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Captain Save-a-Ho
This week’s Project Runway = ruined sewing machines + hetero male rage + ugly pockets for Twiggy
An Advocate.com exclusive posted August 11, 2006

Awesome clothes are like an eye-popping piece of modern art or a great pop song or a snow cone that turns your teeth and tongue a nice shade of blue. I dig fashion because I want to see things that blow my mind. Like the time Alexander McQueen sent a model in a white dress down the runway and then turned paint jets on her while she rotated on a platform, turning her into instant graffiti. And while I’ve dug some of the outfits I’ve seen so far this season, none of this batch of Project Runway designers are freaking me out with that type of awesome stuff yet.

Here’s what is:

- On Conan O’Brien the other night Kim Gordon was wearing a white belted minidress covered in green sparkly stalactites. Sonic Youth performed, and she sang in that way that she does and did some cheerleader–jumping jack moves. She is one of the most stylish women in the United States.

- Linda Evangelista on the cover of the August Vogue, airbrushed into infinity and beyond. Thanks for the weirdness, Anna Wintour.

- Yoko Ono, photographed in her own cutoff jeans, in the same issue of Vogue. If they had balls at that magazine, they'd have put her on the cover.

We begin our Atlas New York morning listening to Jeffrey Christ whining again about not winning yet another challenge. Cut to Michael Knight With No Talking Car also bemoaning his lack of challenge wins. Somehow it plays better coming from him. Robert Gay Arms says, “After the runway show for Macy’s, myself and Bonnie were in the bottom two.” If you didn't see it then you should know he pronounces that word like “tew-w-w.” But that’s not my beef with Gay Arms. I want to preface my beef by saying that in spite of his clothes not being the most thrilling of the lot, he seems like a really good guy, and I liked it when he sassed Laura Glamour Mom a couple of weeks ago.

Now the beef: “Myself” is not and can never be the subject of a sentence. For example: "Myself am going to McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner today." "Myself am depressed today over myself’s recent bout of exhaustion, that angry open letter from the producers of myself’s latest film accusing myself of tons of evil lies about being a bad person, and the fact that myself now have to be photographed at hot nightclubs holding a bottle of water as penance." "Myself am the decider of all American foreign policy decisions." See how the preceding three sentences are all stupid and fucked?

Anyway, it’s time for Heidi to announce the challenge. But first she brings out the models and allows them to choose the designer they want to work with instead of the other way round. Immediate doom drum noise, and cut to Angela the Yves Saint Laurent Copier going slack-jawed with amazement. She does this a lot. She’s not only an Yves Saint Laurent copier; she’s now an Andrae Copier too.

Poor models. Their elimination this week is even more out of their hands. It’s literally the unluck of the draw. Which means that foxy Katia, the only model whose name I even knew, gets shown the door alongside some other girl who has a cold sore on her bottom lip.

The challenge is to modernize the look of a fashion icon. There are photos of 10 different fashion icons in the workroom. The models will choose the icon for their chosen designer.

Tim oversees the selection process in which the models go all Lord of the Flies on each other, grabbing the photo they want. I enjoy seeing this sort of frenzy on television. It should be its own show. Like there would be one cigarette in a chic white-on-white room, and 10 models go in, but only one comes out smoking.

Here are the icons and the designers chosen for them:

- Audrey Hepburn + Angela: Angela jumps up and down spastically with her model. Cut to her saying she peed her pants. That’s probably her design idea for the outfit too, a rosette-shaped pleather bladder attached to the belt loop of a pair of Funny Face–era black capris. Then she secretly dials Keith Michael on her cell phone and asks him to look up the correct pronunciation of the name Givenchy in one of his banned textbooks.

- Pam Grier + Michael: Only he calls her Pam “Mother F-wording” Grier. He is happy deep down in his L Word–loving soul.

- Jackie Onassis + Robert: His model screams “I fought!” and after correcting her usage and saying, “Um, it's 'myself fought,' honey,” Robert announces that Jackie O. is perfect. But how do you get the old-money look down with a $150 budget at Mood? Myself worry for Gay Arms.

- Madonna + Jeffrey: How to modernize a person who has devoted every spare second she has to turning herself into a hard-muscled, self-crucifying, futuristic yoga cyborg that writes preachy children’s books and wants to irritate the planet with kabbalah wisdom until it belches up a perfect pearl for her? The picture they give Jeffrey is adorable, though. The Ciccone Youth in 1984, all baby-fatted and body-odored and content to bang Jellybean Benitez and all the Latino bar backs at Paradise Garage. Jeffrey takes his model slugfest photo procurement as a sign from the universe that It wants him to “fucking win.”

- Marilyn Monroe + Kayne the Flaming Lisp: He’s happy. He says, “Loveit-loveit-loveit.” All fast just like that.

- Diana Ross + Uli, Heidi’s German Pet: Uli has deeper knowledge of life than most people, so she’s very happy to have Diana Ross. There is no other explanation for her pleased reaction to getting this photo. Do we think of Miss Ross as a fashion icon? Was that decided somewhere along the way, and I missed out on the election? Because I stood three feet away from the Death of Florence Ballard at Fred Segal one day, and she was wearing a frumpy men’s suit, and she looked less than supreme. Probably Yohji Yamamoto from 1986, but still, she wore it like a shop teacher out for a night on the town at Sizzler.

- Katherine Hepburn + Laura Glamour Mom: A near-perfect fit for the lady who just happened to bring jodhpurs along with her for the duration of the season.

- Farrah Fawcett + Alison Supernice Supercute: I don't get it, and neither does Alison. What’s Farrah famous for, fashionwise, besides a big swooping lioness mane of hair she didn't create herself (I know this because I once interviewed the female hairstylist who created that hairstyle for Ms. Fawcett-Majors way back in the day), a red swimsuit, perky nipples, and subsequent trips to too many hack-job cosmetic surgeons?

- Twiggy + Corky [Vincent]: “Gia [the clearly deranged model who chose to work with him] picked Twiggy because of what I could do with it.” What, destroy it?

- Cher + Bradley Squid With No Ocean: “I don't know shit about Cher,” says Bradley. “Maybe I should start paying attention to celebrities more.” Dude, just come to my neighborhood. You’ll learn everything you need to know. Seriously, I live in West Hollywood, Calif. Cher is President of here. I feel doom approaching on dirty hippie feet. I take a poll in my home and it’s decided that we want to adopt Bradley. He’s made some cool outfits and some crazy-as-shit awful outfits. He may very well be here as some elaborate art prank being played on Bravo. That would be awesome. But even if he’s not, he brings a Shaggy and Scooby vibe to the place that I can't deny enjoying.

They go shopping at Mood. Robert is trying to find the right thing to combat his reputation as “boring,” for which he says, “Thanks, Heidi.” It was Nina Garcia who kept saying “boring” last week, but you know how it is when you're a gay. All women look alike to you.

Cut to Wayland Flowers and Madame saying, “I. Feel. So. Excited. About my dress for Marilyn Monroe!” Except that Wayland Flowers is dead, and Madame is buried alive next to him, and it was Kayne who said that just now. “I kind of wanted a Marilyn Monroe–meets–Gwen Stefani, their love child kind of thing.” His eyes are bulging with gay retina superrays of "wow." When I see the amount of gay that Kayne is, I wonder if there are instances in public medical records of gays actually exploding from the concentrated amount of supergayness inside them, like spontaneous gay-bustion. Don’t get me wrong; I’m in favor of Kayne’s heavily concentrated supergayness. I’m not one of those masculinity fetishists. But it’s pretty intense, the Kayne Supergayness. You know it is.

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