The Devil’s in the Details
Season 22
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
A Project Runway challenge inspired by The Devil Wears Prada 2 highlights how some of these designers simply cannot sew.
Photo: Spencer Pazer/Disney
Who knew it was possible: We got our first episode this season with two wins and two eliminations edited into one hour! Project Runway just pulled a “How you like them apples?” on us, and I guess I’m impressed. But here’s why I’m not impressed: Jeffrey should have won both challenges this episode, and instead he won neither. Justice for Jeffrey!
In “The Devil’s in the Details,” we pick up where “Viva La Fashion!” left off: a discussion of which designer’s unconventional-materials paper-towel outfit was the best. Tyra and Law sniped at each other over Bryan’s and Bi’s designs, but here, we learn neither outfit was in the judges’ top looks — Naheim’s faux denim and Jeffrey’s ruffly ombré two-piece were. Guest judge Willy Chavarria praises how Jeffrey’s outfit moved (my favorite thing about it), but the strength of Naheim’s tromp l’oeil effect snags him the win, immunity for the next challenge, and $20,000 from Viva. I like Naheim’s look a lot, but I think it was stiff and the dyeing was a little flat. Jeffrey’s look flowed beautifully and his design was striking. I have no argument that these two had the best looks, but Jeffrey’s was a lot more memorable to me.
As all this is going on at the runway, Elizabeth’s having a near breakdown backstage, telling a producer she’s not sure she can return to face the judges. I wonder if there was some sort of altercation between Elizabeth and the judges that we didn’t see, because her reaction felt a little outsize. But she does eventually go back out alongside Anna and Bobby as the bottom-three looks. Anna’s look, with its black-and-white color scheme and formfitting style, gets called a “sexy maid costume” by Willy, but it does fit the model really well. Law likes Bobby’s dye pattern, but Willy and Heidi both think the dress’s baggy, circular shape is unflattering. Neither of their flaws is as egregious as Elizabeth’s — the dress is just poorly constructed with very few straight lines, and Heidi says the harshest thing I think I’ve ever heard her say: “It does not really show that you know how to sew.” Yikes. Elizabeth gets the auf.
In a further sign of Project Runway treating this season like a hermetically sealed vault where everyone’s trapped inside with decreasing amounts of oxygen, the design challenge this episode is to make a red-carpet dress for Heidi to wear to the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2. It’s fun to see Anne Hathaway introduce the challenge; she’s charming as Andy Sachs in both of the films, and Jeffrey looks like he’s about to cry while watching her speak. But Hathaway arrives via a prerecorded message, and costume designer Molly Rogers tours the workroom instead of serving as a guest judge — and once again Project Runway clearly does not command the respect it once did. It’s a bummer. Hathaway tells them to be ambitious and creative, and the designers do have a bigger budget of $700, but once again, only one day.
To Heidi’s credit, she’s pretty clear about her tastes. She wants tight, she wants sexy, and she wants boob-forward; the designers are sketching a lot of corsets and side slits. But the mood in the workroom, after the designers assessed each other as “weak” in the previous episode, is tense and awkward. Jude criticized Bryan but ends up asking Bryan for extra fabric once he realizes he didn’t actually buy some fabric he needed. Joseph still feels attacked and is noticeably quieter. It’s only when Christian brings Molly around to critique the works in progress that things seem to go back to normal, which is to say, frenzied because of the given timeline rather than the bad vibes.
Christian and Molly immediately like Jeffrey’s look: He’s using pink sequin fabric from home and working on an asymmetrical bust design and lace-up back. They also like Bi’s sparkly beige fabric, which would give Heidi the illusion of nudity. (Of course.) But a lot of other people need guidance. Naheim is taking a huge swing with burgundy georgette fabric and fur accents, and Christian is aghast: “You’re so lucky you have immunity. I don’t know what you’re doing!” Fair. Naheim has only made two dresses before, but that’s one more than Jude, who is making a black dress with exposed corsetry; it’s pretty but also fairly staid for Heidi. Christian and Molly similarly have to push Anna away from lining the black lace she bought. “She won’t wear any [underwear], or she’ll wear a tiny little nothing because she can,” is Christian’s slightly exasperated advice. And with Bobby and Joseph, they have to be blunt.
Joseph’s cerulean-blue dress, in a nod to the famous shade from The Devil Wears Prada, is a pretty color, but he’s doing a huge puff sleeve and big buttons down the front of the dress; it’s a playful caricature, and that’s “not for Heidi,” Christian says. Bobby’s dress, made of puke-green-and-black floral satin, also doesn’t seem to have Heidi in mind, and Christian tells her to simplify. But no one benefits from Christian’s and Molly’s advice more than Bryan. His original dress is, I have no other way to say this, ugly as hell. It’s a black tea-length dress (tea length, for the red carpet?!) that he plans to sew straps of green and blue fabric all over to evoke petals. Nothing about it seems like something Heidi would wear, and Christian gives Bryan the exceptional advice to ditch the black dress and instead use the delicate crinkled material from which he was cutting out petals to come up with something new. That’s three weeks in a row now that Christian has given Bryan good advice, and Bryan just isn’t humble enough to acknowledge it. Joseph may be annoying, but I think Bryan is actually the biggest bully in this competition.
Before Christian leaves at the end of the first day, he drops a twist on the designers: The winner of the challenge will get to pick the three bottom designs. I hate this, because it allows for pure vindictiveness from the top designer and makes the judges irrelevant. As many commenters have pointed out, the judges’ expert critique is part of why we watch this show, and this twist compromises the authenticity of that feedback. Bryan and Joseph practically say as much; they want to win to punish the other designers who named them as weak. Not a good twist, IMO.
On runway day, Naheim and Bryan have totally pivoted from their original designs. Bryan has used that gauzy seafoam fabric to make an oversize gown with very low-cut sides, and Naheim is now using some army-green fabric to make a sort of long vest-style dress and a little skirt — basically, the simplest thing he can sew in a couple of hours. But I’d argue that Bobby is actually faring the worst. Similar to her challenges during the NFL episode, she’s cut her fabric wrong, and the dress’s seams are puckering. “My lack of experience in construction is becoming very evident at this point,” Bobby says, and I don’t understand what happened to the designer who brought that super-cool quilted dress from home. Even setting aside Bobby’s issues with timing, her design aesthetic doesn’t seem the same.
Runway time! No Tyra this episode. Alongside Heidi and Law are guest judges model Winnie Harlow and actress Nina Dobrev, and they’re solid additions to this panel. (At this point, I’m assuming we only see Nina Garcia again for the finale.) Just as Bi’s and Jeffrey’s dresses stood out in the workroom, they get universally praised here. Joseph’s blue dress is really mod and fun, but I could never see it on Heidi. Naheim’s is shoddy (the train looks pinned together?), and he knows it. Anna’s sheer lace dress with a huge keyhole in the front and an open back is fine but also like a million other dresses; the same goes for Jude’s nicely constructed, but very familiar, black velvet dress with a corset. Bobby’s color palette is bizarre, and her idea of a sash that transforms into a shawl scarf is really cool but executed poorly. And then there’s Bryan’s, which is ethereal and swingy and, as Bi points out, barely a garment. “There are ten stitches, total,” Bi says, and he has a point. Compared with the other dresses, it feels like very little work.
Jeffrey, Bryan, and Bi land in the top three, and yet somehow, despite Jeffrey’s hot-pink dress being gorgeously constructed and Bi’s being disco-ball sexy, it’s Bryan’s dress that ends up Heidi’s favorite. Law questioned Bryan really pointedly about whether the dress’s design would work for Heidi because it has absolutely no bust support, but Heidi still picks Bryan, and Bryan picks the bottom three: Bobby, Naheim, and Jude. Bobby, I agree with; the dress skewed tacky and wasn’t right for Heidi. Naheim, I agree with because the dress was awful and everyone knew it, but Naheim has immunity — so basically, Bryan ensured a scenario in which either Bobby or Jude would go home. And it’s hard to give Bryan any benefit of the doubt about choosing Jude, because earlier in the episode, Bryan was vowing specifically to choose Jude as payback for Jude’s callout last week. “That’s shady,” Jude says, and I agree.
Out of Bobby and Jude, who’s worse? Law initially called Bobby’s look “crazy,” but then he says he would keep her over Jude because he thinks he could fix the dress with his styling. But styling isn’t everything, and it’s not the entire point of this competition either. Bless Heidi, Winnie, and Nina for seemingly banding together to get Bobby voted out, and with Bobby gone, that leaves Anna as the only woman in the competition.
• How many fans did Jude gain by saying that he wished his first dress client was his girlfriend rather than Heidi? That was adorable. Jude also took being humbled by Christian, who once made a dress in four hours for an Emmy-winning Jean Smart, pretty well.
• “As much as I hate to agree with Tyra …” Iconic words from Law.
• Jeffrey should receive recompense for being saddled with the “Thank you, Ulta Beauty!” line. I also hope Winnie Harlow bought his dress from this episode. She wanted it so badly, and she would look gorgeous in it.
• Heidi and Christian recently did a video with Eater NY at Heidi’s restaurant, Crazy Pizza, that was very cute and showed how well they know each other.
• What do we think about how Bryan’s dress came out after he tweaked it to match Heidi’s proportions? I am not a fan at all. Adding bust support to the dress reduced its flowiness, and the halter neck looks like it’s choking her. Heidi deserved better.
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