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"It Turns Me On"

So says Vincent. For the last time. Well, at least until the reunion show.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted September 8, 2006

House of Dereon? Are you jiving me, Foxy Cleopatra?

With each passing week I get closer and closer to the Lindsay Lohan interview in the September Elle, and the anticipation is about to make me explode, but until that sweet, sweet moment arrives, I have to speak my mind about House of Dereon, the clothing label birthed in the collective couture-bereft minds of Beyonce and Tina Knowles. I saw a few examples of the hideous crap they’ve designed on an episode of Oprah not so long ago. They made the other two Destiny’s Children model for them. It was a great episode. And now there’s an ad for it in the pages of Elle. Next Elle’s going to be taking ads for breast enlargement pills, I suppose. Maybe some creams to melt the fat from your thighs?

Thank goodness for the nice article about how Nicolas Ghesquiere has done such cool stuff with the revered French label Balenciaga, and then the one about those rad Rodarte women. There’s a picture of Miranda July in the “icicle shift” I wrote about a few weeks back, just proving that I was right. That dress destroys everything in its path. It’s on page 382, just so you know.

OK, on to the show: We’re still in Paris, and the flags are at half-mast because Jubilee Jumbles has lost Angela, its spiritual leader. Maybe she can get a job designing terrible shit for House of Dereon.

Now, check back to the first paragraph, where I intentionally misused the word "couture." Everyone misuses the word. They think it just means “clothes.” And that ain’t right. Because it has a very specific meaning, one that has nothing to do with the ready-to-wear business or anything you’re probably wearing right now, no matter how awesome you look today. Couture is what happens when you are a sultan’s wife and you go in for half a dozen fittings for a gown that costs $40,000. And you’re the only one who gets to have it. That’s couture.

So this week’s challenge? Create a couture gown. Oh yes, and they only have two days. This means, of course, that no couture will be created. But first, they’ve had a long-ass flight and Tim Gunn wants to check into his hotel room—so does everyone else, of course, but screw their needs, all I care about here is what will it take to make Tim Gunn happy?—and then they’re all going out to dinner.

Cut to some place called Hotel Lutetia. All the guys are in ONE ROOM. All of them. Together. In one hotel room. Little twin beds. Fucking cheap Bravo. I guess all the youth hostels were booked and the location scouts didn’t want to fight le homeless for their cardboard boxes.

Shots of them all walking around, milling about the Louvre, hanging outside where that pyramid is, the one where they’ve got the Da Vinci code hidden. Did you see that piece-of-shit movie? Turns out Amélie is, like, the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Jesus. You always knew Amélie was magic and now you know why. Laura Glamour Mom is so happy to be in France. “We went to a French restaurant,” she says. Or, as they call them in France, restaurants. She continues on to say that anyone can be sent home at any time because the people who’re left are “the best talent in the group.” And Corky's here too.

They all get on the metro to go shopping. Some hot French guy is cruising Jeffrey Christ, asking him if he’s a musician. “I’m a designer,” says Jeffrey. “Clothes.” Rebuffed, the hot French guy looks for American booty calls elsewhere. Then they arrive at Sacré Coeur and they have 30 minutes to sketch. “I trained in couture dressmaking,” says Corky, who was clearly the Gomer Pyle of that training facility. “It just turns me on.” He is nothing if not insistent about sharing with all of America, and now also all of France, all the many different things that turn him on. They go to Reine, the Mood of Paris, and they have 300 euros to spend, which Tim Gunn explains is about 375 U.S. dollars. Bravo must get a really good exchange rate. When I was there this summer it was closer to $500. I ate a lot of those ham sandwiches that cost two euros a pop. Breathing a cubic liter of air costs five euros. It’s pretty expensive over there. Anyway, Jeffrey goes for an insane plaid fabric that reminds me a lot of what Alexander McQueen is getting down with for fall '06. Why not? If you’re going to be a total copier, then it’s always good to copy someone who’s doing it up right. Tim Gunn leaves them in the workroom and says “Make it work” in French.

What will the designers do?

Uli, Heidi’s German Pet, vows to shy “avay” from crazy prints and “cuh-lahhs.”

Laura references Belle de Jour. She wants to take “prim and proper” and then “vamp it up.” She says this in preggers profile. And if anything says vamp to me, it’s someone whose every move for nine solid months is an advertisement for unprotected sex.

Michael Knight With No Talking Car is talking about curvy shapes, simplicity on bottom and details on top. Always thinking, that one.

Kayne The Flaming Lisp says he wants to make a dress for one of his favorite pageant girls. Uh-oh. Laura pops in to advise him against this because Laura knows what’s best for everyone. Kayne assures her that he knows what he’s doing. I don’t know how well that worked on her, but I don’t buy it for a second. Laura, in interview, says it’s pageant-looking. Jeffrey describes it as “prom gown.”

So far, everyone seems so freaked out by the difficulty of the challenge, and the impossibly short amount of time to finish, that they have no time for interpersonal uglitude. Corky, in interview, states definitively that his gown Will. Be. Couture. Laura, in interview, decides to let everyone know the obvious: “Vincent is a legend in his own mind,” she says. “He spends a lot of time working on his pattern on the mannequin, stepping back, admiring his work, asking us other designers over for what he calls an opinion, but really he just wants us to come admire his work.” Cut to her yawning as she looks at his pattern.

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Dave White is the author of Exile In Guyville, a book that doesn’t scrimp on the fighting parts. Pick one with him at www.imdavewhite.com. Photos courtesy BravoTV.com.

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