Project Runway Recap: Tech Test

Project Runway

Battle of the Seasons

Season 22

Episode 7

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

Six designers from Project Runway’s 21st season return to stir up drama and possibly outclass season 22’s remaining competitors.
Photo: Spencer Pazer/Disney

First, a note about my rating of four out of five stars for this episode. Perhaps it seems high for an episode that included not just one but two needless cameos from influencers whom, again, I refuse to acknowledge or consider necessary to an episode of Project Runway. I get what the production is doing: It wants these moments to be clipped and shared by fans of said influencers, and it wants to presumably reach a younger demographic, and it wants to maintain Project Runway’s relevance in an eternally competitive (and to some members of Generations Z and Alpha, irrelevant) television landscape. I understand it, but I don’t have to like it! I rated this episode so highly on the strength of the concept, the extremely watchable drama that blossomed between the contestants, and the knowledge of this judging panel. You know, the things that make good reality TV! Nina and Iman alone — come on, man. No influencers necessary.

We’re down to seven designers, and we’re also doing … another unconventional-materials challenge? How much has this season’s budget been slashed that we got one sponsored paper-towels challenge, and now another one that requires no Mood budget at all? Oof. Here are the details: The remaining contestants have to use materials from a recycling warehouse specifically for old technology — keyboards, iPods (RIP to my youth), various cables and wires, motherboards, that sort of thing. The design criteria feels fairly loose (Christian just mentions that the looks need to be “incredible”), and the winner gets $20,000. But the designers aren’t competing against each other; they’re competing against six returning competitors from season 21. Twins Jesus and Antonio are back, as are Ethan, Yuchen, Belania, and Ms. Joan, and they’ll make up one team while season 22 makes up another. The groups don’t have to design a cohesive collection (which is a blessing, honestly), but per usual, they have a limited time frame to work. If season 22’s team wins, then none of the remaining seven designers go home. But if season 21’s team wins, one of the season 22 designers is eliminated. I honestly thought Christian was going to say that the winning designer from season 21’s team, if they won, would end up taking the spot of the losing season 22 designer. Basically, what I’m saying is Project Runway has conditioned me to expect the worst. Yikes!

As soon as Christian announces that the designers will be working in teams, Joseph McRae starts pulling himself away from his fellow season 22 competitors. He’s still hurt by them saying he’s the weakest in the bunch, and after the two teams practically strip the recycling warehouse down to its bare walls, he doesn’t join the other season 22 designers as they all sketch together. He’s quiet and withdrawn, and since the unconventional-materials challenge was when Joseph went home last season, he’s determined to win this one. (I am really beginning to sense a season-winner’s edit for Joseph, by the way.) Things get so bad that he confides in Jesus and Antonio about how isolated he feels, and you know shit’s gone wrong when Jesus and Antonio are being used as a source of comfort.

Also bad: How slowly season 22 is working. When Christian does his walkthrough, there really isn’t a ton for him to look at on their side of the workroom. Bi has the great idea of covering his dress in keyboard keys, but it’s going to take a long time to pop them out and glue them on his garment. Bryan — who has immunity because Heidi nonsensically chose his dress last episode to wear to The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiere — plans to do a cocoon jacket and dress made of bubble wrap, and Christian is rightly disapproving that for a tech challenge, Bryan isn’t using any actual tech. Feels a little cowardly, IMO! Meanwhile, Joseph is working with a whole rack of cords that he plans to spray-paint and weave into a jacket, while Christian tells Anna to think more creatively than just a white and translucent top and miniskirt. Christian’s most impactful advice goes to Jeffrey, who is again struggling with how costumey he should go. He has a silver-foil minidress on his dress form, but Christian tells him it feels overly familiar and urges him away from going too drag-influenced. Jeffrey decides to start again entirely — but Christian also tells Jeffrey to whip season 22 into shape. “You gotta step them up,” Christian says, so Jeffrey ends up with split loyalties: On the one hand, he’s now assumed the role of team leader and he’s checking in on everyone, but on the other hand, he has to come up with a new idea.

Which leads me to a question: Do we think Jeffrey purposefully copied Antonio’s dress? Antonio and Jesus certainly thought so, insisting that Jeffrey’s new, nearly sheer minidress accentuated with zip ties was very similar to Antonio’s also nearly sheer minidress accentuated with zip ties. I don’t think Jeffrey mimicked the dress (Antonio’s felt way more Koosh ball to me), but Jeffrey’s new outfit did feel like it was designed from a place of “Which tech detritus can I throw into my design?” rather than “Which tech detritus actually helps me fulfill my design vision?” I actually think Bryan more clearly copied Jesus’s woven-wire dress with his new creation, and I think Bryan’s second look was ghastly. Remember when Law called Aaron’s lion-inspired outfit “disgusting”? That’s genuinely what I thought of Bryan’s messy mass of wires that he tried to drape on his model, Liris, and then his desperation in taping what looked like a trash bag around her when she very validly refused to go nearly naked down the runway. Naheim really captured the vibe when he said, “Wrapping up this woman in tape like a rotisserie chicken … what the freak?” Bryan’s “look” was more of a necklace than an outfit, and he had the nerve to insist he was delivering “haute couture”? Buddy, get a grip. Bryan is a bully and a blowhard, and I’m over it.

Runway time! The season 22 designers go first, and I really like Anna’s top made out of shimmery brown cassette tape and Naheim’s chain dress covered in spray-painted-silver iPods; I appreciate Joseph’s huge wire jacket and motherboard-covered boots; and I’m bored by Jude’s bra top and vinyl skirt. (Seriously, how did he not end up on the bottom?) The clear winner, though, is Bi’s matte-black key-covered dress with a zip-tie ruffle running along the hem. It is incredible, a truly astonishing amount of work in the time given and obviously ready to wear off the runway. But … are season 21’s looks better, on the whole? They just might be. I love Yuchen’s jacket and skirt covered with motherboard pieces, Belania’s skirt and poncho top covered with wires and vinyl frills, and Jesus’s woven dress with its exaggerated skirt shape.

Overall, both teams clearly do well — it’s obvious in how delighted Nina, Law, and Iman look as most of these looks walk the runway — and Belania, Antonio, Naheim, Jude, and Anna are all safe. (Poor Anna, who came into the competition on the strength of her unconventional-materials aesthetic; she’s now lost both the earlier paper-towels challenge and this one.) That leaves season 22’s Bi, Bryan, Joseph, and Jeffrey for judgment, and season 21’s Jesus, Ethan, Ms. Joan, and Yuchen. Everyone has their favorites: Heidi and Iman love Yuchen’s Schiaparelli-evoking outfit (“That’s why we do this,” Heidi says), and Iman and Law also adore Joseph’s huge oversize coat, praising it as an art piece. On the low side, Ms. Joan’s dress of wires fashioned into circles (and breasts with pierced nipples) is called a little tacky; the judges can’t figure out Ethan’s miniskirt, prosthetic robot arm, and collar made of what look like computer fans; and Law calls Jeffrey’s “trash.” But there is no greater gap than that between Bryan’s absolute disaster of an outfit and the masterpiece delivered by Bi, who you might remember was once Bryan’s intern. Law gets some giggles and snaps fingers out of Jesus and Bryan insulting each other’s dresses, but I’ve never seen him more sincere than when he praises Bi’s outfit, with its keyboard letters spelling out “Bitch, please.” “If I was a lesbian, I’d be falling in love with you. Because we’re both women, clearly … You are the one to beat,” Law says; he is shockingly effusive. So are Nina, who throws her other note cards away, and Iman, who actually made me cry when she said of Bi’s look, “AI, eat your heart out. This is what the human touch does.” Yes, mother, indeed!

That’s all very beautiful and soul-affirming, and it wouldn’t be an episode of reality TV if we didn’t crash back to earth via two other people fighting. Back in the stew room, Jeffrey — while hilariously spinning around in his chair like a cartoon villain — asks Bryan why Bryan didn’t mention to the judges that he had actually wrapped Liris in tape. This was clearly a question just to start some shit. Bryan is slick; why would he ever volunteer this information to the judges? But I understand Jeffrey’s frustration. Bryan didn’t acknowledge how much Jeffrey helped him with his outfit, and Jeffrey’s role as team leader was dismissed by Law. Jeffrey could very well go home, while Bryan gets to hide behind his immunity. When Joseph got involved to call Bryan “very condescending,” that was clearly Joseph seeing an opportunity to pile on, given that Bryan has been a jerk to Joseph in the past. Things are tense, and that’s all before the contestants make it back onto the runway to learn which of their teams won — which, of course, we won’t see until next week.

• I would have loved to be let loose in that recycling warehouse. Everything would have come home with me. I miss my Microsoft Zune from college desperately!

• If you are into the fashion-via-recycled-tech aesthetic, the sci-fi musical Neptune Frost is very good and features really imaginative costume design from Rwandan artist Cedric Mizero.

• Christian sighing, “Oh, God, I’m not going to make it through” as soon as the twins walked onto the runway made me laugh a lot, as did the twins calling Jude “that straight boy.”

• Also funny, but in a depressing way: That influencer Nara Smith invited the contestants to “grab something to eat and chitchat,” and then didn’t eat a damn thing herself on-camera. Of course not.

• Nina really clocked Bryan with her “All of them used their hands in their craft” rebuttal to his insistence that his outfit was better than everyone else’s because of his “hand knotting,” didn’t she? I was unaware Nina still had that flex in her.

• Can Liris request to never work with Bryan again? She should.