Welcome to Part 1 of the season finale, dear readers! Are you ready to judge?
The Challenge: It’s almost time for Fashion Week! With a little help from their formerly-eliminated friends, the designers had to choose three looks from their collections to present to the judges to determine who would actually compete at Fashion Week. (Of course, all four finalists and each of their sewing assistants actually showed full collections, but Lifetime still loves to push the conceit that only three people actually showed at Fashion Week, in spite of the fact that most of us saw the decoy collections months ago.)
MICHELLE LESNIAK FRANKLIN, Winner
Sewing Assistant: Amanda Valentine
Photo: Lifetime
I cringed when I heard Michelle talking about chaps, but they turned out more fabulous than I could have imagined. And the sweater is divine, with its wolf-print silhouette and those lovely flowy sleeves. This was my favorite of her three looks, though I think the pants could have been shorter and thus slightly less wrinkled at the bottoms.
Photo: Lifetime
This was a little overworked for my tastes. Michelle has a lot of talent, but Nina was right – she needs to edit down some of her looks just a little bit. The oversized collar, the pleating in the puffy halter top, the buttons in the back of the blouse, the backwards belt, the three-layered half-peplum, the asymmetrical hemline, the fabric from the blouse popping out of the bottom of the skirt – that’s a LOT of details in one look. A lot of great details, but there’s definitely a point of diminishing returns when you have that many embellishments.
Photo: Lifetime
This coat is fantastic, but it also suffers from being a bit over-designed. I agreed with Nina that while the usability of this coat was interesting, she didn’t need three bags attached to it. I think Michelle’s collection was head and shoulders above the rest, but she could definitely afford to take a step back from her looks and simplify them ever so slightly.
PATRICIA MICHAELS, Top 2
Sewing Assistant: Layana Aguilar
Photo: Lifetime
I didn’t hate this dress, but you could barely see it underneath all that terrible styling.
Photo: Lifetime
This is a Monet – from far away, the horse hair looks cool – up close, I’m going to once again agree with Nina and say this looked like hair samples tacked on to a jacket.
Photo: Lifetime
Clearly, Patricia’s collection has no cohesion whatsoever, and I didn’t see why this dress or that stupid headpiece were even worth a conversation. Yes, she can create textiles; no, she cannot design. I thought we solved that mystery sometime around the second challenge of the season, but alas, this is what suffices to get you into the finale in these late and terrible days of Project Runway.
STANLEY HUDSON, Bottom 2
Sewing Assistant: Richard Hallmarq
Photo: Lifetime
Beautifully made, but the judges had a point that it was on the stuffy/matronly side. It’s the matchy-matchiness of it all – all the pieces are actually quite beautiful and wearable, but together, they don’t create an image of the cool, modern woman who would wear those pieces separately.
Photo: Lifetime
I can’t decide if I actually don’t like the proportions of this dress, or if it’s off in an interesting way. But although the dress is pretty and well-made, it’s pretty uninspired when you’re trying to prove you’re worthy of New York Fashion Week.
Photo: Lifetime
I hate the jacket, but I thought the pieces underneath were beautiful. But I AGAIN agreed with Nina – if he had shown those pieces separately instead of matching them together, they would have had ten times the impact. And it is long past time to retire exposed zippers on Project Runway forever.
DANIEL ESQUIVEL, Eliminated
Sewing Assistant: Samantha Black
Photo: Lifetime
Daniel’s mini-collection was incredibly weak. The top is overworked and, while interesting, not actually nice to look at, and the pants are a mess.
Photo: Lifetime
How can you do a throwaway look when you’re only showing THREE LOOKS to the judges?!
Photo: Lifetime
Boring, and like Zac Posen said, we’ve seen this before. I’m no Patricia fan, and I have no desire to see her full collection, but at least she put some creativity and originality into it. That’s more than I can say for Daniel.
Judges’ Top 2: Michelle and Patricia
Diva’s Top 2: Michelle and Stanley
Judges’ Bottom 2: Stanley and Daniel
Diva’s Bottom 2: Patricia and Daniel
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© Democracy Diva, 2013.
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The Democracy Diva 
I was SO surprise of what turned out to be Stanley’s collection. I had not understood really his point of view more than his OCD-kind-of character. I am just hoping that Michelle won’t be turned down by this judges like Mondo did. She is far and beyond the other designers, & has always had good designs on the runway. I feel for Daniel. It was him beign stuborn that got him out since he had nice pieces. BTW; Samantha’s collection was the only one giving Michelle a good competition, good to see a great decoy collection this year as Elena did last year.
Diva will you be planning to recap the Decoy collections again this year? I absolutely loved it when you did it last year!
Yes, the decoy collections post is already in the works! Thanks, Sammy! ❤
Oh good. I am looking forward to that too.
Thank you for all of your enjoyable reviews of PR. I read them all. Congrats on completing law school! Here’s to you to get an inspired, high paying job!
I agree that Michelle has the most chops, but I still love Patricia’s innovation in textiles and she tries to encorporate her textiles into new shapes. It doesn’t always work, but it never bores me. Daniel and Stanley, although lovely men, played it safe and created pieces I’ve seen for years, some of which I have in my closet from the ’80’s. I would wear Patrica’s ethereal hopes and dreams over Michelle’s depressing palat of layered clothing.
I’m not quite finished with school yet (less than a month til graduation!) but thank you so much for your kind words! And I definitely got the 80s vibe from Daniel’s collection, though for me, Michelle’s collection is more wearable than Patricia’s. Thanks for commenting!