I’m here with yet another garment that I designed for my series of at-home recreations of the challenges from Season 9 of Project Runway! We’re getting so close to the end. There were six designers going into this week’s episode, and only five at the end… considering there are usually three who go to Fashion Week, we may only have one or two episodes left!

EPISODE 11: THIS IS FOR THE BIRDS

This week, the designers were presented with a very unusual subject matter for their inspiration — birds! Some of the designers really freaked out at having to even be near birds, but I thought it was a pretty interesting challenge. Tim had paired them up into teams of two, and they thought they would be working together (ugh!) but it turns out they were competing head to head. For an extra twist, they were then asked to create TWO looks each. And then to twist the twist, they were told to choose just one of the two to present to the judges. Whew, doesn’t Tim know that these designers are so frazzled by this point in the season that they can’t handle all these twists?

The birds that were available to be randomly assigned to the pairs of designers were a raven, a cockatoo, an Amazon parrot, and an owl. The birds each had a decidedly distinct color pallet and attitude, so it made for some very interesting design aspects to consider. Since there were four birds and only three teams, one bird was left unused — the owl. I decided to use the own as my inspiration, and tried my absolute best to avoid being too literal. We all know the judges hate literal! I tried to make my dress strong and sharp, with a subtle focus towards the head, because that what inspired me about the owl.

I thought most of the designers did an amazing job with this week’s challenge. Kimberly and Viktor had the cockatoo as their inspiration, and created lovely gowns. Kimberly had a terrible start and I thought she was going to give up, but she mustered on and came up with a very nice three hour dress that draped wonderfully. It was certainly better than any previous attempts she had made, but I didn’t think it was quite as nice as Viktor’s faux feather gown. The judges just hate anything literal, so he was doomed. Why is it that they think feathers are okay on any garment EXCEPT something inspired by a bird? The raven was the muse for Laura and Anya. Laura did a nice job on her jacket and pants, but she also got the thumbs-down from the judges for those “literal” feather-like additions on the collar. I feel bad for Laura… it seems like the more she loves one of her designs, the less the judges do. Anya went way out of her comfort zone (the judges love that) with her sharply-tailored black dress. It was certainly pleated and cut in a unique way, although I can’t help but be reminded of Viktor’s dress from episode 4. The judges loved it, of course, and Anya pulled home another win. How many is that? I lost count. The final bird was the Amazon parrot, which was used by Joshua and Bert. Joshua took a huge lesson from being forced to edit down to just one look, and correctly chose the orange draped dress that I liked quite a bit. He sure threw a fit over not winning the challenge, though. Bert never really got into the challenge because he hated that particular bird, and his gray dress with peek-a-boo color showed his lack of enthusiasm. As with many of his designs this season, he made a perfectly fine look that just didn’t match the challenge. This time it was enough to send him home. I’m glad that he was able to stay long enough to become better friends with the other designers and get his groove, but I think his time was definitely up.