Runway Jury: More Like a Hard Place

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POODLES! PIGEONS! POSSUMS! Puppies! Plankton! Did you wait for me, the rose wilting between your teeth, the champagne growing warm, the violinist striking up "Time After Time" time after time?

It was a day of disasters, beginning with the fact that I lost my garbage can. Did the cleaners hide it? Who does that?

So, tears, tears, tears of regret for the late post. Let's get to shredding these bitches.

Man, I took a million notes during this thing and you know what I have to say about it? Nothing.

As in Season 2, the designer will be designing for each other, meanwhile each wearing a design someone else designed for them. (It's fun to type "design" a lot. Not as much fun as "throughout," but fun.) It probably took three seasons for the producers to figure out how to streamline this gangbang of sewing, stitching and modeling, and it's still what Gossip Girl calls a fustercluck.

The challenge was presumably crafted to hoist the contestants from Comfort Zone to another province, either Step It Upville or Incapability Island, and it's a measure of the show's distressing devolution that everyone landed on Clueless Atoll, sharing around their one coconut. After, of course, the producers aufed the only person who could have rocked this challenge to Canada Day. Poor Stella Barbarella — how much would you have given to be watching that episode in her batcave over a bowl of gluten-free chicken claws? Ratbones is all, "Don't cry, baby. Have some more more of my blood; that always picks you up."

MUSICAL WARES
/>The motif is clothing inspired by a musical genre ("ANTM" shoutout No. 2! Smile with your eyes!) So, costumes, again, not clothes. Kenley is tasked with making Leanne a hip-hop outfit, which should be — and is — comedy gold. She's making a pair of sternum-grazing dark-blue jeans and a leather jacket, because dark denim and leather jackets say "hip-hop" to her. Not that I have ANY love for La Vache Qui Rit, but that's a knuckleball, really, designing a hip-hop outfit for a girl. Kenley's reference is Alicia Keys, and Jerell drily notes that "Alicia Keys" is more R&B and surely the camera cuts away before we get to hear Kenley bray, "It all sounds the same to me." Because you know she's thinking it. P.S.: Marry me, Jerell.

Leanne must turn Korto into "country." That doesn't sound hard. I mean, the porportions, the theatricality, the exaggerated femininity — not hard for Leanne, right?

Korto, who interviews, deliciously, "Kenley on hip-hop? I can't wait until tomorrow," must make Suede look "punk." Like anyone out there who lived during the years 1977-1982, yeah, I can feel you shuddering now at the desecrated, cartoonish mess "punk" now telegraphs. She's got chains, bleach and rubber bracelets, so you know where this is going.

Suede is given the most free range with "rock 'n' roll" for Jerell. Skinny J can probably handle the most butt-clenching leather pants Suede can construct, and he does love flashing his ribcage, so this should be good. Right? Should I stop asking that?

Jerell grabs every stretchy, shiny, see-though thing he can at Mood in order to make Kenley's "pop" creation. The sight of Kenley in a wee fishnet dress turns Suede immediately straight, so ... that happened.

MYSTERY SEWING MACHINE THEATER
Tim Gunn glides Jeevesily into the workroom to find five musical genres lying in scraps on the worktables. They listen to him with varying degrees of attention, from Leanne asking him whether "it's too nuanced" — um, no, sweetie; you know perfectly well that's code — to Kenley openly snotting him. My God, this woman! "What does Tim Gunn know about hip-hop, anyway?" she interviews. He knows it's not crotch-strangling Jordaches and patterned silk blouses, you monster. Plus, she doesn't know what "precipice" means. Or "self-awareness." Ugh, I can't stand it. Let's ...

START THE SHOW!
The guest judge is LL Cool J, so there, for better or worse, is your gauge of the show's grasp of rock fashion. I mean, he's cute and not stupid, but a wee bit 1989, no offense. Were all the skinny It Band singers too cool for the show? Is Katy Perry busy? Did anyone call The One Who Can Sing from the Trampyslut Dolls?

Oh, there she is — sorry! No, wait, that's Kenley in Jerell's pop outfit. A stretch fishnet dress — class-ay — with half-sheer skirt, silver bra, infinitessimal purple vest, gold slouch boots and her hair Barbie-d to high heaven. It's actually a wee bit do-me-countrypolitan; I could see Shania Twain rocking this with just a change of boots. But "pop" sort of means Hannah Montana on slut-meds anymore, I guess. It looks cheap, and the bangles blow. The judges swoon. Jerell is through, though; yay.

Speaking of Shania Twain, "I'm Shania Jenks," says Korto, gamely wearing the horrible, terrible, no-good Leanne design of floor-length black jersey skirt, fushia satin top tied in front, fugly gold belt and black-and-white neckerchief. Two things tied! Black jerskey ankle-length skirt! It's a crime against Tammy Wynette and a crime against nature. And it's not nice to fool Tammy Wynette. She's had enough heartbreak in her life. The judges keep Leanne in for body of work, but it was the second-worst outfit on the runway.

The firstest and the worstest? Yo, yo, yo, dawg and other cliches — Leanne is wearing it. Kenley's hip-hop number is everything her attitude promised and more, so much more. Sister Christian-style skinny jeans with a waist up to here, demure silk blouse in one of Kenley's patented going-to-tea-with-grandma ugly prints, doll-sized leather jacket, strappy high-heeled sandals. Somewhere, MC Lyte is laughing her ass off. Kenley is rude to Heidi — does Kenley go home for this? She does not.

Oops, I've made a circle. Let's go back. So Suede is modeling Korto's punk-rock look, and the whole assignment is a mug's game, but that bitch works it on the runway. Tongue out, mean pointing, hunching over. He looks a wee bit like Pete Burns before Pete Burns lost his ever-lovin' mind, but whadayagonna do? The black jeans, they are splashed with bleach; the chains, they are many. Suede might have complained that Suede is not punk at all — may I refer you, Suede, to the antecedent movement that inspired your stupid, stupid blue fauxhawk? — but he steps up like a good model (I think in part because people like Korto and Suede, whatever his other problems are, isn't a jerk) and Korto's well-made interpretation and her menswear styling — not her forte — are precise and even passionate. Congratulations, K!

So, Suede rocked up Jerell in a very nice pair of skinny pants with an exposed zipper, a kind of International Male watercolor shirt and a sleeveless, rather tough-looking suggestion of a leather jacket/vest. His boots are to die for. I think it looks OK — the styling is terrific, and Steven Tyler wouldn't throw it out his hotel room window. But — body of work, y'all — our little finger-gunning, third-personning cockatiel is out.

As I called it, pigeons, but depressing nonetheless. That Bitch is still around (but only as the dummy fourth, I think) and three talented designers are on their way to Bryant Park.

If you see my wastebasket — green, translucent, frogs — please drop me a line, no questions asked.

Next week: Plants and stuff, another recycled challenge. Who's in, who's out and who will become as famous as Chloe Dao? Leave your prognostications below.

Photos courtesy Bravo