In It to Win It
Season 22
Episode 3
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
An NFL-inspired challenge for Project Runway tears apart this season’s first clique.
Photo: Patrick Harbron/Disney
The thing about being in a cool-kid clique and acting like you’re better than others is that eventually that self-elevation will come back to bite you in the ass. I’ve seen John Hughes movies; I know the deal. Hence, the dissolution of Andriy and Bobby, the Ukrainian and Russian duo who already glommed on to each other in the first two episodes of this season of Project Runway and in this episode collapse fully and phenomenally. Andriy is a bad leader. Bobby is an inarticulate communicator. Both of them were wrong, but if I had to pick sides — and of course I’m going to pick sides, this is a reality show — I am going to sympathize more with Bobby. She wanted to be team leader the most, and that probably put a chip on her shoulder. But Andriy’s idea for their NFL-inspired collection (more on that awful sequence of words later) was underwhelming; he offered no advice (that we saw) in the workroom about how Bobby could edit or improve her look, and I personally think it’s crappy to watch someone you claimed to be your friend sob next to you and do nothing at all. Bad form!
Let’s go back to the words NFL-inspired collection. I understand from the recap comments that the strategic-voting element of last week’s episode was not wholly embraced, but to me, this is more a reflection of the current, somewhat compromised era of Project Runway than any tweaked gameplay. An NFL collection? The NFL and its many, many frustrating qualities are already an inescapable monocultural element of our lives, and now I have to think about all that while watching my little fashion show? This is, of course, a challenge because Disney owns ABC, which is going to air the Super Bowl next year. Synergy, baby! But even aside from the flatness of the “push the boundaries of what NFL fandom looks like” challenge, this felt to me like the perfect opportunity for a menswear challenge. NFL players have become more and more fashionable over the years; what about designing an outfit for a player to wear when arriving at a game? Or an outfit for an NFL player to wear to a post–Super Bowl celebration? Past seasons of Project Runway have done similar challenges tied to the Olympics. I just don’t think this was very creative.
Anyway, the challenge gets explained to the contestants after the reveal of the who-gets-to-stay vote, and it’s Bi! Bao and Dani also get some votes, but Yangyang and Octavius get none, which is sad. Of course, Bryan immediately takes credit for Bi sticking around — though I think in reality, the contestants who were voting based on the work itself were probably impressed by Bi’s technical skill — and I am sure this will be another irritating thing Bryan will harp on for episodes to come. Christian and Heidi then lay out this week’s challenge: The 12 contestants will form four fashion houses to create looks inspired by NFL teams. Each three-person team will have a captain, and Bobby, a die-hard Eagles fan, volunteers first; sadly, when five people volunteer and Heidi and Christian pull names out of a bag, she’s the only one left behind. Joseph McRae, Andriy, Jeffrey, and Bryan all end up as team leaders, and they choose their teams: Joseph picks Naheim and Aaron; Andriy picks Bobby and Jude; Jeffrey picks Chloe and Anna; and Bryan picks Bi and Elizabeth. They then pick football teams based on their logos: Joseph’s team picks the Carolina Panthers, Andriy picks the Philadelphia Eagles, Jeffrey picks the New York Giants, and Bryan picks the Atlanta Falcons. The team’s colors, location, and logo can all serve as inspiration for the designers, and the three outfits need to complement one another while also being “wearable art.”
Oh, and it’s a double-elimination challenge that will get the 12 contestants down to ten. The head of the winning house, meanwhile, will get immunity for next week.
The teams get some time to plan, and they’re inspired by their NFL colors (Joseph’s team will structure its collection around various shades of blue) and discussing ways to add avant-garde flourishes to their outfits (Jeffrey’s team wants to incorporate corsetry). Everyone seems to be getting along except for Andriy and Bobby, who are already butting heads with Jude caught in the middle. Andriy says he wants their clothes to appeal to “female fans of football teams” and “stick to classic” looks; Bobby is contemptuous and, I think correctly, says playing it safe doesn’t meet the spirit of the challenge. When Christian tours the workroom after the teams have shopped at Mood, his reaction to Andriy’s team seems to align with Bobby’s. Andriy is making a cropped jacket with a brown glove, Jude is making an asymmetrical moto jacket, and Christian calls everything “familiar.” “NFL, sports, shape, sculpture,” he admonishes the team, and Jude says in a talking-head interview that he agrees with Christian — but we don’t see him say anything to Andriy to take Bobby’s side. Not great, Jude!
On Joseph’s team, Aaron says the Gullah Geechee people and their deftness with indigo dye are guiding the designers’ shades of blue. On Jeffrey’s team, Chloe is really struggling to merge her boho aesthetic with the challenge; she’s trying to make a huge ball gown work, but I agree with Christian’s doubtful “I don’t know what that is.” Bryan’s team, taking inspiration from the design of the Atlanta Falcons’ wings and centering pleating into the designs, feels the most cohesive so far. I’m a big fan of Elizabeth’s weird woven-pleather dress. “This is the tightest team I think I’ve ever seen,” Christian says to Bryan, Bi, and Elizabeth, and that’s big praise!
Meanwhile, the situation with Bobby and Andriy reaches rock bottom. Bobby thinks Andriy is insulting her personality, and she sews her outfit incorrectly because she’s so keyed up. Andriy is withdrawing into a judgmental, aloof posture, and when he tries to offer some emotional support to Bobby by saying it will take her only an hour to fix her mistake, it feels dismissive. Andriy simply isn’t a good leader — neither empathetic nor precise with his advice for Bobby — but then again, Bobby is also clearly in her feelings. It’s all very melodramatic and obviously a setup for disaster. To be fair, over on Jeffrey’s team, he’s not doing a good job helping Chloe, either. She’s crying too because she’s struggling so much (I think what’s being unsaid here is that Chloe doesn’t know how to dress a non–size 0 body), and Jeffrey gives her somewhat generic “you can do this” advice rather than specific feedback on her design. It’s clear these two teams will be in the bottom.
Runway time! Ciara, who has been married to former NFL quarterback Russell Wilson for a decade and before then soundtracked my college experience with her bops, is the guest judge filling in for Nina. Joseph’s team’s collection has a lot of interesting separates, including a cropped leather jacket from Naheim with exaggerated shoulders. From Jeffrey’s team, Chloe’s remade dress, with an off-the-shoulder top and an awful mesh corset patch tied with a blue ribbon, is universally hated by the judges. “Something must have gone wrong,” Heidi says, and yes, that’s correct. Bryan’s look for his team, with a gigantic blood-red latex skirt, looks like something straight out of The Cell, which I respect. And Andriy’s team is just a mess. His white sculpted top is too small on the model. Jude’s moto jacket and diagonal-hem skirt are very nice but look like something you’d find at Ann Taylor. And Bobby’s huge quilted crop top and wrap skirt show clear signs of being sewn and then taken apart and resewn. Law’s “The fuck is happening?” is genuinely confused, and I get it.
Jeffrey’s and Bryan’s teams are on top, and I’m disappointed that we don’t get any judges’ feedback about their looks; we just learn that Joseph wins the challenge and gets immunity and tickets to the Super Bowl. He takes this with his customary humbleness; do we need to start considering the possibility of Joseph McRae winning this season? The losing teams do come back out for more conversation. Jeffrey’s team isn’t that bad: Ciara says she would wear his corseted red outfit, and Anna’s sculptural all-white one is praised (I loved Law’s exaggerated delivery of “rich” to describe it). But there’s no way to justify Chloe’s work — it has the same mistake as Bobby’s with weird patches in the back suggesting neither woman knew how to dress her curvy models. Did anyone else think Andriy and Bobby’s explanation of what happened in the workroom felt patchy too? If I hadn’t watched the rest of the episode, I wouldn’t have understood how catastrophic their fallout was, and I’m curious how much of their conversation with the judges might have been left on the cutting-room floor. When all the contestants are dismissed and the judges are chatting alone, it sure seems like Chloe and Bobby are going to get axed — until Law says of Andriy and Bobby, “For me, they could both go.” Send both members of the cool-kid clique home at the same time? Chloe doesn’t deserve to be safe, but that double elimination sure would shake things up.
• Kudos to Christian for keeping a straight face when he says the NFL has a “rich tradition of collaborating with fashion.” Does it, though? Is that even possible when its official fashion partner is Abercrombie & Fitch?
• Heidi says the winning looks will “partake in Super Bowl Week.” What do we think this means?
• I’m ready to submit Bryan and Andriy as this season’s villains but am willing to consider other suggestions.
• I thought the most amusing thing Christian would do in this episode was fail over and over to catch a football, but then he said to Chloe when she was so happy about putting boning in her dress, “I’m so proud of you. You learned how to make clothes,” and you could never make me hate this man.
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