Irina Shabayeva

‘Project Runway,The winner, Irina Shabayeva:

Tonight’s “Project Runway” did have a certain level of suspense, given how Tim’s yelling was played up. But mostly it was a showdown between three quite talented designers — and Irina Shabayeva, whose collection was both beautiful and technically, walked away the winner.

Those last couple of days before the show were a long haul, with everyone scrambling and Carol Hannah so sick. Irina’s struggling with Gordana as an assistant, partly because she has so much work to do and partly because Gordana doesn’t seem to be the quickest draw in the east. At times Althea appears to be coming apart at the seams.

But for all the talk about things being so frantic, Carol Hannah, Althea, and Irina manage to pull off some of the best and most polished 13th looks of any season’s showing. Carol Hannah’s one-shouldered teal jersey goddess dress is really beautifully draped and looks very finished. Althea’s put together an outfit of separates — a top, a pair of silk khaki pants that Michael and Nina later go bananas over, and a black jacket with exaggerated shoulders that looks nutty on the mannequin but very nice on the runway. Irina’s bitten off a lot with a beautifully constructed, architectural, layered skirt and a basic black tank — and she goes even further balls-out by putting the 13th look on her muse model. Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid, girl.

All the promos featured Tim saying he was about to lose it and scolding the designers for being incredibly late in getting their models and looks together. Which is ridiculous, because Tim’s far too big a gentleman to ever froth at the mouth, and his upset was so calm that I could fight with him every day of my life and still have a very pleasant and unfettered existence. How much do we heart Tim? Thiiiiiiis much.

Althea’s up first, and explains that she was inspired by sci-fi movies of the ’50s and ’60s, and interpreted them as a vision of what the woman of today would wear tomorrow. She has some beautiful pieces — the black dress, suits with fitted pants that still looked comfortable, and a very cute silver top with a gray skirt that looked so insanely narrow at the bottom I couldn’t believe the model didn’t fall down. Althea’s knits, though, looked kind of a mess — not particularly futuristic and stretched out several inches over the models’ hands. The whole collection contained just one shot of color — a green dress under a black jacket that was really cute — but was otherwise incredibly muted.

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