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‘Runway’ Recap: ‘Lipstick Jungle’ Is No Place for Tramps

Did you not positively love Brooke Shields as a guest judge on Project Runway last night? Because we sure did! She was such a natural, so genuinely excited to be there, and yet so composed. When we’re inevitably a celebrity guest judge on that show we can only hope to bring the same level of giddy class while avoiding just plain freaking out and dying (you know she kind of wanted to).

This week’s challenge is to create a day-to-evening outfit for Shields’s character on Lipstick Jungle, a high-powered mom who runs a big movie studio but used to lead a “bohemian” lifestyle with her musician husband. The prize is much better than immunity: Shields will actually wear the winning design on the show. For the first time this season the designers have to work in teams, which is merely an invitation for attitudes to bare their fangs.

When it’s time for the team captains to pick their partners, Keith chooses Kenley seemingly because she’s the best designer of the bunch and it’s just a smart move. Kelli chooses Daniel because it’s either him or Stella, whom she really doesn’t want to work with even though they’re friends. And so Jerell is stuck with last-pick Stella. But! He sweetly tells her he so would have picked her anyway because his design incorporates her ambrosia: leather. We never would have imagined those two would wind up together (we were secretly hoping Stella would wind up with Blayne because their arguments would have been priceless), but they worked together seamlessly, pun intended.

Daniel and Kelli, on the other hand, are a different story. Daniel hates Kelli’s outfit right away, but he doesn’t help her make it better. In fact, he sews the skirt so poorly the hem rises unintentionally at a 30-degree angle to the floor. We found this odd because we don’t recall his sucking at sewing before. Then he says he just “didn’t care” because it’s Kelli’s design and not his — well, that explains it. What a team player he is! Although we guess we can’t blame him — from the start, all Kelli’s design seemed to be missing was a street corner and a common prostitute.

Michael Kors agrees with us; when he has to critique Kelli’s outfit he says, “I mean hello! Slutty, slutty, slutty.” YES. LOVE HIM. We were especially peeved by the half-leopard half-turquoise boobs on the top. But at least we know what to wear if for some reason we decide we want everyone we meet to be unable to look at any part of us but our funky chest … which could be any day now! (Kidding … well, at least until Friday night.)

Keith and Kenley’s winning dress and Kelli and Daniel’s losing dress.Photo: Courtesy of Bravo


Needless to say, we’re so glad Kelli went home and Blayne survived after he landed in the bottom two with her (as an aside, can we all agree that Blayne really needs to start washing his hair?). As lame as all his “licious” blather is and off-track as his Bermuda-short-blue-top beach outfit was last night, we’re not ready to see him go — and that orange-patterned Saved by the Bell shirt he wears every other day deserves more airtime. Though we would have been pleased with either Keith or Jerell winning, we can’t knock Brooke for choosing Keith. After all, the skirt-floral-blouse combo looks like something she would wear on TV and we give him props for crafting the skirt out of all those little fabric leaves. We’re suckers for handiwork. (Plus Jerell’s zebra belt was way too much.)

At the end of the episode we felt like we’d finally reached the point where we could really get into this season like we’ve gotten into past seasons. A little less chaff, a little more wheat. And next week’s episode, in which the challenge is to create an outfit for a drag queen — featuring special drag-queen guest Chris March? — looks ah.ma.zing. There’s no way we’d miss Tim Gunn dropping the “pterodactyl from a gay Jurassic Park” line, even if we weren’t required to watch it for work.

‘Runway’ Recap: ‘Lipstick Jungle’ Is No Place for Tramps