Epic Fail / Project Runway

Michael Kors: "She looks like she is pooping fabric"

One day you are in, and the next day you are out. For that to happen, every designer is bound to have some Epic Fails. Most of them resulting in Impossibly Tacky Clothes.

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Season 1

• Episode 1 brings us Wendy Pepper's "candy bikini".

• Episode 2 “Vision” had the designers produce a dress with the concept of “envy” out of cotton fabric. The challenge resulted in the Bottom 3 producing very bizarre looks.
  • Wendy’s dress was a version of the Goddess Hera, and “envy biting in the ass”, which quite literally had a rope attached to the model’s back, which made her look like she was pooping.
  • Starr produced the dress which fans of the show still refer to as “the Tumor dress”, because it was a green dress with a big red fabric tumor on her shoulder.
  • However, as horrible and bizarre Starr’s dress was, which earned the boot was Mario’s dress, which was basically a white tube dress with insults scribbled, inspired on the models badmouthing each other behind their backs. On top of it, Mario instructed the model to flip off at the end of the runway. The judges still thought the concept and the execution were lazy, because that dress was easily made in one hour out of the entire day they had to execute.

• Episode 5 "Model" Clients gives us two particular examples:
  • Austin's entry was a short turquoise dress with a big train of turquoise and pink tulle, on top of the "Space buns" styling. It was so ugly that Heidi made a disgusted face as soon as she appeared on the runway. To be fair to Austin, it was exactly what Julia asked him to do, and as a twist ending in his career, Austin nowadays has a successful trajectory as a wedding gown designer. And the only reason he dodged elimination was because...
  • Nora's dress for Melissa was neither original or well constructed. Melissa, being 16, told her that she always dreamed of having a princess-style ball gown with red roses because her middle name is "Rose". Instead of adding suggestions of her own with those two requests, Nora ended up doing a very generic Disney princess ball gown with roses that were a wine-dull shade, which the judges compared to a bride who just strolled across the cemetery. Both the lack of voice and the generic styling were enough to boot her.

• Episode 6 “Making a Splash” had the designers make swimsuits and grab the attention of New York Post’s reporter Richard Johnson. The challenge showcased Kevin’s outfit, which was a disaster in two fronts: The first was the concept, which was supposed to be like a scuba suit, but ended up looking like a slutty secretary because it had a tight skirt over it. And the second biggest reason was because Kevin let Morgan walk away to a party with the swimsuit still on, which resulted in Morgan accidentally ripping it, not even feeling sorry about it. The only reason why Kevin avoided elimination was because Alexandra’s bikini was very generic and a direct copy of Michael Kors and Missoni.

Season 2

• Episode 2 "Clothes Off Your Back" had the designers use the clothes they were wearing at their welcome party to create new looks for their models. This produced some looks worthy of this list:
  • Zulema only took her golden seater, cut around it, and sent her model with only that, and everyone noticed that her buttcheeks were visible under that miniskirt.
  • Andrae's entry caused both one of the Bottom 3 outfits and the first awkward moment of the season. The dress consisted of a badly made denim qipao, and then he started a long rant crying on the runway, which much later the reunion show revealed that the whole thing was 9 minutes 50 seconds long. While some of the people were amused by this (like Heidi and Santino), the other people in the room were annoyed and bored.
  • Kirsten ultimately got auf'd because of a mismatch of a crop top that looked like a napkin and a generic denim skirt.
  • (Dis)honorable mention to Guadalupe's dress, which should have been a Bottom 4 because of the bizarre hairstyling for the model, and the asymmetrical shapes.

• In Episode 4 "Team Lingerie" the designers were formed in teams of three and had to launch a minicollection of sexy lingerie. From all the collections, Santino's was supposed to be inspired by Heidi's German roots, and took elements like ribbons, lederhosen and the models had makeup inspired by deers. Unfortunately, the judges didn't find the collection pretty, and Nina even had a heated discussion with Santino, describing the whole as "aesthetically not pleasing". The only reason Santino skated elimination was because Daniel Franco's pieces looked more safe and generic in comparison to everything else.

• Episode 5 “Social Scene” had Guadalupe’s dress, which was a basic black dress with a lot of random fabric ribbons attached to it, which at one point was described as “fabric vomit”. The dress was so bad that the judges eliminated Guadalupe instead of Marla, who plagiarized a dress Nicky Hilton already had.
  • Guadalupe herself knew her dress was horrible, but still went with it. Tim’s feedback summed it up perfectly.
    Guadalupe : (to Tim) I thought it looked like crap.
    Tim: I'm not going to debate that.
    Guadalupe: Yeah, it looked like crap.
    (They stare at the design.)
    Tim: ...I'll leave you alone.

• Episode 8 "Inspiration" had quite notable fails.
  • Nick was clearly distraught from losing Tarah as his model and had a hard time adjusting to Rachael. The judges noticed the lack of passion and that the design was a recycled version of his Nicky Hilton dress.
  • Kara's dress had a weak concept and a lot of explanation about the dangers of the city, the high skyscrapers and construction everywhere... only to translate into a simple black dress with caution tape around.
  • Zulema was the one who ultimately got auf'd, and the fall was a whole thing to appreciate as Laser-Guided Karma. According to Zulema, she could do better with another model, so she took Tarah from Nick. Then she chooses as her inspiration for a dress from the entire city... an African woman with a dress. The dress was badly fit (and Tarah even states in the confessional cam that Zulema had to sew the dress on her and was poking her with needles the entire time, so apparently it wasn't Rachael's fault after all). The judges, unsurprisingly, criticized her uninspiring reference, the ill-fitting, and the dull styling.

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

• In Episode 9, the designers had to create an Avant-Garde look based on the previously eliminated designers' Zodiac sign. This resulted in the three Bottom 3 entries, two ended up being eliminated:
  • The trope picture above. Blaine's outfit was inspired by Libra, and somehow he thought it would be a great idea to play with the assymetry. As a result, he ended up presenting a skin-toned bodysuit with leather straps and a lot of chiffon that went from her right arm, across her legs and ended in her right ankle, which made her look like she was "pooping fabric", in Michael's words.
  • The other elimination was Terry, who refused to listen to Keith's suggestions and ended up making a generic dress with some fur trims on the bodice.
  • Kenley dodged elimination somehow after producing a dress with over-the-top shoulders (that weren't properly stuffed) and mismatched fabrics that didn't go according to "Gemini" as inspiration. On top of all that, Kenley was the only one who dared to argue with the judges.