Keira Knightley to Fart-Face Her Way Through Yet Another Costume Drama

On the plus side, Charlotte Rampling is around to shred the taffeta with her customary hauteur, and the wigs do look fab.

And now, Mrs. Vreeland shows you how it's done.

Confidential to Jennifer Diederich: *This* Is What Surrealism and Dada Is All About

Salvador Dalí Meets the Fetishist of Icy Blondes

Have a look, possums, at this snippet of the Dalí-designed sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, and tell us whether this has anything to do with what Jennifer Diederich designs. Indeed, the more we think about it, the more profoundly annoyed we are by the whole “Holly Golightly goes to a Salvador Dalí exhibit” shtick. Now, Tippi Hedren or Kim Novak goes to a Salvador Dalí exhibit—that is something we could really get behind.

The Fashion Show to End All Fashion Shows

Salma Hayek's Brother Does an Oldham on an Ad(ler)

Oh the Hughmanity! Week 3: “Nightlife in Salt Lake City Involves Corn Pellets and Fresh Eggs”

‘Tis a pensive, gnomic, almost Trappist Hughman we bring you this week, possums, as he vows, out of boredom as much as out of propriety, to follow the example of Mother Superior García:

“I have nothing to say” - Nina Garcia on Episode Three.

Oh Nina, if only the contestants followed your lead. In fact, since Bravo has seemingly run out of original challenge ideas, here’s one I could fully appreciate - the designers have to make an entire outfit without saying a word. “Leathuh” SSHH, Stella. Corset your lips together if you have to but just shut up. Blayne, “Muffle atcha blather.” Suede, “Block on.”

Granted, we’d be spared stories about Keith Bryce’s Mormon upbringing with his (assumed) 60 siblings and 12 moms. A household so crowded that when cutting his hair, they got to that last long strand in the back and said “eh... fuck it.” I’ll admit, while that rat tail might get him better seats at an Indigo Girls concert, it kinda freaked me out. What kind of Fashion Magazines are the gays in Salt Lake City perusing? The kind that made chicken costumes for school plays and then later recreate them as “night life looks”? I guess night life in Salt Lake City involves corn pellets and fresh eggs.

Of course the whole “Holla Atcha Boy”-gate would also go away, which could only be a ratings booster. We’d be saving poor Tim from having to wrap his wise mind around an impossible amount of stupid. Later Blayne remarks he “hates his life” which is something we can at least agree on.

Last week’s “eco-friendly” theme continues with a recycled competition. It was a pretty lame challenge the first time around, not very structured towards any particular direction, where they all take some Sponsor cameras out to take pictures of whatever. Stella has a John McCain moment and asks the Einstein of the bunch (Blayne) for help with her camera. Eventually they all get some banal pics to inspire them. None of which had much to do with the original directions to emulate NYC at night. Haven’t these people ever seen a movie? People, taxis, neon lights... hello! Who goes out at night in Manhattan and looks at a clock, for God’s sake?

I’ve read several reports wondering why Sandra Bernhard was a judge. There are more reasons than you’d think:

1) Known Lesbian. In the Gay Ballpark.
2) Supposedly slept with Madonna. Gay First Base.
3.) BFFs with Isaac Mizrahi. Gay Babe Ruth.
4) Goes to all the Fashion Shows. I’d see her at shows in Bryant Park all the time with ex-Interview editor Ingrid Sischy. Gay World Series.

So yeah, in terms of the Gays, she scores more than most. Otherwise it’s hard writing about this episode because frankly it was so boring. Banal pics = banal clothes. No shock there.

And for the final results, we naturally get a mixed bag. Stella hammers her “gay little grommets” into something Jackie Warner might wear to a S&M club. It was ok, but not really an outfit you’d see on a Fashion Week Runway. Keith presents his Big Bird Burqa. Blayne’s dress looks like a uniform for Drag Flag Football. Terri’s outfit is like Mother of the Bride over pants and I just didn’t get it. The judges loved it but sorry, Michael Kors, a dress over pants isn’t groundbreaking.

The winner is Kenley with a cute dress but one that was pretty much done before on runways everywhere. It was finished but didn’t knock me out. I much preferred LeeAnne’s cleverly constructed skirt and top. It just seemed different and so much more thought out than everything else offered.

Emily’s dress was the loser even though it was really only a half step below Blayne’s. It was like something you might serve margaritas in and those ruffles were wacky, like she used an Etch-A-Sketch to decide their placement. As I noted before, Nina said, “I have no comment,” and really, how do you judge a dress that has no reason to its Helter-Skelter logic? I blame the lame headbands.

Federico Fellini: Project Runway to Hell

Simon Sez!: Jonathan Adler Fiancé Tells You How to Look Like a Fairy

N.B. Once it starts playing, it goes and goes, possums, in different little segments, with Simon telling you about neon and the 18th century and so forth. Don't say you weren't warned.

“Leanne, can I ask you something? Is life on an LDS compound the way they show it on ‘Big Love’?”

Keith Bryce Takes Sides in Deadly Salt Lake City Gang War Between the Anemics and the Craps

Bright Lights, Big T...Er, City

“OK, this is where the batteries go. Oh, and girl, you *have* to stop using that line about Holly Golightly and Salvador Dalí. Seriously.”

Tim Gunn’s Guide to Pronunciation

Guest Judge Sandra Bernhard Whets Our Appetite and Wets Our Lips for Tonight's Episode

Dispatches from the Department of “That Explains a Lot”

From Stella Zotis’ MySpace page:






















Oh, so that’s what that morning potion was for….Does it also contain formaldehyde? Because, possum, you don’t look a day over 101.

















“I see dead people. In leatha.”

Pink Navy Photoessay: Hair-Band Production of “Macbeth” Missing a Weird Sister

Oh the Hughmanity! Week 2: “Ribbed for No One’s Pleasure”

Possums, it was the Roman playwright Terence who wrote, “I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me.” However, had he survived into the modern age, and were he a viewer of Bravo and a reader of blogs, there is no doubt in our mind that he would have written, “I am a gay man. Nothing Hughman is alien to me.” And it is in that spirit that the redoubtable Hughman brings you his take on the second episode of Project Runway:

Jeezy creezy.

I so want to believe everything Tim Gunn says. Honestly. “Pencil skirts are in.” Hell yeah! “Glamour is the new black.” Hot-cha! “The Eighties are back!” Um, ok I guess. They weren’t that inspiring the first time but whatever.

So it seems particularly telling that in his first rooftop appearance, instead of telling us, as he usually does, that “this season has the best designers we’ve ever seen,” Tim says that this is the most “diverse” group of designers in the show’s history. “Diverse”?! Really?! That’s really damning with faint, meaningless praise. The thing is, though, I think his scrupulousness is showing through; the man is trying to tell us something, and not for nothing has he been bitchier than on any season past.

Maybe it’s just me but this season of PR already seems like the Presidential Primaries, no end in sight. And it’s ONLY THE SECOND SHOW!! Maybe I need to drink more but I feel like I’m sitting through a long boring movie (cough*The English Patient*cough) and desperately need to pee.

Why? Maybe it’s the lack of the “Speech in Berlin” moment thus far. There’s been no Gay Gasp like when we first laid eyes on Laura Bennett (who in my movie is played by Rosalind Russell). No jovial Chris March. No annoying yet strangely magnetic Christian Siriano. Not even a Wendy Pepper hovering around the edges like a soccer mom on a meth binge. We barely know anything about this season’s contestants, so when they’re booted, the best we can manage is “meh.” No thanks to Bravo, who’ve been as tightlipped about this season as Condi Rice at the Dinah Shore Classic.

The one thing the designers do most creatively on Season 5 is be Reality Show Contestants. Fortified by years of Real World, America’s Next Top Model and I Love New York, they eagerly jump into roles as Stereotypes. Talent be damned, this is about what the camera loves or what some people have decided the camera loves. The rest of us know the camera adds ten pounds to your ego and usually not where you need them.

So we get second-rate, crazy hippie, an overcaffeinated small gay, and a misplaced straight guy. All they need are “Hi, My Name is That One” nametags and we’re all set.

Even the clothes are meh. On this episode they could have all come from Forever 21 and we’d never know the difference. Short, nondescript little numbers from the wardrobe of The Hills. Twenty or so outfits thus far and frankly, I don’t think I could pick one of them out of a lineup.

Bravo tried to shake it up. First, all material had to be “eco friendly,” a vague enough term slapped onto everything these days to try and assuage our TV-addicted guilt. I still don’t really know what it means and I doubt any of these kids do either. In a perfect world, we’d get bamboo leaves and recycled glass. As if.

Second, we were treated to the Models being forced to buy the fabric at Mood. It was like watching the Valet Parker being made to buy your car. Just let them do their job, get a check and go back to smoking and drinking bottled water. I can tell you firsthand, models really don’t usually give a shit about what they’re paid to wear. It’s a JOB, not a stint volunteering to stop world hunger.

The results spoke volumes about what Models think of designers. Apparently designers are like crows with bad taste, attracted to shiny things in dull colors. Brown satin was the main draw. Perhaps the Models thought it was made of recycled camel dung and the remnants of lip gloss. (Eco Friendly!)

Stella ain’t having it. She declares in her best Penny Marshall voice that she’s Urban and all about leather. No shit. If Squeaky Fromme were a dominatrix, Stella would pretty much be her Doppelgänger. Oddly her final design didn’t exhibit any of these two qualities, unless Urban means we’re about a half inch from seeing the model’s “Lower East Side.” One-armed hookers everywhere are drooling over her product.

In what may go down in the records as Most Ironic Statement Ever on PR, Blayne calls her “leatherface.” I was hoping Stella would slap that kumquat he calls a head right off his shoulders (which Korto could snatch off the floor, splice in half and call a brooch.) Instead, the Gay Gollum takes the one-sided dress idea and applies it to his “Licious,” making yet another “I’m a little teapot” concoction. The result was also very Pretty in Pink/Flashdance, complete with a side ponytail in case you weren’t yet convinced it was retro enough.

Finally we got our requisite shockers.

Suede wins! Bisexual Kewpie dolls everywhere are crying with glee. I didn’t personally think it was the Best (I favored Kenley’s shift with the dramatic neckline which I could see Pat Buckley wearing to a cocktail party) but if you were a milkmaid going to a milkmaid prom, you could do worse.

Poor Wesley. I’m not into Conspiracy Theories but I’m just gonna go on a limb and hope (to his credit) that he was overwhelmed with Puppy Love. This is always the way it works. First the sultry looks, next the stolen kisses then suddenly you find yourself forcing your model into a brown satin condom while you whiteknuckle through frustration. The dress was too tight, too short and ribbed in a way that brought no one pleasure. Here’s hoping he can release some of that tension by the reunion and it’ll all be doe-eyed moonlit walks on the beach once again.

“If Squeaky Fromme were a dominatrix, Stella would pretty much be her Doppelgänger”

“Top Design” Breaking News: See You Later, “See You Later, Decorator”

Hallelujah, Praise the Lady Bunny, and any other religious ejaculation you can think of. In the above clip, Raggaydy Andy Cohen announces that on the upcoming season of Top Design, we will no longer be hearing Jonathan Adler say, “See you later, decorator.” What the new send-off will be remains to be seen. We’re counting on you, Simon Doonan, to save the day.

Miss XaXa Cries (Gay) Uncle

Our Miss XaXa tipples with fairy godfathers Ted Allen of Top Chef and Nick Verreos of Project Runway at last night's Gender Public Advocacy Coalition event at the Chopping Block in Chicago.