Mayhem and Magic on the Runway - Project Runway Season 14 episode 5 Review

Pam wanted to make Fridays our craft day a while back and I thought it was a great idea.  Crafting is creativity and magic and transformation in my mind.

Last night's episode of Project Runway though, brought BOTH Magic and utter mayhem so I thought it appropriate to bring a review here.

I have been watching Project Runway for YEARS and you see good and bad all the time.  Last night though was like the best and worst all at once.

http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/project-runway/video/full-episodes

Team challenges are often chaos - creative people have their own strong aesthetics and often don't do well when they have to compromise and blend with others in a team.  So that often means DRAMA - and of course this is no exception.  That said, conflict can lead to creation or destruction and last night, we had both.

Gunn and Heid

 It started with two teams who had to get their fabric while being pummeled by paintball guns and grenades.  Then they were told their paint spattered coveralls were to be the fabric, with the other fabric they had 'captured' as ancillary fabric only.  Then they were given white fabric which they could spatter with paint to add to their looks as well.  Sounds pretty fun and simple.  Very low-key actually for Project Runway standards.

Then a chasm split down the middle of the teams.

The one team got together and formed a cohesive theme and plan and started working.  Not only that, they communicated, helped each other, created paint designs to weave throughout their designs.  You could feel their synergy. It was amazing.  Nina Garcia said it was the best teamwork she had seen in all of the seasons - I agreed.

 This was what should happen with a team, taking all their strengths, combining them together to create something Magical .  And they did - every one of their looks were fantastic and beautiful.

TEAM MAGIC!

Then there was the other team.

 They had no direction. No communication.  No inspiration - absolutely nothing.  For the longest time they just did nothing.  Then they decided to paint the white fabric.  Only they didn't just paintball spatter it.  They destroyed it.  Completely drenching it in Easter egg colored paint until it was a soggy, hideous mess.  Did they start designing then?  No.  They decided to let it dry and try to come up with something in the morning.  Morning came and went - still no theme, no inspiration, nothing but a group of several mean girls planning on throwing the one they didn't like under the bus because they couldn't get it together.  The thing is, nobody stepped up and took control.

Finally after having nothing for the models to try on for the fittings they decided to use their purple accessory fabric as the thing to make the looks cohesive and then proceeded to do their own thing.  Teamwork = NONE.

The result was horrible.  The thing is these pictures from the website do NOT look like the looks actually looked like on the Runway.  Maybe they were airbrushed.  Regardless, if you saw this collection on the show (watch from link above) you would realize how utterly bad they were.  These pics do not tell the story.

 TEAM MAYHEM!

Seeing the full collections side by side, the contrast was even greater.

The thing is, as I watched Team Mayhem struggle, all I could think was how it could have gone.

If someone had taken charge and said, okay our fabric is horrible, we are chaotic, WHY NOT WORK WITH IT???

Instead of giving up, they could have said, let's push it all the way.  Take the fabric and go Avant Garde, or Post-Apocalyptic chic - Call it Easter Egg Apocalypse.  Then think outside the bocx and make MAGIC OUT OF THE MAYHEM?  or maybe MAGICKAL MAYHEM?

To me - that could have opened amazing creative places to go to.  Go wacky, go ironic, go post-punk, go over-the-top, embrace chaos...  All I could see was dozens of options. None were taken.

The worst part is that when Kelly Osborne actually called them out as Mean Girls as they were throwing one under the bus, calling it a "Bitch-fest", they stood shaking their heads in denial?  Really?  The most embarrassing thing was when they tried to say they were inspired by San Francisco as a throwaway desperate attempt to come up with SOMETHING as a theme.  At least own it - say we were completely lost and clueless.

To me this episode should be a life-lesson.  Creativity is not finite.  Inspiration can come from anything if you open your minds. If you get caught up in an obstacle and give up, mayhem ensues and it is not pretty.

Terri