Project Runway Season Eleven, Episode Three: It Stinks So Good!

On this episode of Fashion House the designers have to create looks for an international fashion icon:

Grace Jones: "I'm thrilled to be the new face of Lady Eloise Cosmetics and I need two looks to promote my new fragrance called Steel Vagina."

It stinks so good!

Heidi: "Seriously? That joke is so old."

Zac Posen: "Yes, it's perfect for Heidi."

Heidi: "Excuse me?"

Kristin Davis: "Heidi's mad! Heidi's mad!"

Heidi: "Calm down, Kristin! I won't hurt anyone. I'm in too good a mood today. I've brought in a box filled with all the inspirations for my new fragrance called Stunned Silence. It has top notes of vanilla and roses, middle notes of chamomile and patchouli, and base notes of barbecue sauce and arsenic. OK, fine, I just made that up that last part. I've never actually smelled the base notes because I have my assistants bath me every 26 minutes and apply new scent. Also, I lost my olfactory sense in a Victoria's Secret accident. Don't ask me about it. It's a secret. Anyway, I wanted to make a statement about how everyone has a fragrance now, so I designed a box using the color combination pink, black, and gold so that it would look like every other fragrance box you will see."

Wow, it's amazing how well that box will blend into the background! It's completely unmemorable!

Heidi: "Thank you! I'm really excited about promoting it! So obviously I want to wear a dress that looks like it was made in one day."

You've come to the right place! I'm sure these designers can come up with something worthy of your fragrance.

OK, so this challenges is a bit better than the last one. But it still seems specifically geared to making sure the designers create boring looks. Heidi has two basic silhouettes that she will wear and they've been given a very limited color palette, so there just isn't much they can do. But that's life. I accept that.

Heidi: "Good."

Yeah, it is good. I'm not going to hope for excitement or innovation or even anything remotely interesting. I'm just going to hope for a pretty version of a dress we've seen a million times before. You know what? I feel like I've made a breakthrough. This is an important step in my recovery.

Heidi: "Well, I'm happy you aren't expecting much. You're still going to be disappointed."

Of course I am. Alright, let's get to the runway. The winning team was Keeping It Real:

Amanda and Joe worked together on this challenge. Why? That's a good question. I'm sure Amanda would love to know why. But it is a mystery locked in the pure, innocent, childlike mind of Joe, who is the only person on earth who didn't realize it was a terrible idea.

Daniel made a boring but decent gown that Heidi could have worn for the ad campaign if there hadn't been a better option. It's completely wrong for a press event, so that's where she's going to wear it.

Patricia made another super cool fabric out of little squares of leather. I think she sewed them to paper and then peeled the paper off the back. The dress was a complete disaster. But if it had actually looked finished, it could have been really cute, which is why I suppose it did belong in the top three.

Layana and Kate worked together on the winning dress for the ad campaign. I thought it was feminine and sexy and absolutely perfect for this challenge:

Love the mix of hard and soft!

Kate chose the color scheme and she deserved to win. Congratulations, Kate!

The losing team, once again, was the Dream Team:

And Michelle, once again, made the best thing on the losing team. It was a little black dress that Heidi could have worn to a press event if Michelle had been eligible to win. Poor Michelle. Well, eventually she'll be the only one left on her team and then maybe she'll have a chance.

Samantha made a really weird "illusion" dress. We've seen this dress attempted before on the show and it never works. Apparently the completely visible pink mesh was supposed to be invisible so that the rest of the dress would look as though it were floating on the model's body. Unless you are JLo and you can get fabric that perfectly matches your skin, please do not attempt this look. And even then, please do not attempt this look.

The bottom three were Matthew, Benjamin, and Cindy:

Matthew ... I don't even want to talk about it. He's lucky he wasn't sent home.

Benjamin designed the perfect dress for Heidi's ad campaign. Unfortunately, he didn't actually make that dress. Forensic scientists are still trying to piece together what went wrong. 

Benjamin: "It's a disaster. I can't say anything else."

Zac Posen: "Let me give you some advice: you need to slow down on the excuses. We're tired of hearing all the minutia of excuses."

Benjamin: "Thank you. I acknowledge your completely psychotic and patronizing advice."

Cindy made a little dress that was not so bad. For some reason, though, she chose the tackiest prom dress fabric she could find. I appreciate that it is not a fabric she would normally use, but the fact that she thought this was actually "classier" than what she would normally use is really frightening. I agree with Zac that this is a fabric that can only be used ironically and that is not what she was doing. It was not the worst dress of the night, but she's been on the bottom three weeks in a row and the judges had had enough. Cindy is out.

Sorry, Cindy! You made a very dignified exit that was a million times classier than your fabric choices. If it's any comfort, even Grace Jones knows how it feels to be rejected:

How can you turn this down?