Project Runway -- back to normal, whatever that is!

Okay, Episode 8 was fun. What a relief.

The challenge was to create an outfit for an international jetsetter (although the sublime Tim Gunn neglected to mention that the garment was to be worn while the jetsetter was on the actual jet.) The additional twist was that the designers were to be the jetsetters, and they had to make the garments for themselves and then model it.

It was immediately apparent that the designers knew no more than I about the dress and habits of international jetsetters. (Whenever I hear "jetsetter" I think of Elizabeth Taylor in The VIPs , a movie made in, uh, 1963. Hers was a great look if you're into lots of eyeliner and towers of hair.) In fact, some of the designers had never traveled out of the U.S. As a result, they produced a bizarre assortment of garments, Angela's, of course, the most bizarre. She made walking shorts out of a guaranteed-to-wrinkle maroon silk-linen blend fabric, and she stuck her "fleurchons" all over the back of them so it looked like she had drawn a target on each ass cheek. The bizarre shorts also gave her rear-end camel toe, which I've never seen before and I hope never to see again.

Only Vinsane's garments, a plain black jersey and loose black pants, looked like something a real person would wear when traveling. And travel he did, with the rest of the designers, to Parson's in Paris. There they had the privilege of being abused by real designer Catherine Maladrino (Tim said they had to shoot the elimination six times because she said such harsh things to the bottom two). Jeffrey won for producing a great jacket, a tee-shirt adorned with a rhinestone skull, and legging-like pants that had some shiny, scary metallic objects closing the fly. Angela was auf'd, the remaining designers stay in Paris for the next challenge, and all is almost right with the world.

The problem? There are six designers and two or three challenges left, but NY Fashion Week starts September 9, so once again we'll know who the final 4 designers are and the finale will be an anti-climax AGAIN. Can't the damn producers use a calendar?

On the subject of clothes people would really wear, aka real clothes: way back in episode 4 designer Bonnie Dominguez was auf'd for producing, among other things, a cowl-neck tunic. "Who uses a cowl neck anymore?" asked dragon-lady judge Nina Garcia just before she lowered the boom on poor sweet Bonnie. Well, if you shop at Bergdorf-Goodman, lots of designers do. That would be designers like Temperley, Stella McCartney, TSE cashmere, Derek Lam, and eskandar. These cowl-necked items would probably make a much better traveling outfit than anything the PR gang produced this week. Whatever -- no one ever said reality TV has to be real.