Runway Jury: Model Dress

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HOLY CATS ON a cracker, was this episode boring!

Actually, this whole season has been bring so far. Even the surfwear/avant-garde challenge of Episode 3 is starting to feel like lost halcyon days; at least it was bat-guano crazy.

Red carpet — bluh.
Maternity — eh.
And now — make a dress for your model to wear to some kind of model event at which they have to look nice.

You are killing me, show. I wish Hedda Lettuce would swoop in and lay down some drag-queen smack on these producers. If the talent among the scissor monkeys is the highest level yet on "PR," as is claimed every year, why are they being asked to run up a pretty frock or two week after week? This is not Top Seamstress!

MISSION: POSSIBLE
After the designers are told they'll have to make an outfit for a woman "who knows exactly what she wants," they are relieved to discover those women are not former hefties, mothers and daughters, each others' mothers or any other variety of what we in the normal world call normal women and those in the fashion world call ectomorphic freaks.

Dresses, models, pretty.

MODEL DRAMA
Very low this week. Epperson's model, Matar, is looking for orange, punky, romantic, leather, lace, tiger, billowing, streamlined, ankle-length, mini, made of rusty duchesse satin, industrial parts and 50 feet of cable. Whatever, stick figure. Bring back Season 1's Melissa and her evil 16-year-old dreams of a rose-studded wedding gown. (Which Nora dutifully made and got aufed for.) Good times.

LET'S JUST START THE FREAKING SHOW ALREADY.

THE GOOD
Professor Carol Hannah Whitfield sends Lisa out in an asymmetrical purple satin top with clever, flattering draping over a skirt with a very high, wide waistband like an obi. What's so smart about this skirt, in a black floral-print leather-looking material, is that because of the high waist, it appears ladylike and demure even though it stops halfway down the model's thighs. Just beautifully executed, despite the odd choice of making the skirt longer and ruffled in back.

Poor exasperated Epperson makes exactly the right executive decisions in dealing with flighty Matar. He scraps the concept of orange, showing her the fabric and noting that it's tacky, and does a fierce mini-dress in brown jersey overlaid with velvet ribbons in a range of browns, romantic and bondagey. Crazy asymmetrical strapping over the back is a little complicated but also to die.

When, oh, when, will the judges notice that Gordana makes beautiful clothes? (See photo at top left.) Is she an apparition being beamed directly into my head and is not actually on the show? Love, love, love the either-dead-pale-peach or nude long-sleeved frock on her mini-me model, Tara. It gathers on the bosom toward a panel of basketweave in the same fabric from the neckline to the hem. Don't love dolman sleeves — ever — but this dress is a winner.

Irina makes Kalyn a fierce print dress in gray and pink and black with a black ruffled hem that's echoed in a short black jacket with a flirty peplum. The bathrobe belt doesn't add much, but it's very chic.

THE MEH
Koji wanted a '50s silhouette, and Logan doesn't know what that might be, since he hasn't "researched that period," or, like, lived in the world, so he makes her a bright-blue satin prom skirt that's all kinds of bunched up around the hips. He just can't design an A-line, which is unfathomable. The top appears to be a black lace overlay on the same blue material with a desperate strapping-about of black velvet ribbon.

Louise took her black fabric apart and resewed it in strips to make a short dress of vast textural interest, but I could live without the clown collar. In fact, all designers need to stop obsessing on Chris March and Christian Siriano's avant-garde design from Season 4. Yes, it won. No, a fabric goiter is not your ticket to the top.

Valerie looks kinda mad — and kinda old — in Qristyl's boring black dress. The single shoulder, the shirring that flatters jiggle, the stretch fabric — it's all very boring and a wee bit new trophy wife's first Hollywood party, at which she'll feel underdressed and hideous and will promptly burn the thing and have Marta bring the car around so she can go to Jeffrey and get some real clothes.

THE FUGLY
I guess Emarie asked for purple, because Johnny made her a purple dress. It's — yawn, so sleepy — sorry! Where was I? Oh, yeah, it's purple and short and on sale now at TJ Maxx for 75 percent off the regular retail price. Also comes in blue (see below).

Christopher Straub's stuffed Katie into a cornstalk. He even name-checks our gal Hedda while pleating his horrible, emerald-green satin into a sleeveless bodice — it looks like he just folded up some fabric. The mini-dress' skirt is pleated as well and the smooth center section set off with two black bands. From the What's-Shirring? No-Sew Home Collection.

Love Celine's shoes. Those are great shoes. Mm! Nice shoes, girl. Nicolas' dress? Not so much. It's short and white with a gray collar that recalls an old sweatshirt, and the closeups of that collar on MyLifetime.com reveal it to be jaw-droppingly poorly made.

Vanessa smiles through the pain, but a GIGANTIC BLUE FLOWER is devouring her boobs. Oh, the humidity! Ra'mon does love his big flowers.

Shirin, well, see TJ Maxx, above.

THE INEXPLICABLE
And finally, Tanisha is not short or wide or without a waist, but I cannot see the logic of Althea's cheap gray T-shirt, diaper-like black blouson mini and short, sharp jacket. She's just ... a box. A box whose boobs are slapping all over the place because girl has no bra on and the T-shirt offers no support. The skirt is bunched weirdly and there's a belt made of strings distractingly dangling off one hip. I hate it. It wins.

DeaR anDY cOHEn, if yoU WanT TO sEE miChAel KoRs AgaIn ...

Where is he? And where is Nina? And who are these people? Snotty Ice Elf Marc Bouwer, the designer; Elle editor Zoe Glassner and that harridan stylist Jennifer Rade take seats next to Heidi. Someone just doesn't care anymore.

Epperson and Carol Hannah make it into the top three along with Althea. Qristyl, whose name I never have to type again, and not a minute too soon, is auf. She seemed a little in over her head from the start, which means the wheat and the chaff are finding their places. But the judging this season is just infuriating.

Come on, back mama up, pigeons! Do I hear a shout-out to my girl Gordana? Anyone? Bueller? Leave your comments below; I'll be on the couch with a wet washcloth on my forehead until next week.

Photos by Kannie Yu LaPack/Lifetime