Project Runway All Stars recap: Food inspires design collaboration

Pairing food and wine can be an inspirational experience. In this week’s Project Runway All Stars, food inspires delicious design collaboration.

Sometimes the most accomplished designer can falter in a collaborative environment. While some partnerships flourish, otherwise lose perspective. In this week’s Project Runway All Stars recap, the designers must collaborative with each other. Will the designers be a perfectly paired or a disastrous mismatch?

This week’s Project Runway All Stars doesn’t start in Mood, the workroom or the runway. The designers sit down to a dinner at New York City’s Daniel. The highly acclaimed, award winning French restaurant is a coveted reservation. My inner foodie was extremely jealous.

While a restaurant seems like an unlikely setting, the designers should be able to find design inspiration almost anywhere. This week, the designers used Daniel’s food and wine pairings as their design inspiration. Competing in pairs, a few designer pairs were perfection and some designers were utterly tasteless.

A note before going into the fashion: wine and food pairings are very subjective. Finding a way for food and wine to balance both complementary and offsetting flavors takes skill. Of course, certain flavors, just like certain colors or textures in fashion, work well together. The key is to find a way for both parts of the pair to shine yet not overshadow each other.

The same sentiment can be said about this week’s challenge. Working in pairs is never completely easy in a Project Runway challenge. One designer will eventually have to compromise some part of their aesthetic. Still, that the compromises can’t over shadow the individual. A few designer pairings achieved that perfection.

One phrase from this week’s episode stood out: Push your partner to greatness instead of letting them fall. While a very poignant comment, the truth behind the message was real. Both designers in the bottom pair would be leaving.

Putting aside the middle design pairs, which were neither horrible nor impressive, the perfect pairings were quite a dichotomy. Top designs and bottom designs were quite apparent on the runway. From finishing issues to taste levels, the bottom designs should have been sent back to the workroom for a re-fire.

Before tackling the bad, the top designs were everything that the judges could want from a perfect pairing. Ken and Fabio created a visually stunning pairing. While the choices weren’t obvious, the two looks worked well together and on their own. That combination is the key to a perfect pairing.

Inspired by a dish of guinea fowl (it’s a fancy poultry dish) and a pinot noir, Ken and Fabio created two looks that were lush. The richness of the fabrics mimicked the robust nature of the dish. With structured details in each look, those components referenced the wine. Even the added volume to each look could be found in the layers of flavors in the food.

Project Runway All Stars recap: Food inspires design collaboration, photo from Lifetime

Needless to say, Ken and Fabio were the obvious winners for this week’s challenge. While Anthony and Kimberly did well, the second place pair couldn’t compare to the winners. The winning looks definitely made a runway impact as well as a lasting impression.

The bottom two pairs were equally bad, but did the judges make a mistake in sending the wrong two designers home? While an argument could be made for either team to leave, the decision seemed based more on potential future episode consideration than what actually walked the runway.

Project Runway All Stars recap: Food inspires design collaboration, photo from Lifetime

Ari and Melissa were one of the two bottom pairs. Their dish was a citrus cured Hamachi with a Chablis. While this starter dish was bright, both in color and flavor, the designers were less impressive. First, Melissa’s fabric choice looked like something out of The Golden Girls. Of course, pink can be a fabulous color choice. This pink was more grandma pink than millennial pink.

Finding the Hamachi reference in Melissa’s design was hard. Her dress overall seemed flat or flavorless. Those two words would never describe a raw fish dish from Daniel.

Even more concerning, Ari’s design was borderline tacky. The vertical sheer portion, on both the back and front of the dress, was too revealing. No one wants to see a belly button in a formal gown. Her reference to a delicate Chablis was also muddled. The wine is light and floral. If the dress had more movement or limited embellishment, it would have been more successful.

The second bottom pairing was even more disturbing. Merline and Candace had to create designs based on an asparagus dish with a Gruner Veltliner wine (white wine often from Austria). Pairing wine with asparagus is hard. Pairing these two designers together was even harder.

Project Runway All Stars recap: Food inspires design collaboration, photo from Lifetime

First, Merline has construction issues. Regardless of her visual, innovation and creativity, she doesn’t sew well. The first couple of challenges proved that fact. Her poor construction was apparent again.

Merline’s dress was a disaster. The model wasn’t covered well (no one wants to see that much of a model). Also, the design looked unfinished. Sure, the concept was interesting, but no one could wear that dress. Not even a 6-foot tall, super skinny model.

Candace’s look was both good and bad. Her top was stunning. The layers of fabric were draped dramatically. But her pants had major hem issues. Who wants two different length pant legs?

The bigger problem with Merline and Candace was the pairing. No one saw the asparagus and wine reference. Looking at the colors, everyone thought mushrooms. Sure, color choice isn’t everything, but it can’t be overlooked.

When the judges decided which pair would be sent home, the decision was shocking. Truthfully, it was the wrong decision. Ari and Melissa were sent home.

The reasoning for sending Ari and Melissa home was that the pair didn’t look like a pair. Sure the frumpy pink and sheer mesh wasn’t great, but it wasn’t falling part. The designs weren’t totally innovative, but the model’s crotch wasn’t showing.

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Personally, the judges made the wrong decision. The biggest fashion disaster was the Merline/Candace pairing. It must have been Candace’s top that saved those two designers. Or, maybe Project Runway All Stars wants Merline on another episode. After all, it is reality television.

What did you think of this week’s Project Runway All Stars? Did the judges get it right or wrong?