It was the Goodwill hunting episode for Bravo’s “Project Runway” on January 2 as the designers were tasked to repurpose second-hand clothes into an upscale outfit for the show’s host, model Karlie Kloss, to wear at a Paris event for the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Complicating matters? This was the first one-day challenge of Season 18.
As usual, Gold Derby senior editors Daniel Montgomery and Susan Wloszczyna discussed the outcome of the fourth episode as the 11 remaining contestants scrambled to collect piles of previously worn duds to upcycle into a chic ensemble. They are eager to discuss the outfit that landed on the bottom — namely, Tyler Neasloney‘s supposed Jackie O type look. As Daniel notes, it was his third week in a row with a low score from the judges.
But this time, he defends Tyler’s look — which Susan refers to as “office-worker Barbie” –saying that it was “so much better than the look he stayed in for” previously. Namely, his underwhelming yuletide disaster from two weeks ago.
As for the two other designers with low scores, Shavi Lewis and Marquise Foster, this was their first time on the bottom. As Daniel notes, Shavi did little more than “cut the arms off a blazer and add layers of flaps on the shirt in the front.” As for Marquise, he was reduced to taping the back of his design to keep it together, which was obvious when his model was on the runway. And, as Susan notes, Shavi’s too-tight skirt caused his model to walk at a very obvious snail’s pace.
But all of the results of the competition took a backseat to what happened during Tyler’s critique — otherwise known as Kushner-gate. Susan says that she had been waiting for someone on the show to dare reference Karlie’s connection to a certain clan since she is married to Jared Kushner‘s brother Joshua. And, boom, there it was.
After judge Brandon Maxwell said he couldn’t see Karlie wearing the design anywhere, that cheeky little Tyler remarked, “Not even to dinner with the Kushners?” Ugh, he went there, causing Karlie’s reaction to become instant meme material. As Daniel rightly notes, “It was uncomfortable but pointless.” Susan surmises that Tyler was just itching to bring up her family connections into the conversation and he waited until it was clear he was a goner. “He wanted to go out with a bang,” she says.
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Daniel and Susan go on to discuss how the loss of both Alan Gonzalez and Tyler has basically deciminated the humor quotient in the workroom this season, how judge and fashion journalist Elaine Welteroth has kept a rather low profile during the critiques, the march of the “Karlie Klones” look-alike models and guest judge Laverne Cox’s spot-on comment when she called one outfit something you would wear to “a dystopian office party I don’t want to go to.”
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