Project Runway: Garden Party or Leafy Lunacy?

Do we have a crop of designers this year who are color-phobic? Do we?? All season we've been seeing a sea of neutrals and this week they were turned loose in garden centers and told to design "garden party" dresses with plant materials, where presumably we should have seen a veritable rainbow of dresses when they were done. But no. Instead we end up with a runway that looks like they were trying for dressy camoflauge. Um, ok. I could totally sympathise with the judges ragging on them about that. I watched last night with my friends Nan and Bev. Bev picked the winnah! Her favorite was Daniel, mostly for the same reason the judges liked his - that he at least made an effort to incoporate color. Nan liked the intricacy of Kara's design. Actually, I did too, although it wasn't quite my favorite. Going into this episode I was sure Kara would be gone this week, but she really pulled it out this week. I have to say I was impressed. She stayed calm, no meltdowns, even when Tim was pushing her about explaining her design when she just wanted to have it evolve "organically" (har! good pun, Kara). I really thought she might win one this week. My personal favorite this week, though, was Chloe's dress. I thought it looked the most like a "real" dress....the most wearable. And I thought that was quit an accomplishment considering the insanity of glueing 40-gazillion tiny leaves to muslin as her main design element. It was simple and elegant and pretty. I thought Santino's dress looked like it belonged to a wood nymph on acid. But hey, that's very Santino. I wondered if the judges would use the dress as an excuse to get rid of Santino this week, as a sort of cumulative thing...you know - "you've disappointed us for several weeks and this is the final straw". But they decided to keep him around yet again. He is entertaining. He is. And he has talent, but I increasingly wonder if that talent is best channeled as a fashion designer. I'm starting to think he would make a good sculptor. He seems to me to be trying to make art, not clothes. I also wondered if Nick would go this week, although I'm glad he didn't. I loved the middle of his dress where he made the large leaves act as shaping. But the top and bottom were a disaster. As soon as we saw that baby's breath poof of stuff hanging out of the leaves, my girls and I started making vulgar "flash your bush" jokes and I figured Nick was in trouble. But here he still is. Nick, Nick...sweetie...I still believe in you. I do. But you must, MUST get over losing Tarah as your muse and do something fabulous again. Please, Nick, try harder!! You can do it! Poor Andrae. Poor, poor Andrae. I really liked him and thought he was doing some good work the past couple of weeks. And while I agreed with the judges about the poor fit of his garment and yes, he was another in a nearly-unending sea of green, I didn't hate his dress as much as they did. I thought his idea of using such odd materials to create a sort of classic '50's sort of style was rather clever. But in the end it wasn't enough. I'll miss you, Andrae. So in the end, my choices would have been to name Chloe the winner and send Santino home, but instead we have Daniel as winner and Andrae went home. Oh well. Next week should be, well, interesting to say the least. Hhhhmmm...