Tonight’s episode of Project Runway comes just three days before Friday morning’s Project Runway showcase at Bryant Park during NY Fashion Week, and there are way too many designers left on the show. It’s bewildering, but Gratz Industries has an intensely thorough analysis to help you grope through the darkness.

This episode might well be called “The Reunion Show,” as all of this season’s eight aufed contestants will be called back to partner with the eight remaining contestants. The challenge: create a dress that reflects the zodiac sign of the aufed designer in the pair. There was some discussion over at Blogging Project Runway about what role the aufed designers will really play–are they merely clients? clients and models? collaborators?–but after viewing the previews about a thousand times we’re ready to say they are collaborators only, not clients or models or any combination thereof.

All of this is precipitated by an episode of Project Runway Australia, in which the aufed designers were also brought back and paired with the remaining designers. In that episode, the aufed designers were both collaborators and models, but the real trick of the episode–and one that played smashingly well, we thought–was that the previously aufed designer on the winning team won a place back on the show. So important was this in PR Oz that the previously aufed designer who won her way back on is now in the final three.

Will our Project Runway follow suit? It would certainly up the ante for the aufed designers, and reinvigorate the show mid-season. It all sounds great, until you realize that even just aufing two designers–which has been confirmed by the Powers That Be at Bravo–we’re still left with six designers on the show just three days away from the filming of the finale at Bryant Park Fashion Week. (The finalists show their collection at Bryant Park while the regular season episodes are still airing, and the finale episodes are edited together in-season, to be ready in time for their debut.)

But the way this has worked in the past is that four or five designers show lines, with one or two of them acting as red herrings for the viewing public. That way, we don’t know which of the last four or five designers the judges are actually scoring. But six runway shows? That’s a lot. And now, if one of the aufed designers is added back in, that could mean seven runway shows. At some point, this becomes like the hockey playoffs–everybody makes it, and nobody cares.

Here’s a preview video of tonight’s episode to tide you over–we’ll be watching tonight at The Tanker, where the whimsical DirecTV oracle contends that it will begin at the regularly scheduled hour of 8 pm.

Marjorie Skinner is the Portland Mercury's Managing Editor, author of the weekly Sold Out column chronicling the area's independent fashion and retail industry, and a frequent contributor to the film and...

5 replies on “Tonight’s Project Runway Excites, Confuses”

  4. Thanks for the link! And to answer truthypup’s question, they’ve done this every season. The Bryant Park finale happens while the show is still airing, and they know there’s no way to keep a lid on which three designers are showing in the finals. Hence the decoys. Last season, Sweet P–the last regular season contestant to be eliminated–AND Chris–the loser of the third place competition with Rami–each showed full collections. Sweet P showed because the episode in which she was eliminated had yet to air, and Chris showed because they didn’t settle the three official “finalists” until the week of the fashion show. So folks who attended the finale show at Bryant Park that year saw all five designers’ lines–but didn’t know which three had officially made the finals. (I know. It’s confusing.)

    From what I understand, the red herring designers are given a smaller budget, but still asked to complete a full line of looks. There has long been a debate about this among fans–if the fourth-place, and sometimes FIFTH-place designers still get to put on shows, how much of a reward is it really to be in the top three? Sure, the top three are broadcast on television, and one of them will walk away with the $100,000 prize–but for many designers, just getting on a Bryant Park runway to put on a show is an enormous challenge. (Just ask season one winner Jay McCarroll.)

    And as for demonjuice, “aufed” is PR fan short hand for Heidi’s “auf Wiedersehen” of course, which she says every time she boots someone from the show. I admit, I should have changed things up a bit in that passage–it does get repetitive. What can I say? I wrote that at two in the morning. 🙂

  5. I enjoyed the analysis, Gratz, I’m a viewer… it’s just that ‘aufed’ grates on the same part of my brain that ‘licious’ does.

    Oddly, I’m still OK with ‘fierce.’

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