Episode Report Card Jeff Long: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Wall To Wall
By Jeff Long | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 07.11.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close. The 15 finalists file into the Atlas apartments. They meet Real World-style, with equal parts posing and sniffing. Tim and Heidi summon the designers to the rooftop, where they have a champagne toast. Then she tells them their first challenge: they must make an evening garment from items in their apartment. Anything goes. Bradley Baumkirchner even tries to grab a pillowcase that is the personal possession of another designer. Menswear designer Keith Michael of the Two First Or Last Names makes his first dress ever, and wins the challenge. Stacey Estrella, with her see-through nightgown-y dress, barely loses to Jeffrey Sebelia and seriously ill Vincent Libretti. (No offense, but I think the guy is cracked.) Want more? The full recap starts right below!The Road to the Runway having ended here at the Atlas apartment building, we begin the first actual episode of Season 3. Malan Breton is dressed in a suit and tie and is carrying a single garment bag up the street. He interviews that he was born in Taiwan. My second grade teacher had been a missionary to Taiwan and, when all of the kids came back from the holiday break, she stood at the doorway and bowed to each of us and said, "Gong-shi, gong-shi. Congratulations, the dragon didn't get you." I'll have to base my future judgments of Malan's pathology on the fact that they tell young children there that a dragon might eat them every New Year's Day. He interviews that he is inspired by old Hollywood and we see that he is thirty-two years old. "Raw talent" is what he believes sets him apart from the other designers. Then he laughs like a total dork. Maybe he has a sense of humor? That would be nice.
He is the first to enter the guys' apartment and declares that it is bad feng shui to have fake flowers in your house. Or just ugly. Michael Knight is the next to arrive. He interviews that he is twenty-eight and from Hotlanta. He mentions that the burgeoning music industry in Atlanta has provided him with an entrée to fashion. He wants Project Runway to make him a "big mother (bleeping) fashion star." I can't imagine that he won't be the most famous designer in Atlanta by the time he goes back. Michael asks Malan where he's from and says, "You sound so distinguished," while taking his impersonation of an English accent for a spin. I bet we're gonna have a lot of that.
Next come Robert Best and Bradley Baumkirchner. We see that Bradley is thirty-one and from Los Angeles. Robert is thirty-six and from Hollywood.
The first lady is Laura Bennett. She's carrying a set of old-school Louis Vuitton luggage cases. I know it's conspicuous consumption and it's pretty stupid to have expensive luggage (as it's sort of a red flag for "Hey! Steal me! I'm expensive and the stuff inside of me is even more so!"); but...I really love those cases. I'd live out of a steamer trunk if I had one. Even in my own apartment. We see that she is forty-two and from New York. She interviews that she is an architect, but her "passion is in fashion." She laughs at the last part, because it rhymes. She says she never dresses down. "When you are forty-two years old and you have five children, it's a slippery slope into sweatpants and a minivan. So I just don't go there."