Project Runway Season 15 Recap: Sink or Swim

Image via Lifetime

This week, Project Runway sees the contestants design both a bathing suit and a coverup to be sold along with Heidi Klum’s new swimwear line.

And we’re back once again with Project Runway, and the catty bitching is already in full swing as the front runners, like Erin, begin to emerge. Meanwhile, Tim Gunn has come out in the most dapper swim trunks known to man. That’s because this is the swimsuit (and cover up!) challenge.

Out come six models, in Heidi Klum’s new swimwear line. Because it can’t just be a swimwear challenge, someone has to profit! This week, that’s Heidi. The winner with have their look reproduced and sold “with” Heidi Klum Swim (Not as a part of the line, just alongside.) That’s partly because the challenge is multi-faceted. Instead of being given Heidi’s pre-chosen fabrics to work within, they’ll be creating their own textile pattern as well as shopping at Mood with an $100 budget. (Heidi’s models wearing her line are for advert purposes only.) All this in only one day. Thanks tight Lifetime budgets!

While the designers storm Mood, their custom designed textiles print back at Parsons. Remember in Season 8, when it used to take overnight to make the custom designed fabrics? That was almost ten years ago. Now it only takes as long as it takes to wish Swatch a Happy Birthday.

Image via Lifetime

Now that we’re back from Mood, it’s time to skip over the catty nonsense and the cattier people whining that they have no clue how to handle swimwear, and find out what Tim thinks. Tim…and Heidi! This will be sold “alongside” her line after all.

• Alex: He took his floral design from his own tattoo. Heidi coos, but Tim calls the look “gymnastics.”
• Cornelius: His design is inkblots. Heidi looks appalled at the big “H” clasp in the center and the high waisted bottoms.
• Dexter: His bathing suit has a dragon eye in the center. Heidi calls it an alligator eye, and clearly does not approve.
• Mah Jing: The denim king is making a swimsuit out of denim. Heidi is highly perplexed by this all too predictable turn of events.
• Roberi: He had a nice feather print.
• Laurence: She has bullseyes on her print that Heidi instantly drapes to sit dead center of her own nipple.
• Erin: Her bathing suit’s not bad, but Heidi’s face falls at her fabric choices for the cover up.
• Sarah: Her “girl sunbathing” print is neat, but her design is safe and her work is so-so.
• Brik: He did a brick print. He likes bricks. Heidi laughs sadly at him.
• Nathalia: Heidi sniffs her current design is “juvenile.” Tim says the cover up looks like it costs $3.
•  Jenni: She was the one who misjudged her color on the computer screen and got a pinker lavander than she meant to. Heidi thinks it’s too old, and proves it by putting on the bottom right there in front of Jenni over her jeans.
• Rik: Heidi calls his print “ballsy.” He takes it as a compliment. I’m not sure she meant it that way.
• Tasha: Her print is very yellow, and her top is deemed “unflattering” by Tim.

That’s four weeks and the third in a row where we have checked in with every single last contestant! Sorry everyone, no one is automatically mushy middled to safety this week. Instead we get model fittings, where those who are confident seem to only grow in confidence, while those who are drowning…drown harder. Tasha tries to call down the power of Lord Jesus that her model doesn’t walk naked tomorrow. I’d pray harder to the power of Lord Brother Sewing Machines.

Day of runway, and Cornelius meltdown from the night before has not abated. At least he’s working and not vomiting negativity all over everyone else and slowing them down. Tim notes it is a shorter morning than usual, which helps exactly no one that needs help. The Name Dropping Hair Salon and Product Displaying Makeup People are no help either, sometimes bullying the flustered designers into what they think are the best choices.

Let’s all head to the runway, and have ourselves a drink.