The textile is cool — a grungy red-and-black print from the lacework — but the garment looks pretty patchily made, and now it’s hanging open in the back.

Runway time! The judges are Heidi, Law, Tyra, and Willy, and Christian is on hand to explain which pieces are made out of paper towels. Immediate hits include Bi’s fitted black tank top and wide-leg pants, Jeffrey’s underboob-flashing two-piece, and Naheim’s denim-looking jacket and pants. Less successful are Bobby’s dyed dress with a frumpy scarf-style neckline, Anna’s black minidress with a white pleated-paper-towel panel, and Elizabeth’s falling-apart dress. (In general, it seems like the paper towels lent themselves better to separates than to dresses.) Heidi and Tyra are very complimentary about the designers’ work overall, but as is Law’s custom, he’s more curmudgeonly, calling his fellow judges “way too nice.” And we get more of Law’s acid tongue when the designers get back to their regular runway for judgment, and when Heidi asks them to “spill the tea” on each other.

Each contestant has to share which designer they are “least impressed with.” It’s really a way for Law to pick them apart. Elizabeth, Bobby, Bryan, Naheim, and Jeffrey all say Joseph, citing his repetitive silhouettes. Jude is the first person to break from that trend and say Bryan, whose work hasn’t “clicked for me.” A couple of people, like Bi and Anna, try to say themselves, but when urged to name other people, Bi also goes with Joseph, while Anna says Bobby. That makes six of nine people identifying Joseph as the weakest link, and when Heidi gives Joseph the opportunity to respond, he starts talking about “my life is the life that I built,” referencing how he now lives for himself and not others’ expectations. It’s a totally valid defense — and that Law interrupts to tear into him. “It’s becoming the Joseph McRae show again, and I’m not here for it,” Law says. “There has to be something wrong with you if you’re the common denominator.”

I have a couple of questions here. Why does Law hate Joseph like this? Did he nastily tweet about Zendaya?  Did Joseph do something personally to Law or his family? Joseph is annoying, sure. But there’s such a level of personal animosity here, and I don’t understand it. And it’s also odd that Law doesn’t acknowledge the possibilities that the other designers are picking on Joseph because they don’t like that he’s rolled over from season 21, or they’re threatened by him winning a couple challenges already. Law just takes the other designers at face value. Do the producers give Law carte blanche to be a major asshole for one episode a season, and this is it? Even as tough love, it’s too much.

The judges eventually discuss the clothes — but there, too, things get dramatic, with a lot of disagreement between Law and the other judges. Law says he would put Bi’s outfit on Zendaya for the Dune: Part Three press tour, and that “everyone else who voted against you is stupid.” When Heidi and Willy praise Bryan’s gown of various pleated panels dyed different shades of green, Law interrupts to call the pleats “tortured,” and says the debate over the look “is really bothering me.” He seems to hate Bryan’s dress, and he seems personally offended when Willy says Bi’s look doesn’t have “any storytelling.” Law gets Willy to admit that he’d hire Bi to work in his atelier before hiring Bryan, and that sets off Tyra, and then Tyra and Law are each accusing the other of “overstepping.”

Maybe this was all staged for midseason drama. Who can say? But there is something Law said that I really liked, and that gets to the heart of Project Runway: Heidi, Law, and Willy all seem to be attracted to Bryan’s look because it’s so fantastical. As Law points out, though, just because a look is over the top doesn’t mean that it’s automatically fashion. Now, do I think this is a little hypocritical, given how often Law puts Zendaya in costumey looks himself? Yes. But I appreciate that he’s willing to go to bat here for Bi’s simple top and pants, and to argue for its worthiness as a look. I think Project Runway tends to award designs that feel big, opulent, and ostentatious, when sometimes something more simple and straightforward can be as, if not more, chic. I don’t love Law’s tactics all of the time, but I appreciated this take.

Who’s on top and who goes home? Of course we don’t know that yet! Viva next week, when we’ll find out.

• Law better take Aaron out for a drink, and he better pay.

• I would like Christian’s alligator-green leather jacket as long as it’s not real alligator. Please, a dupe, come to me.

• Jeffrey’s family is beautiful!

• We need to create some kind of system where every time Bryan again mentions Bi being his intern, a Who Framed Roger Rabbit?–style mallet hits him over the head. We get it, dude.

• A mallet for Law for telling Anna to “just walk off the stage” if she doesn’t believe in herself, too. Way harsh, Tai.

• I don’t know who Paige DeSorbo and Hannah Berner are; I don’t understand why they toured the workroom and otherwise had nothing to do in this episode; and I refuse to learn.

• When Elizabeth said she wants to be in the top so she gets more feedback from the judges … maybe my theorizing last week that the judging sessions are longer but get edited down for TV was wrong. Are these designers really spending weeks on this show with no constructive criticism at all?