Season 11 folks. That's what we've come to. The opening montage is of Heidi and Tim taking turns telling us about the big new twist for this season. Heidi seems to have been drinking from the Tyra Banks Kool-aid in that, she's gone even crazier this season than the last one. Over the top expressions, goofy voices, she's a bit too much. Reel it in, girl. They tell us that this season, every single challenge will be a team challenge. Scoff, dread, groan, deflation. Seriously? The entire season in teams? This is going to be a long season. They try to defend this concept by saying because in the real world, all fashion is created and done by teams, so why not start it now? I see this going very badly.
As Heidi would say, let's start the show. There are gonna be a lot of designers, and I'm not gonna even try to remember all of their names in the first episode, but I'll do what I can for you guys. We meet a girl from Brazil originally, but she moved somewhere else. Instead of walking into the apartment, they walk into the empty runway. We meet Richard Hallmarq (perhaps Hallmark sued him for copyright infringement or something). He says he's from Sacramento, CA, the OTHER fashion capitol of the world. Mmmk. I can already tell this dude's personality. And it goes as follows:
Ah, Kate. I've seen a tiny little fact about her that makes me want to cheer for her. She's originally from Eau Claire, WI! Home state pride! Let's hope she's not a bitch. That would be sad. She lives in Chicago now though. My cat is all up in my face yelling at me for not throwing her ball for her. Such a spoiled brat, this one. Kate says she's a very type-A personality. Oooo, I'm sensing a bitch.
Next is Michelle who says she's "thirtyfedorable". In case you don't speak crazy, she means 34. She designs as geek-chic. She's from Portland. This means she produces high-quality hipster crap. I'm already waiting for the hate train to take off, I'm in my seat with my cold beverage in hand. She's not gonna be cool with teams.
We meet the counterpart to Hallmark with a Q; Daniel Esquivel. Seriously. Two extremely flamboyant men with the letter q in their last name. That can't be a coincidence, can it? Are they part of some gay sub-culture where they incorporate underused letters into their names? Also, his mustache is like a 1920's villain.
He has kind of a goofy accent/speech impediement. It could become endearing or annoying. We meet James, who literally stumbles 3 times on his way from the doorway to the group of people. Ah, poor guy. He then lifts his leg and faux-pees on the stage marking his territory.
Emily says she's going to underestimated because of her age of 24, but don't worry, she's used to not sleeping. I guess this will help her with the long hours in the workshop. She looks kind of like a brat who feels entitled to everything. "I'm sorry, but I'm gonna win. So everyone else can just pack their bags, and go home." Aww, isn't she just so cute?
So many new people. Benjamin Mach, Mr. Albino himself.
He's from Sydney, Australia originally, but has been living in London, and now he's in New York. JEALOUS! But he does look like even sitting too close to the window would give him sunburn. So we could not go hang out on the beach together, because surely, he would burst into flames. I hope he's a good designer. He says he likes faded glamour. I like that idea.
The token grandma to the show! Cindy, is 59 and had owned a funeral parlor with her husband for 23 years. Morticia was feeling a creative void in her life so she enrolled into design school and just graduated this year. She says there's no link between her funeral work and her fashion work.
Heidi and Tim come out to meet everyone. James says he's not sure if he should throw his underwear at them to have them sign it...James...we're only 6 minutes into this episode, save some of that gold for later episodes, if you make it to later episodes. Heidi actually looks decent for a change. She doesn't look like she got dressed in the dark. They drop the bomb on them about teams. No one seems happy, understandably. Tim tries to justify it, and God love him, but not even Tim can make this idea seem like it's going to be fun. They divide the teams. I guess they did this on an earlier pre-episode where some previous winners divided the teams up.
The teams are made up like this
Team A: Stanley, Kate, Qaniel, Qichard, Water Lily, Amanda, Joseph, Layana
Team B: Samantha, Tu, James, Albino, Matthew, Emily, Morticia, Michelle
They get their challenge right away. They have to create a look that shows their point of view as a designer. There will be a winning and losing team. Someone from the winning team wins, someone from losing team goes home. This could screw people. Their inspiration for this week is New York City. One team goes out on a boat and gets a ground level point of view. The other team goes up on top of The Atlas (their home) and gets an above ground point of view.
The view from the Atlas is pretty freaking phenomenal. Michelle is already balking at the idea of working with the group she has. Each team gets a bucket with tons of champagne. Ground level team decides their name is Team Keeping It Real, and I hate it. That's a horrible name. We get a minute with, shut the hell up, seriously? STANLEY HUDSON! The Office is REAL!
Although Stanley looks like he's lost a lot of weight, and grew about a foot. Awesomeness. He says he's a costumer for film, stage and TV. He tells everyone he doesn't have a lot of weakness. He brings the essence of couture to ready-to-wear.
Team rooftop is called Dream Team. Michelle came up with the name by saying "teamwork makes the dream work". At least it's a decent name. James bombards Albino with a ridiculous amount of questions, and Albino wants to know where his off switch is.
Patricia Michaels tells us that her native name is Water Lily, and that she's the first Native American on the show. She's happy to be the first. Holy shit. Xena sounds galore! Water Lily apparently was praying. A little warning would be nice before that happens again, please.
Amanda is another queen bitch and she's on team KIR, but is deciding she'll be friends with Michelle, even though they're on opposite sides. Bitches of a feather...
To the workroom! We get Lord and Taylor as the sponsor yet again. I'm kind of surprised that they get to be the sponsor rights twice in a row. Tim comes in and gives them a welcome. I have to admit, I went to New York for the first time in my life last year, and I had a huge nerd moment where I went and found the Parsons building. I was very excited. And I also went to Mood. That was insane and amazing and I completely understand why the run down the aisles. It's like a whole block long and 2 floors. Each team gets $1,200 for the whole team, which works out to $150 per designer. They can decide to distribute the money however they want.
KIR decides everyone gets their $150 and when they get to the register and if someone needs more they can ask if anyone has extra. Dream is keeping it pretty much to $150 and keep track of what you're spending. I don't see Michelle as someone who will be willing to share, and I feel like she's gonna be Queen B. A new nickname, perhaps?
Back at the workshop. Emily is awfully confident. I'm hoping this bites her in the ass. Water Lily is doing this hand painting to her fabric. Emily tell us she thinks it's a really bad idea. Oh stop it. Amanda is worried that now she has to worry about everyone else. Qaniel seems to know his shit. He's helping a lot of his team members with creating patterns and knowing how to tailor his pieces.
Tim comes in to check with the teams. Dream is up first. Look how not interested Emily is in the background. No one should ever not give Tim their full attention when he's there to help. Have you never watched the show before? Tim never steers people wrong.
Damn my cat and her obsession with fetch! She's more of a dog than some of my friends dogs.
Tim admits he's wowed by Michelle's piece. Tim consults the team on Morticia's piece and they decide instead of doing a long top with a fitted pant she should do a full length maxi-sort of dress. Nothing is really gonna save that dress though. James says he would really like to stay with his original design but will listen to the group and try and pump up his dress. Assorted other designers. There's so many! The team tells Emily she has too many pieces and needs to bring it in.
KIR consultation. Kate says she doesn't care what her team says, she cares what Tim says. So even with all her team members telling her to get rid of the sleeves, she waits and asks Tim what he thinks, and only then does she agree. Girl is letting down my state. Perhaps Chicago has made her bad. Qaniel's look looks great. I'm hopeful. A lot of looks get skipped over.
Models come in. They're all so tall and skinny. Emily says she knows her look is better than Cindy's and really, she only needs to be better than one person. Eww. I hate her. Stanley is not liking Water Lily's look at all, he says it looks like a craft project. Emily has nothing finished but her muslin pieces. Remember how she said she was going to win and everyone should just pack? Someone can't back up their shit. She doesn't have a single thing done. So somehow she's going to get it all done in like 2 hours tomorrow? None of her teammates are gonna have time to really help her that much either.
Queenie B tells the girls that she'll be super pissed if their team loses because of Emily, because she's extremely happy with her own outfit. Amanda asks her if she's going to help Emily so they can win, and she kind of mumbles and doesn't answer. Morticia pipes in with, "we need to weed out the herd anyways..." Wow! Look out for Morticia! Ah, but she does go in and immediately helps Emily, and shockingly Emily is actually grateful. She's using hot glue on a chiffon top. Lovely.
I like that there's Tu,but he's never been acknowledged that he's on the show. I think he's Thai. Amanda says she's puzzeled by Albino's look, but I really like it. My cat sees a bird out the window and has become possessed. Strange dinosaur chattering noises.
AND Heidi is back to getting dressed in the dark.
Before we start the runway, we meet the new Michael Kors, who has left the show forever, Zac Posen
Nina as always. and then our guest judge is season 4 winner, Christian Siriano. I loved him. He could be a full time judge. Full of sass and snark.
Team KIR first.
Stanley. His model makes me long for a Big Mac. Good gracious that girl is skinny. It's actually pretty gross. The design is eh. Fine.
Kate. I like it, but don't love it.
Qichard. It's sporty. It's cute. It was probably difficult to make even though it looks so simple
Water Lily turned it out! I love the panels with the movement and the subtle peek of blue.
Amanda. A plain tank top with a weird patterned pair of pants. This is her aesthetic? Ok...
Layana (Brazil girl) makes a perfectly nice black dress with straps all in the back. Blah.
Joseph (who?) made a scrap dress is what it looks like. Not good, rather ugly in fact. He better hope his team wins, because he's got a low score.
Qaniel made a beautiful black suit. It's very well made, you can tell. It's hard to see all the beautiful detail because it's all black, but it's gorgeous. Nina, as always squints to be able to see and shields her eyes from the light. Can we get the woman some sunglasses? Or a chair with a different heights so she's not always looking straight into the lights?
Dream is up next.
Matthew (who?) made a lovely outfit. Nothing super amazing, but with so many designs it's getting hard to keep track of them all!
Samantha's dress is pretty. I don't really like the extra tulle that's all around the skirt, but the next is beautiful.
Tu has a piece I don't like at all, but I'm not a fan of showing your gut. The front is all white and the back is all black. I feel like Heidi will like it though.
James isn't anything fabulous. The top looks pretty rough and the skirt is just blah. It feel kind of like Neapolitan ice-cream, but in a bad way. The purse adds nothing.
Oh my good hell. Emily, in the best Tommy Boy voice I can muster, what'd you do!? She admits she's horrified. And she should be. It's god awful!
Albino's look amazing. It looks effortless and flowing. Love.
Morticia...you should've stayed in the funeral business, darling. What is with the kitchen tablecloth red checkered empire waist band? The print isn't amazing, but it's not awful, but those weird bands around her middle are completely misguided and bad. The sad part is, she says she's very happy with it.
Queenie B sends down her offering. I don't hate it as much as I want to, but I definitely don't like it. It doesn't really look finished. I do like the shoes though.
I think Dream is on the losing team. And I'm right. KIR wins. Emily knows she's in trouble. Winners get talked to first.
Losers don't deny that they lost. The Q boys and Water Lily have the highest scores.
Qaniel made his look expensive, structured and classic. Mr. Posen tells us black is the signature color of New York. Huh? I didn't know a city could have a color.
Qichard got inspiration from the concrete color and mixed it with the winning black color again. Heidi loves the a-symmetry and that the sleeves have one short and one long. Qichard admits that everyone on the team was very helpful in helping him edit out some bands that were going to go across the middle.
Water Lily goes on a rant for about 20 minutes before Heidi stops her with a, "She's a talker, yes or no? You know the shows only 90 minutes, right? I don't think you need to speak that much, the dress speaks for itself." HA! Remember how Stanley hated on her dress? I bet you are eating your words now, bro.
Losers up. Emily, James and Morticia are bottom looks. Not surprised. James is first and says he's into color blocking, and he says he wishes he wouldn't have listened to the team about getting rid of the rest of the color blocking that would've gone on top. Nina says there's nothing wrong with the look, it's just not inspired at all. Heidi says there were great pieces on the team, Tu and Albino get mentioned (see, I knew she'd like it!).
Emily explains what there was supposed to be, and then admits that she ran out of time. Heidi says that her 8 year old could've made that. She takes off the jacket and it only gets worse. The top isn't even really a top, it ties in the back. Nina says in all 11 seasons they've never seen such an unfinished garment. I would argue that whichever season it was they went to the hardware store and someone came up with a washer-bikini had far less clothes on their model than this one. But I get it. The team admits they helped her construct it because as of this morning she had nothing. Emily starts to get teary. Oh save it. You were too cocky for your own good.
Morticia says the print reminded her of all the chaos and colors of the city. She explains that there was an original look but the team gave her a thumbs down on it. People on the team sort of jump in and say that while they liked the print, they were trying to save it from being worse than it was going to be. The judges don't like it at all. Posen calls her out that she should've made something to show who she was because this was her opportunity. Nina admits that there were plenty of high scores but the low ones brought them all down, so they need to work better together as a group.
The judges are questioning if the team mates on Dream are actually trying to help each other or just get rid of the people that suck. More deliberations, more repetitions.Posen is proving he's got some sass. I'm ok with him for now as a replacement to Kors. Heidi calls Emily's piece butt ugly. I can't disagree.
Winning look is...
Qaniel! I have to agree. That was an amazing piece.
Losing look is...
Emily. We all could see it coming. Although, I thought because she was a little bit more bitchy they might keep her around for ratings. But ah well. I sense Morticia will get hurt feelings about something at some point and lash out at everyone.
And there we have it! We see that at some point in the season people are being sent to various countries in Europe?! Excuse me?! Where's my ticket? If I was a previous contestant, I'd be pissed. What'd you guys think? Did the right person go home? Do you hate teams as much as I do?
Til next week!
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