Once again, The Fashion Show: Ultimate Collection served up a delicious episode: Housewives from Bravo's Orange County and New Jersey wings wore the contestants' fashions, and some of them looked elegant! Really. Pick your jaw up and join us for our weekly interview with judge Isaac Mizrahi, who thinks the best designers this week infused their work with just the right amount of trash.
The housewives were great to watch, and pretty drama-free, mysteriously. What do you think they brought out in the designers?
I think the good thing was that the designers got a taste of what it was like to work with actual clients. For the most part everything on the show is ready-to-wear, but often you're called upon to do clothes for actual special clients. More and more, in the world of expensive clothes, the more service you offer someone, the better. The closer you make it to something they want to buy, the better. I think it was an incredibly good lesson to work with special clients.
Was House of Nami's win inevitable? Was it a tough decision at all?
No, I actually thought it was really close this week. I didn't think House of Nami was definitely going to win, especially because, to me, what I noticed more this time were the women. I didn't notice the clothes as much. The women are stars, so it was kind of difficult for me -- and I'm a fashion judge, all I do is look at fashion all day long -- because I thought the House of Emerald did a really good job too. Those girls looked fine. They were all fine. Somehow I was focused on the women, their jewelery, and the way they came across the runway. That said, they're all stars. It was much more difficult for me to see that the House of Nami's clothes were better.
Did the champagne color palette lose it for Emerald?
Well, I think honestly that the House of Nami's color palette worked because it was darker colors and it's just more flattering. [Emerald's] beige-y, ecru-y colors are really hard to do on actual women. In 24 hours? That's like adding another challenge to the challenge.
Honestly, those women have beige hair and skin. Maybe they were doomed to look washed out?
I think so too, I think so too. That idea of it being gold? They didn't go gold enough. It ended up beige and ecru, and they're starting with people who have beige hair and beige nails and beige lips.
I can't take credit for this observation, but Eduardo's winning dress and Golnessa's losing dress were pretty similar. Did you notice that?
Well, I mean, yeah, but the handling of it is everything. The detail, the drama of Eduardo's dress and the turning of the rustle and the flattery of the body, it came out really great. Gretchen is a good-looking specimen, but I thought that Golnessa's look made her look terrible. The way it was put together, the whole lack of knowing -- the way that flap was chewed up and slapped on that dress? I do realize it's a 24-hour challenge, but you have to just choose another design. The dress that was on Dina, I don't know -- yes, it was definitely flawed, but for some reason he really worked all of Dina's assets. If you put Dina and Gretchen side by side, you'd have a good chance that half the room is going to like Gretchen better, but when you put her in that beige dress with the top that worked well and the bottom that was too tight with that crazy banana? And then that the scary brown that didn't match anything? Or it didn't mismatch enough? Nothing about it worked.
Plus, Golnessa had that weird beanbag-chair thing affixed to the bottom of her dress. Was that her waterloo?
Yes. That was what did her in. I can't explain it -- maybe in food terms, it's like if someone made a butter sauce and it cracked. You can't serve a cracked butter sauce. That's like slapping everybody in the face. That was Dress 101 bad. For instance, take a look at Cesar's dress: It didn't work. It was a failure, I'd say. But you at least get the impression he's going somewhere. He finished it the right way. He's great at that, finishing clothes. Somehow, it didn't slap you in the face as something really terrible. The fabric didn't end up looking like remnants, whereas it looked like she had remnants of things.
Speaking of Cesar, I'm worried for him! I'm actually worried that I'm this worried for him.
I know! I get it! I get it, I get it, I get it. I love that you get to see what we go through as judges. It's not easy as a judge to sit there and say, "Hey, Cesar, why are you so failing so much? You're so good at what you do, and you're failing. Get with it! Pick it up!" You know?
I mean, the bottom of that dress? I didn't think that kind of tackiness was in his vocabulary.
No, and I have to say, you didn't get what it actually felt like in person. In person it was way worse. It was a tattered polyester. I mean, no one loves white cotton under evening clothes like I do. I used to do always do that, like white cotton under velvet or something genius like that. Or a petticoat with cotton trim, I love it. So Scarlett O'Hara, so southern. But I'm sorry, this was a poly-cotton pillow case that was frayed. It was so terrible, terrible, terrible.
Speaking of costume drama, what the hell happened with Dominique's dress for Jacqueline? I couldn't figure out how exactly it was dated. Agnes Moorehead, maybe? Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca? Aunt Augusta in The Importance of Being Earnest?
[Laughs.] I know! I know. She's lucky she was on the winning team, I'll say. That was our least favorite dress. Uh-huh.
That hair with that neckline? So old.
I know! And Jacqueline, she's such a good-looking woman. She's busty, and you've got to work that. These kids, I keep saying to them, "You know what? It's that simple. When you look at that woman, you know what's going to make her look good. Right? So why are you over-thinking it? You know how to solve this problem. Now solve it." Every week it's the same thing! They seem to ask, "Is it that simple? I have to complicate it and show them I'm working." No, no, no. The way you'll show us you're great is if you grasp that it's about these simple little principles. Simple principles! If you have any extra time, then over-think it.
Despite David's multiple drafts, his dress for Caroline Manzo turned out well. How do you think he pulled it off?
What's funny is we weren't privy to the drama backstage, and how the dress once flirted with Jolly Green Giant [territory]. When it came out, I was like, "Hooray! That's one dress over another dress! How funny! How mysterious!" We didn't know it was a disaster that he saved by being really clever. Maybe it was one of Calvin's ideas? "This isn't working. You better fix this fast."
Calvin somehow made the most garish dress. That teal thing for Teresa?
And yet it was the most resolved too in the way it worked with Teresa's body. It was polished and resolved. Yes, it was the most vulgar and garish, and the color was simply unforgivable to me. I hate that color. That color looks like the worst part of the '80s. But in fact, it made a big impact on the runway. The way they showed was really something kind of special -- the cute models, how they approached it like a Vanity Fair portrait shoot.
Lastly, you guys seemed to love Cyndi's dress. I don't quite know. Seemed tight and satiny in some places and more fabulous in others, to me.
I'll tell you, the reason Cyndi almost won -- and she'd have won if she weren't in the losing house -- I think the reason I liked that dress the best was because there was a sexiness and a drama to it. You could fault the craftsmanship and some of the fabrication, but for the most part, that girl walked down that runway looking beautiful. She wasn't too trashy, yet just trashy enough. It looked like it really belonged on her body. You didn't wish she had some skinny model wearing it. Teresa's dress looked really trashy for instance -- you know, because she had actual anatomy.