Project Runway Season 15 Recap: Make Up Teams

Image via Lifetime

Project Runway and MaryKay get together to bring the pain of the catty team challenge, just as things were getting too pleasant.

We return to our contestants being catty about each other, already in progress at the hotel. Today they’re bonding over sharing a hotel suite and cattily pooping on those not in their room. Why? Because it’s clearly time for a Team Challenge!

Who is to blame for bringing back the terror of the Team Challenge and the inter-personal lack of  professionalism? Only those Product Displaying Make Up sponsors, MaryKay. But it’s not just an opportunity to promote MLM Make Up gurus, but also the new version of Shark Tank that Lifetime is doing, Project Runway: Fashion Start Up. That begins airing in a couple of weeks, on Thursdays at 10:30pm, right after ProjRun  Proper, natch. (For the record, I assumed it would run late spring, after Project Runway: All Stars and complete Lifetime’s vision of year round PR audiences, but apparently they’re a little too nervous about the show’s chances to risk that. Personally, I go to bed at 10:30pm on Thursdays right after ProjRun ends, because I have a life and a job, so we won’t be paying it the slightest bit of mind, other than this episode.)

But enough of our own cattiness about this future Lifetime one and done that will eventually join the heap next to Project Accessory and Under the Gunn! Let’s find out who is on which team! Rik starts us off as last week’s winner, and picks his first team member before we turn to the dreaded button bag to start off the other team.

• “Team Unity” Rik: Alex, Roberi, Cornelius, Mah-Jing, Nathalia
• “Team Button Bag” Brik: Tasha, Laurence, Erin, Dexter, Jenni

Image via Lifetime

Much is made by the first four of Team Rik being “roommates” with Mah-Jing and Nathalie being the outsiders, while the other team is just kind of disastrous. The contestants will have to pitch the 4 piece collection they are designing to the “investors” in order to get a budget to shop at Mood at all. They turn out to be Nina Garcia, Zac Posen and Heidi (not the investors from Fashion Start Up), each of whom have $1000 to allot between the teams. Unfortunately, if this is supposed to sell anyone on Fashion Start Up, it fails, because frankly I find the entire segment duller than dishwater and want to get on to Mood. After all, I did not tune into to watch their upcoming terrible spin off, did I?

In the end Team Unity and their full of themselves attitude failed at the pitch and only earned $200 each from Nina and Zac and $400 from Heidi. The rest of the money goes to Team Button Bag, giving them $2200. Shopping, of course, is then a disaster as Nathalia attempts to step up and fix Team Unity, while Mah-Jing gets left in the dust. (And Alex continually pronounced his name wrong) Team Button Bag rename themselves the House of Bouton, since they’re feeling better about themselves, and get on with their weirdness.

Image via Lifetime

Let’s skip the extended session where the Make Up People Display their wares a second time, and see what Tim thinks of the two team’s progress.

• Team Unity: Alex does all the talking (again), and Tim says “Well, it looks modern” which is not exactly delivered as a compliment. He thinks it’s too sober. Alex and Co don’t hear him, only Mah-Jing recognizes they got a bad critique, which they all flip out about when he tries to say that.
• House of Bouton: This is another vague presentation disaster with people talking over each other, but each piece is really kind of awesome. (Ok, maybe not Brik’s.) Tim also points out Erin’s piece doesn’t work with the rest of the collection. The difference here is the team hears that Tim is worried and decides to rethink.

The model fitting goes ok for some of Team Unity, but when Alex’s dress doesn’t fit, everyone tells him not to worry, they love him anyway! House of Bouton’s fitting are far less organized (this is a hallmark with them) and features them trying to find a piece for Brik to have his name on, since his piece got cut faster than paper dolls in a box of Xacto knives.

Day of runway, Team Unity is pleased with themselves and their boring, snooze of a collection because they finished, while the House of Bouton are dissolving into a bunch of buttons rattling around in a bag, desperate to have clothes on their models at all costs before Tim calls time.

Let’s go down to the runway, and see how bad this goes.