http://graffiti-indi2012.blogspot.com/

After wrapping up its 10th season last month (congrats, Dmitry!), Project Runway is back with its second season of All Stars. Our resident critics and PR fans Jill Slattery and Darrick Thomas will be dishing out recaps and sartorial snarkiness all season long.

Jill: Project Runway All Stars took it to the streets last night! A few "legal aerosol artists" lent their spray painting expertise to the contestants for a graffiti-themed challenge that had everyone attempting to create wearable art. Freeway taggers of the world, let this be your inspiration: you too can score a guest spot on Project Runway All Stars if you work hard enough and have strange names like Meres One, Sen2, and Zimad.
Darrick: I'm not sure even the wide open space of the Brooklyn streets are big enough for Althea's ego. Girl, you haven't won anything yet. What's with the superiority complex? As for the challenge, I'm into the idea that they have to create their own patterns with paint instead of using those silly digital sketch books that exist purely for product placement. Emilio has the right idea when he says it'd be silly to try and imitate what the professional taggers do because it'll just come out "amateurish." Foreshadow much?
Jill: Suede helpfully tells us that "Suede has never held a can of spray paint," while Laura Kathleen moans that she's not dressed for the challenge because "her shit is expensive." Ivy says she's inspired by "girl power meets superhero meets pop art" so basically she's just haphazardly putting words she thinks are cool together.

Darrick: What do you expect from Laura? I mean she goes by "Laura Kathleen" as first name. It doesn't get much WASP-ier than that. At least, she's one of the few people referring to graffiti as graffiti instead of "aerosol art." That's so pretentious it makes me want to gag.

Jill: We cut to Suede hard at work on...something? It has green and yellow dots and some seriously ill-advised black streaks of paint, and it looks like it's shaping up to be a real monstrosity, which...YES. I'm eager to see someone make something truly fugly and I think Suede can do it. I believe in you Suede.
Darrick: I couldn't help but think if Tobias Bluth when Suede said his design "could blow up in my face." Oh, Suede. My money's on Kayne (again) for the fugliness. He hasn't done much, but when trying to summon inspirational words, he jots down "Puerto Rico," so, yeah, anxiously awaiting a silly disaster.

Jill: Apparently Laura Kathleen is like a card carrying member of the 1% and loves to talk about it (I bet girlfriend has a horse and I bet that horse knows Mitt Romney's horse), so of course Ivy and Kayne take time out of their busy schedules to trash her in the lunch room. The exchange between the three of them is like a weird outtake from Mean Girls where EVERYONE is the Regina George.

Darrick: I just want one of them to try and make "fetch" happen. Back in the workroom, Joanna Coles shows up for another dose of positivity. (I know I harp on this every episode, but can someone give Joanna a makeover already? They have the L'Oreal Paris hair and makeup room RIGHT THERE. You look like the Tilda Swinton banged a raccoon. Sorry.)

Jill: For the second week in a row, Joanna asks Uli if they had things in East Germany, and no, those poor saps didn't have disco OR spray paint apparently.

Darrick: "I'm new to this spray paint thing because I was busy, you know, ESCAPING COMMUNIST GERMANY!" — Uli
Jill: Suede tells Joanna that his design is inspired by "earth and sky and star." Casanova's face pretty much says it all because this thing is so ugly that it should just be torched on the spot. Casanova, meanwhile, should save a little bit of that face for himself because it looks like there's some bedazzling going on at his work station. That cat never met a sparkle he didn't like and I kind of love him for it. Him, not his designs.

Darrick: Hey, look at that, Kayne lived up to expectations and created a mess. I think we're ready for the runway. The judges, who include a pair of adorable lumberjack Santas named Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra, quickly hurry off the safe designers — Uli, Andrae, Casanova, Joshua, and Althea.

Of the bunch, Andrae's craft project with the strange purple tool belt accent and Casanova's bedazzled hodgepodge were the most questionable. On the flip-side, I thought Althea's purple and gold animal print and Uli's orange and purple sunburst with pointy shoulders could have made the cut for Top 3, but both probably landed in the safe zone for missing out on the "could I hang this in a gallery?" metric.

Jill: Onto the Bottom 3, which unsurprisingly includes Suede and Kayne, along with Laura "I go swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck" Kathleen. Kayne's paneled skirt is definitely all over the place, but I can at least see what he's going for with it. Sure, his stick thin model's butt looks huge and there are like 50 different spray paint motifs going on, but at least it looks purposeful. Laura Kathleen's spattered neckline was pretty, but the rest of her cocktail dress was ill-fitting and drab. But it's Suede's one shoulder gown with paillettes that really takes the cake. Isaac Mizrahi says it reminds him of a Party City store and Suede insists that he stayed true to his aesthetic. When this is your aesthetic, you should not stay true to it, bro.




Darrick: I was pretty surprised to see Laura Kathleen in the bottom. Sure, the hem's a little screwy and it's short, but it wasn't THAT bad. I actually liked it better than Ivy's repeat coat with ridiculously obvious words splattered sloppily all over it. Nope, that piece made it in the top three. The coat was well constructed (because that's what she does), but who wants to wear a jacket with "Tenacity" and "Passion" spray-painted down the front of it? And how is this gallery-worthy? Anthony Ryan's black and neon blue graphic mini-dress with a Rorschach-style ink blot at the collar was by far the coolest thing on the runway. What girl wouldn't look cute in that? But, as the episode had been pointing to from the beginning, it was Emilio who walked away the winner for his bright, bold jacket and skirt. Anthony Ryan, robbed again.

Jill: I also didn't like Emilio's as much as I liked Anthony Ryan's adorable little dress, but I wasn't mad at the judges for crowning him the winner. It was definitely a show-stopper. As for our poor purple-haired eliminated designer, at least he went out with a defiant, "Suede OUT."