In honor of the next phase in Elizabeth Berkley's winding career path, Bravo's Step It Up & Dance, I'm going to start off this re-cap with a quote from a seminal cheesy dance movie that wasn't Showgirls (that's just a seminal cheesy movie): Center Stage. Near the end, the token flamboyantly gay male ballet dancer complains to his friend, the token rebel ballet dancer, "He has all these theories about making ballet for the people. I do ballet cause it has nothing to do with the people. Give me tiaras and boys in tights any day."
If you simply replaced the word "ballet" with "fashion" and the words, "tiaras" and "boys in tights" with "ridiculous ruffles" and "models that look like live-action characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas," and (of course) inserted the word "fierce" a few thousand times, I think you'd have a pretty good idea of Christian's design philosophy. The weird thing is that, even though Project Runway is usually all about fashion for the people—"not wearable" is usually one of the judges' worst condemnations—in this case they went for fashion for Victoria Beckham (who is definitely not a person). Christian, and the hammer that he uses to beat his fierce catchphrase into your skull, won.
In a way, it's an odd choice. After all, didn't the judges just eliminate Fattie Chris the week before because the three pieces he chose from his collection were too "creative" and too "monochromatic"? Maybe the producers were too afraid to have both skirts made from human hair and a dress that looked like a hawk being swallowed by vicious ruffles on the same runway. Perhaps that would have alienated "the people," who it ended up not being about anyway.
Still, I see why the judges chose Christian: "wearable" can really just be another word for "boring." Both Jillian and Rami's collections were fairly translatable to general consumers, and neither one of them was as interesting or as entertaining to watch as Christian's. Jillian's gold lamé dress that looked like a Princess Leia nightie, or her metallic pantsuit, or that sweater with two mop-heads for sleeves couldn't match Christian's death-by-voluminous-ruffles collar in sheer entertainment value. And Rami's decision to shift his drapery from dresses to sleeves and pant legs and jodhpurs wasn't as innovative as Christian's decision to dress a few of his models up like giant, belted, ruffled versions of a glass-cleaning brush.
They had to pick Christian. After all, he had a personality! (FYI: "personality" is now defined as "repeating the same word over and over and over again while cultivating an aggressively tall and angular hair style".) Let this be a lesson to future Project Runway contestants: develop a catchphrase NOW, the dramatic couture looks you can make up later. Next season's going to fierce it up all fierce in the fierce fierce. I can't fierce-wait!
Grade: B
Stray Observations:
—Has Jeffrey slept since Project Runway 3? He looked more than a little ragged in the audience.
—That was Jaslene (and her pointy, pointy clavicles) from ANTM wearing Jillian's spaceship milkmaid dress. See? Winning ANTM does translate to something—like working for other reality shows about fashion.
—Even Jillian's mental breakdowns seem to take obscenely long to unfold. Her little whining fit was more like a slow droning fit.
—So Christian does have a family. Where were they last week when he was introducing Tim to a wall of pictures?
—Even though we've all heard her before, it's still very unsettling to hear Victoria Beckham speak. Honestly, high-pitched croaking sounds would be more reasonable coming from her than an actual human voice.