Awesome / Project Runway

• Jay's call-out of Wendy in Season 1 was amazing.
  • On the same chaper, no matter what opinion you may have about Wendy Pepper, but "The Shoe-Gate" does give Wendy a Jerkass Has a Point moment for once. Despite Kara Saun being clearly on the wrong^note She got custom designed shoes from a friend for free, got extra help from that same friend in the workroom, and when Tim told her that she couldn't have free favors as stipulated in the contracts, she told her friend to put an arbitrary $5 price on the receipts, which is a huge gap comparing to Jay and Wendy, who had to scrap their budgets for cheap shoes., Wendy finally calls her out for blatantly cheating after placing herself on the moral highground for weeks to attack Wendy for her behaviour on the show.
• Season 5, the look of "Oh, Crap!" on Kenley's face when she realizes Tim Gunn is going to be one of the judges for the finale, after she's disrespected him that whole season. Yeah...it was so awesome!
• Season 6, where not 1, nor 2, but 3 designers (Irina, Althea and Carol Hannah) manages to advance to Fashion Week without having a bottom look.
• The Season 7 episode "Takin' It to the Streets." Emilio and Seth Aaron create a stunning, cohesive set of two looks inspired by New York's Harlem neighborhood. The judges are so impressed by the quality of their work and their ability to work together as a team that the two earn the honor of being the first designers in Project Runway history to both win a challenge.
• Pretty much everything Tim Gunn does is a CMOA, but his lecture about Gretchen in Season 8 pretty much tops them all.
  Tim Gunn: I have a few words for Team Luxe. I fundamentally do not understand your behavior and demeanor and affect on the runway. I don't get it. I don’t know why you allow Gretchen to manipulate, control and bully you. I don’t understand it.
  • To put it in perspective, Gretchen had just stabbed her entire team in the back during judging^note  (claiming that the items in the collection were "[her] babies" and heaping praises on her teammates, before completely reversing her opinion and proclaiming the entire collection to be "crappy") and then cowed them into throwing Michael Costello (who had immunity) under the bus. It took Tim (usually the most staid and professional of the "experts") losing his temper for someone to finally say what every viewer was undoubtedly thinking.
  • In that same episode, as the feuding Team Luxe designers all try to pin their failures on Michael Costello and his alleged difficulties with construction, they point out the stitching in one of his pieces as an example, but guest judge Georgina Chapman looks at it and simply says, "Perfect".
• Clever editing in Episode 11 of the same season, when Ivy came back and began harassing Michael, accusing him of cheating, and warning him about Karma. Cut to a shot of her nearly getting hit in the eye by a flying needle.
  • Michael C. smiling from ear to ear in the background while it happens counts as this too.
  • Also from the same episode as above — Tim Gunn confronting the allegations Ivy made about Michael C.'s so-called "cheating" and declaring the whole thing a "non-issue". Amen, Tim.
• In Season 9 Anya lost her money envelope in Mood, and as result was only able to buy $11 worth of fabric with leftover money that Anthony Ryan gave her, and had to make the rest out of muslin (they did go back to get $50 worth of fabric for another garment, which she did not lose, but she still only had about a third of what everyone else did). The "Awesome" comes in when despite all this, she won the challenge!
• On an All-Stars challenge, the designers had to talk random people on the street into giving up their clothes to be used as fabrics in the design. Anthony Williams talked a man into giving up his shorts, leaving a very attractive brief-clad gentleman in the middle of the park. Cue the following:

  Austin Scarlett: I don't know about Anthony and him, but I got the guy's phone number.

• Season 10's Dmitry Sholokhov finally winning episode 9 after being snubbed repeatedly. His reaction when the other designers ask? "About fucking time!"
• In Season 11, Richard has a great Make It Work moment when, after having put off putting a lining on his dress, he improvises and uses the t-shirt he bought at Mood earlier in the episode as an improvised lining. The awesome is that he actually wins the challenge.
• In Season 13, Sandhya is given the opportunity to assign garments with which the other designers are supposed to make a dress out of; she picks based on what she believes the other designers would choose for themselves. This nonetheless rubs Hernan, who she had disagreements with, the wrong way, and, spends the entire episode bitching about the choice of garment and Sandhya. During the runway he says out loud "Fucking polyester—thank you, Sandhya, again, bitch." She immediately gives him the finger and says, "Don't ever speak like that to me again."
  • Episode 8, the Runway is simulated in rain, and the designers have to design a dress around the theme. In a moment of Genius, Sean Kelly designs a dress with powdered dye pouches inside, that when the rain hits them, its leaks onto the white dress he made. It wins him the challenge.
    • It really has to be seen to be appreciated.
• The majority of the unconventional challenges fall into this. Taking something that you don't normally associate with fashion (or as textiles period) and turning it into something fashionable truly falls into awesome. Designers have worked with fresh produce, plants, materials from their apartment (including things like blinds, lampshades and chandeliers), lawn chairs, mop heads, recycled materials, candy, car parts, newspapers, potato sacks, party supplies, DIY supplies, duct tape, even stationery and school supplies! Granted, a number of these things are usually glued onto muslin for practical/safety reasons, but you do have to admit that there is still an art to it.
• Canada Season 2 winner Sunny Fong, where he manages to scores high or winning in all of the challenges.
  • Australia Season 2 winner Anthony Cappon also did the same thing (barring one week where he was only safe).
• Season 16 has one for the show format: after 15 seasons of watching designers freak out anytime they have to design for a model bigger than size 00, they're throwing out the single token plus-sized challenge. The new models range from size 0-22, with variety in body type and height, and the designers are randomly assigned a new girl each challenge. Designers who blame their poor performance on the model's size get No Sympathy.