Project Runway Season Three: Episode One Recap

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Rejoice, fashionistas everywhere!

Bravo's Project Runway is on again, starting its third season.

Here is the Lipstick Mystic's recap of episode one. I will be assigning Mystic Points to each designer in my recaps when they do or say something that's cool, according to my completely random and personal sense of cool. Mystic Points will be given throughout the season, and at the very end, I will be declaring my own Project Runway winner. This is likely to be different from Nina Garcia and Michael Kors' winner, but then I'm far less obsessed with the evenness of hemlines and more into whether people are amusing and fun to hang out with at parties.

Project Runway Season Three, Episode One Recap

In this first episode of the third season we return to NYC's fabulous Atlas Apartments, where we see the designers meet their new roommates and make excessively cheerful small talk. Everyone acts all sweet and friendly because they haven't yet entered the sewing room, where sharp implements like needles and scissors will soon provoke contestants and make them turn on each other. You can bet that blood will be drawn after the honeymoon period of making nice to each other is over.

Until then, we can but wait.

For now, the designers are bubbly and earnest, like starstruck kids. Some of them are very cute. Vincent Libretti is so grateful to be included in the fun that you just want to go up to him and muss his already mussed hair, even though you can sense that he's a little too desperate to actually win.

Later in the episode, his bizarre insistence on putting a woven basket thingie on his poor model's head and calling it a hat also forebodes his eventual doom. Although I'm giving him one Mystic Point anyway for his whole "What the heck" attitude. And he'd probably be really fun to go out drinking with, because he's totally the kind of guy who'd make you try really weird liquers until you get stone cold drunk, in a "God I had fun even though my head is killing me and I want to die" sort of way.

Score So Far: Vincent Libretti 1 Mystic Point

Other cute folks include Alison Kelly, the ingenue of the piece, who has that sweet and innocent "I haven't been in New York very long and I still have a soul" thing going on. If you met her in person, you'd no doubt have a Putin moment, going up to her, lifting up her shirt, and nuzzling her tummy, because she's cute like a kitten. (Putin, the Russian leader, did this recently with a small boy in a crowd and it generated some comment.) I'm giving Alison one Mystic Point for being so farm fresh and milkmaid-ish. You can tell that you could confess your dirtiest secrets to her, like the time you made out with that total loser at a party who had just been released from the state penitentiary, and she'd totally have your back.

Score: Alison 1 Mystic Point

And instant adoration goes out to Robert Best. He's a Parson's graduate, and he gets one Mystic Point for telling us the truth about the time when he worked for Isaac Mizrahi. He said something like "A lot of the time, I wanted to kill him," but he said it in this sweet, funny way, not a Santino psychotic way. Good for him for telling the truth. I mean, we all knew that Mizrahi had to be high maintenance. Robert is simply confirming this. Hopefully, he will be good for more insider gossip.

Robert also gets a second Lipstick Mystic point for all his funny comments about designing for Barbie. He's been working at Mattel for a while and his main job has been to dress Barbie. He made some hilarious comments about how she's an easygoing client and looks good in everything and never complains about what you dress her in....you had to be there, but it was funny. He said a lot more of this in the preshow casting special. So congratulations, Robert, you have a total of two Mystic Points already! And if I had a Barbie, I'd so want you to dress her.

Score: Robert 2 Mystic Points

As everybody checks out their apartments we see Malan Breton, an strong early candidate for show villain, looking over the decor with a sneer. He's foreign in a vague, pretentious way, yet apparently he doesn't have an actual nationality. He says he was born in Taiwan yet is from "everywhere". And his face cracks when he has to smile and play nice because deep down you know that he hates everybody and totally wants to be alone in a dark room playing with his dolls or whatever because nobody really understands him. (I'm with him. I like a dark room on occasion, too.)

As far as I am concerned, Malan is a Santino in the making, so the Lipstick Mystic gives Malan 1 Mystic Point for his potential to make the show interesting. Bad is good! Keep being bad, Malan.

At one point Malan looks at a fake plant on his windowsill and immediately sneers that "Fake pants are very bad feng shui for a room." This earns him another Lipstick Mystic point. Knowledge of feng shui is a very good thing. I approve. That leaves Malan with a total of two points.

Score: Malan 2 Mystic Points

We're all kind of awestruck by Laura Bennett, a tall, stylish redhead who must be lying when she says she is mother to five children. In the show they briefly show clips of five random small people, but I think they must have been rented from Central Casting, because there is no way that somebody that stylish and elegant is a caretaker to five rugrats. This is my subjective opinion, of course, but if you saw Laura on the show, then you know I'm right.

Laura said that the reason why she always overdresses is because as a mother of five children, she knows that it's a slippery slope to sweatpants and a mini van, and she wants to avoid that. Laura receives one Mystic Point here for being a funny and self-referential "cool mom" instead of "I'm the perfect mom and my kids are my life" like that bogus Wendy Pepper from Season One. Remember how Wendy tried to pretend that she was somehow wiser, more noble, and possessed greater character than all the other designers because she was a breeder, and then she proceeded to backstab everybody else on the show until we all hated her?

Somehow, I don't think Laura will go ever go there. If she's going to get bitchy with someone, then they will no doubt deserve it. And it will be very rewarding to watch her take out whoever it is with a pinking shears.

Score: Laura 1 Mystic Point

Michael Knight from Atlanta earns one Mystic Point for his design. The episode's challenge was for each designer to grab stuff from their apartment - bedsheets, curtains, lampshades, etc. - and to design something that reflected their vision as a designer. If you saw the preview show when they showed the designers auditioning, Michael Knight came in with three fabulous dresses he had designed following three of the challenges from Season Two. He had a girlie muslin thing that was gorgeous, a lovely dress that would have looked fab on Nicky Hilton, and another too pretty piece - and each of them perfectly conformed to the specific requirements of those challenges. Tim Gunn frowned and said Michael wasn't presenting enough of his own personal vision, but I thought everything he did showed a unique design sensibility and that Tim Gunn needed to eat a muffin or something. He gets very grumpy at auditions when he's had a long day.

Fortunately, at that audition, Season Two winner Chloe Dao was on hand to put her cute little foot down and say that she liked Michael's work, which allowed him to become a semifinalist. You go, Chloe!

Anyway, in this episode Michael constructed this gorgeous white dress made out of coffee filters, and it was so pretty. It reminded me of the garden party challenge last season when Chloe made a dress with tiny green leaves that was so delicate-looking, your eye couldn't even detect that the damned thing was made from plants. (Unlike Santino's shellacked creation, which looked like the poor model had grabbed a plant from a doctor's office lobby and pulled it on over her body.)

So Michael, for your lovely coffee filter dress, and because caffeine is my drug of choice, and for your versatility, and because you are from Atlanta, a city I love, you have one Mystic Point. I predict you will have many more.

Score: Michael 1 Mystic Point

Everybody seemed to have a lot of fun in the workroom because this was the first challenge and they still had lots of energy, and because nobody had declared war on anybody yet, and it hadn't yet reached the point where somebody needed to shout "Where the HELL is my chiffon?!?!?" (Check out my Where the Hell is My Chiffon Gear Here.)

The judges for the first episode were Nina Garcia, Michael Kors, and famous designer Kate Spade, whose designs I always like. Kate was friendly yet professional, unafraid to criticize the pieces that really didn't come together (Vincent, you barely escaped an Auf Weidersehen with that basket hat of yours!)

Ultimately, Stacey Estrella got Auf'd because her diaphanous white creation was a little too see through for everybody's taste, even though she did construct a last minute panty for her model so she could avoid past judge Anne Slowey's assessment of "slightly vulgar" (Anne thought Emmett McCarthy's skating outfit for Sasha Cohen showed too much "tootie," I believe. Not big on the tootie, is Slowey.)

Keith Michael ended up winning the challenge. He's a menswear designer who was so annoying when he bragged about how he won the challenge for designing his first dress ever, that he completely failed to win this viewer's loyalty. Even though his dress was kind of cool. Initially he had the potential to win at least one Mystic Point due to his resemblance to both a younger Jude Law and a younger Greg Kinnear, but ultimately, his personality annoyed me so much, I decided not to give him a point. I suspect he may end up being a bitchy and nasty person, but Malan makes a much better show villain because he's much more sleek and shiny, so we will have to see how things progress. So for right now, anyway, Keith - no points for you!

That's it for my recap of episode one. Look for episode two's recap next week!

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Lipstick Mystic Points Awarded So Far:

Vincent Libretti: 1 Wacky Mystic Point

Alison Kelly: 1 Cute and Kittenish Mystic Point

Robert Best: 2 Funny and Fabulous Mystic Points

Malan Breton: 2 Mysterious and Villainous Mystic Points

Laura Bennett: 1 Cool Mom Mystic Point

Michael Knight: 1 Fierce Talent Mystic Point

Note: I've opened a different shop selling a couple of cool Project Runway mugs. These are the new mug slogans:

Full tilt boogie quilted extravaganza of puff (Laura Bennett's famous saying from episode four)