This week we had one of our favorite kinds of challenges — make a dress out of Fill-in-the-Blank-Absurd-Material. An eggshell tunic! Newspaper pants! A skirt made out of broken glass! The contestants get taken out of New York (already?) to a place called Adma Farm, and Tim finds the fact that they have to run in the dirt very amusing. We guess. The models are all wearing potato sacks, and look very cold, and the designers learn they’ll have to make a party dress out of the sacks. Also, the models are the clients, which means they get to enthusiastically express their opinions, and then the designers get to disregard everything they’ve said. The client-models get to pick what designer they work with, and the only surprise is that Mila’s model picks Anthony instead, probably because he is awesome and Mila seems a little scary. Good choice, tall, pretty model whose name is beside the point. Then Jay does a cartwheel in the mud. There’s a farm stand filled with accessories that everyone gets to rifle through, and can someone tell us why they’re at a farm, again? This is just weird.
Finally back in the city, the contestants get creative with burlap, and it’s actually really cool to see how they dye and manipulate it. Jesus makes the fatal mistake of not taking Tim’s advice about using more of the sack in his design — “you skirted the challenge!” Tim puns. This is why we love him — and Ping also doesn’t realize (even after Tim points it out) that her model’s nether regions are fully exposed. “Maybe there was supposed to be an ass flap?” muses Jonathan. The problem with these early episodes is that we don’t remember who’s who, forget everyone’s name, and generally don’t get enough screen time with each person to form an opinion. That said, we’re still happy to judge their looks at the runway show! The guest judge this week is Lauren “adventurer” Hutton, who looks amazing as usual, in all her American, windblown, casual glory. Michael and Nina are also back, thankfully. Let’s get on with it.
