The designers were seeing red this week on Project Runway. Fights breaking out? Nope, try again. And no, it wasn’t for the upcoming Valentine’s Day either.
Inspirational was the theme of this challenge. The designers were given the opportunity to design a dress for the Campbell Soup Company’s campaign “Address Your Heart.” The bonus was that the model they designed for if they won would be wearing the dress to a Fashion Week gala and the dress would be made into limited quantity to be sold on ProjectRunway.com. Though they did have to incorporate the Campbell’s branding somehow into the dress, be it the colors of the soup can, or using Campbell’s Soup printed material that was provided for them. Pretty sweet challenge.
All of the models were real life women who have been touched in some way by heart disease, and they were of all shapes, sizes and ages. One model told how if she becomes dehydrated, stands up for too long, or goes without eating, her heart just stops. Another had died for two minutes and was revived. Some amazing stories.
Anthony’s model had been dealing with hypertension all of her life, and Anthony immediately identified with her as he had to move his mother to Georgia with him after she had gone through heart surgery after numerous years of heart related complications.
After being given their $100 for this challenge and one day to complete, the designers set to work. Mila designs a red dress with two stars on it, a smaller then larger one, incorporating them from the Campbell’s logo. While it is almost costume like, her model loves it. Amy designs a red flowing dress of chiffon. It is gorgeous. Her model literally glides down the runway. Anna designs a shorter dress that though having the right idea, makes her model look bigger than she is with a beige racer back to the dress. She also continued the beige in the front peaking out from underneath the red. Jesus designs a short red cocktail dress. While his model has the figure to carry it off, he adds a chains of cubic zirconia to the front and back. Michael Kors in the runway show describes the dress as the five tackiest things you can do to a dress combined. And it shows. Heidi questions his taste level, again. Even guest Judge Georgina Chapman who is the co-founder of Marchesa raises her eyebrows, even though it appears she wants to like the dress.
Needless to say, Amy wins the challenge, and is excited. It was an emotional win for her, though she never comes right out and says why. Amy is just warming up Project Runway fans. Be prepared for even better things to come. She has definitely been one of the quieter ones until recently.
Jesus sadly gets thrown off this time, after ending up with Anna in the bottom two. You could almost see the pain in the judge’s eyes. They were finished with his taste level, or lack there of. He is only 21 and I believe he does have a bright future ahead of him, if he takes this experience to heart and continues to evolve as a designer. I believe he will.
Next week’s challenge is being deemed by Tim as the “biggest” Project Runway challenge ever. Anthony perhaps summed everything up best in a nutshell in the preview for next week.” Life isn’t fair, why the heck should Project Runway be?” And so it is my friend, so it is.
– Mary B
