Project Runway Recap: Pregnancy Scare

Hello, Runway lovers! As Beth mentioned last week, I ditched my week 1 recapping duties for an exotic vacation in rural Rhode Island. If nothing else, it’s class all the way here at the House of Roch.

So it’s episode 2 in fashion land, and everyone has gone baby crazy. Babies working the sewing machines! Babies buying crushed velvet at Mood! Babies, babies, everywhere babies – all in honor of special guest Rebecca Romijn, who is expecting an entire litter of little Jerry O’Connells.  Bless!

As guest judge, Rebecca politely requested (pregnant women never demand!) that the remaining designers create a chic maternity look – something fun, sophisticated, and fitted – for the average supermodel-cum-actress-cum-fertility experiment.

While the ladies of Project Runway took to the challenge with matricentric gusto, the men (read: gays) were at a natural disadvantage. There was something about the challenge’s gynocentric nature – something about the mechanics of reproduction; of women with real curves; of babies that didn’t arrive in boxes from China – that struck fear and confusion amongst the menfolk. And, just as every human must ultimately die alone, so must every gay designer fail in his own private, unique way.

First there is shrunken Perez Hilton doppleganger, Mitchell, who handled this week’s task with confused cruelty. Last week, Mitchell triumphantly proved his ineptitude by sending a naked model down the runway, her grace covered only by a net with a fancy collar. This week, Mitchell divided his time between mocking fellow contestants in true Perez-Hilton fashion (“It looks like a bowling ball!” he cackled at Ra’mon) while simultaneously creating yet another incompetent outfit. The end result was a look that is best described as “Britney, right before she shaved her hair off”. In fact, I think I once saw a crazy girl pee in the subway wearing a similar outfit.

Then there’s Ra’mon.  (Does anybody know what letter the apostrophe replaces? – I’m so very curious!)  Truth be told, Ra’mon’s outfit did look like something from out of a bowling alley. (Mitchell, you did do something right, after all!) Since Ra’mon won last week’s challenge, and since the only interesting thing about him is the punctuation in his name, let’s chalk Ra’mon’s folly up to second album syndrome.

And finally we have Malvin – wise, wise Malvin. It was neither artlessness nor a sophomoric slump that proved Malvin’s downfall; it was the power of his own mind. Riffing off the proverbial “which came first: the chicken, the egg, or Rebecca Romijn”, Malvin probed deep into the human psyche with his self-described “mother hen” design. A hot-towel papoose complete with ruffled feather appliqué, the design was a crazy mess of Bjork proportions.

The fashion show was a macabre affair, and I need not disgust you anymore than to say that late-term pregnancy bumps on anorexic models are perhaps the most ludicrously grotesque things mine eyes have ever seen. Suffice it to say, lovely Shirin won the challenge with a classy little purple number. We love Shirin, and hope she does well.

The same cannot be said for independent thinker Malvin, who was AUFed for his chicken-lady design. “One of the best things about this experience,” he pondered during his exit interview, “is I’ve learned how strong I am grounded as a designer, as a philosopher, and as a person.” Too sagacious for this world, Malvin left us to join the ranks of his brethren – Plato, Rousseau, Nietzshe. For as a wise man once said, “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished maternity-wear designer one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.”

Until next week, great minds of Providence, auf wiedersehen!