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“Thanks, Mrs. A!”

Chris’s natural talent for dressing drag queens finally gets a chance to breathe freely as the designers make stripper gear for lady wrestlers.


I got a breathless e-mail from model pal Elyse two weeks ago, just as the last Project Runway recap about dying of denim barfness was being posted. Subject line: “oh shit I hope you get this on time.”

She’s a busy model, lady-posing globally, so I don’t mind if her commentary is late. Fashion isn’t a hobby, it’s work. So I understand. And because it’s a plain fact that everything this woman says about living stylishly is totally true, except for when I disagree with her, I’m going to give you her entire e-mail about blue jeans right now. That denim challenge episode may be stale, but the fact is, it was stale when it aired. Therefore, take it away, Elyse:

“If you have any jeans in your closet with a 'whisker wash' (fake wrinkle lines around the crotch), you must throw them away. You are no longer allowed to have those. The same thing goes for those tassely Balenciaga handbags: They were faked so thoroughly and persistently, you may no longer carry ANY iteration of this bag, fake or real.

"Oh, fuck it, denim is, like, SO out. The outest incarnation of denim is the jacket. I shudder to think of it. I'm wearing a dotted swiss dress right now, happily denim-free.

"I've noticed they're trying to bring back flared jeans. I wholeheartedly condemn this trend. Keep it straight-leg. Keep it tight. Keep it for at least another year, then we'll talk. Oh, but all that 1998-style 'embellished jeans' nonsense, with, like, rhinestone butterflies and fake-leather tassels sticking all over the place? Keep that at the mothafuckin' WIPP site, OK? Bury it half a mile underground.”

Now we can all move on to the gorgeous ladies of wrestling and their needs for garments that give. Also, that "display the fake tits to maximum antigravity roundness." That’s this week’s challenge, and I must say I’m all for it. The same way that I was for the plus-size woman challenge from last season and the Tiki Barber menswear episode. Force these people to do something that proves they can make more than another dubiously sexy party dress.

“Sweet P…” begins Jillian.

“What?” says Sweet P, who was all set to scream, “MY NAME’S NOT KIT!” until she realized that she’d been called by her correct self-chosen moniker.

“I don’t want fashion week to be all boys. We can’t let that happen. We have to rep -- present,” says Jillian. Sometimes it’s like Jillian’s iron-poor blood won’t even lend her the energy it takes to say multisyllabic words in one breath.

Of course the producers don’t want it to be all boys either. And that’s why it’s kind of a sad fact that Sweet P will most likely be going home soon, leaving, I predict, a final trio of Jillian, Rami, and Christian. The residents of my home -- that would be me, my husband/partner/whatever, and our good friend Xtreem Aaron -- and the nonresidents who are seemingly always wandering in and out are uniformly afraid for the future of Sweet P on this show. We all love her and want to give her a lifetime of cuddles, hugs, and homemade pies and cakes. But we think she’s going home soon.

Just not this week. That honor belongs to Ricky.

And it’s about motherfuckin’ time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Oh, wait, no, I’m not. Because here’s Christian and Rami to shit all over Ricky.

Christian: “Ricky’s dress had ruffles attached to the bottom.”

Now, to properly explain Christian’s delivery of that sentence requires video. But failing that, and I am failing that here right now, I’ll tell you that after Christian said, “Ricky’s dress had,” he paused for just enough of a split second and tilted one eyebrow and gave his head a little shake before huffing out the word “ruffles.” It’s the perfect smoothie of disbelief and mocking disdain and it’s just one more reason I love him. I’ve encountered a lot of anti-Christian sentiment out there lately, people who can’t believe that he’s my favorite contestant. They don’t like cockiness. They don’t like attitude. They don’t like tiny, queeny men. Those people don’t actually enjoy television excitement, either. They fail at watching this show. Just look at Rami’s delighted laugh. That’s the proper response to Christian’s bitchy superiority complex.

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