by Gina Scarpa

 

Tonight, on Project Runway, the remaining eight designers meet with Tim Gunn and Collier Strong, consulting makeup artist for L'Oreal Paris, to find out their next challenge. They'll have to create a look inspired by one of four different and distinct New York City neighborhoods: Chinatown, East Village, Upper East Side, and Harlem. Just as everyone gets excited, Tim delivers the bad news that they'll be working in teams of two to create two looks, a look for day and a look for night.

 

Tim names Anthony, Amy, Emilio, and Jay the team leaders and they pick their partners in that order. The teams are: Anthony and Maya (Chinatown), Amy and Jonathan (Upper East Side), Emilio and Seth Aaron (Harlem), and Jay and Mila (East Village). Nobody wanted Mila, as both Jay and Emilio expressed their dislike for her and go figure - Jay gets stuck with her! It looks, right off the bat, like Amy and Jonathan will be the most cohesive team. I'm expecting good things from them come runway time.

 

The teams visit each neighborhood for inspiration. Emilio and Seth Aaron are drawn to the denim and the mosaics on the buildings of Harlem. Anthony and Maya notice the structure of the clothing in Chinatown. Amy and Jonathan try to capture both the architecture and the high end feel of the Upper East Side. Despite their personality differences, Jay and Mila are motivated by the desire to win and their love for the neighborhood that they're in. However, Jay hasn't really formulated a plan or vision yet and with a strong personality like Mila's, it could be very easy for her to just take over and run with it.

 

When Tim makes the rounds, he reminds Emilio and Seth Aaron to keep that urban edge to their designs. He's concerned with Anthony and Maya's color choice for the jacket and I couldn't agree more. It's a very boring, mute color and hopefully, they take his advice. Jay and Mila don't even have anything to show Tim yet and need to get their butts in gear stat! Amy and Jonathan appear to be guilty of "over designing", in that they're trying to do way too much in too short a period of time.

 

With 30 minutes to go until the runway show, Mila says that she'll place the blame on Jay if they land in the bottom and Jay says he's worried about being thrown under the bus, which leads me to believe that this episode has been building up to one of them going home. Please don't be Jay, please don't be Jay, please don't be Jay...

 

Tonight's guest judges are Women's Creative Director for Calvin Klein Collection Francisco Costa (sitting in for Michael Kors) and actress/model Molly Sims. Following the show, Mila and Jay and Amy and Jonathan find out that they have the lowest scores and the judges will deal with them later. Anthony and Maya and Seth Aaron and Emilio impress the judges and I'm quite happy to see Anthony there, since his nighttime outfit was my favorite of the night.

 

Word of advice: listen to Tim Gunn. He tried to warn Jonathan that was over designing and that's exactly what the panel had to say to him, despite the fact that he showed off a lot of his design skills with the nighttime look. Jay's daytime look comes under fire but Mila's nighttime look is unanimously loved by everyone, which spells trouble for one of my favorites this season.

 

Emilio and Seth Aaron are the winners of this challenge, which must please Emilio, since he's a New York native who once lived in Harlem. He HAD to win in order to represent! The double win a first in the history of Project Runway and the two could not be happier about it. Anthony and Maya are in, along with Mila and Jonathan are also in. That leaves Amy and Jay in the bottom this week and that bad feeling I had for the entire hour was apparently paranoia. Shockingly, Amy is leaving.

 

I wish the world could have seen what she did during Fashion Week at the Project Runway finale show (she presented as one of the decoys). She was absolutely amazing... this is certainly not the end for her.

 

Project Runway airs Thursdays at 10/9c on Lifetime.

 

(Image courtesy of Lifetime)

 

Follow Gina at twitter.com/ginascarpa

 

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