Project Runway Season 15 Recap: Final Four Finale, Part 2

Image via Lifetime

Our final four edit their collections and present their Project Runway Season 15 finale lines for Spring 2017’s New York Fashion Week. And the winner is….

It’s time for the two hour Project Runway finale! We rejoin our contestants right where we left them, looking run over in the green room after the beating they all took from Michael Kors last week. When the going gets tough the tough…go to Mood with $500 and the words “cohesion, cohesion, cohesion” dancing in their heads from last week. (Roberi’s commercial for “Cohesion” may have won him my heart.) Meanwhile Erin does a 30 second commercial for Brother’s newest gadget, the $2000 embroidery machine.

Tim wastes no time checking in, in a whirlwind that tells Rik to make a new leather dress, Laurence to keep at making things more classy, Erin getting told not to descend into craft projects, and Roberi to, well, be less confusing. This is difficult for a man who goes about declaring “I AM CONFUSION” as if he’s Marvel’s latest Fashion Designer Superhero.

Part of the point of expanding to a two hour episode is it affords the production time to recap the entire season, from each finalist’s point of view, reminding us of their highest points and their biggest failures, as well as extra interview of what the experience has meant to them. In between, the models come and go, in a Prufrockian manner. The Name Dropping Hair Salon get an extended edition, as do the Product Displaying Makeup folks.

Image via Lifetime

With the runway nigh, Tim stops in for the first gather round of the season. Tim usually does these sorts of “I’m proud of each of yous” at this time of the season, but this year’s feels particularly poignant. Last season, Tim was not nearly as into our final four, and in fact, has stated since that he thought it was the worst season they’ve ever done. Though this season has not had nearly the drama of that one, what it has done is pulled Tim back into the process. He genuinely seems to care for these contestants, and the show, in a way that I feared had faded for him.

Day of runway hits like the contestants like the oncoming train it always is. They arrive at oh-dark-thirty for a 10am presentation, along with Mah-Jing and Cornelius and their collections, though neither of those guys are acknowledged or get the slightest bit of camera time. The rest of the cast is also backstage–the entire line up of sixteen contestants will walk the runway at the conclusion of the presentation.

Image via Lifetime

But for right now the show concentrates on the last minute foibles of our final four. Rik is lording over the others that he’s done, while Laurence and Erin are sewing on the floor, and Roberi has a model who just didn’t feel like coming to work today. The observations seem to suggest that Laurence is the one whose collection and last minute decision making is crumbling under pressure.

But of course, when the collections walk, it’s a beautiful moment, and everyone is moved by seeing the culmination of their labors and 14 weeks of competition.