ULI, ULI, ULI!!!!!

Kittens, it's been so long since we've had some Uliness in our lives. Don't you all miss her? We snagged a picture of her off the Getty Images site where she attended the party in New York for the launch of Lorraine Schwartz's ‘Diamond Monkey Collection’ at the Monkey Bar in NYC.

Here she is with a friend:

Doesn't she look gorgeous? Love the shoes, girl! Her friend's not bad either.

It was a veritable German explosion as Heidi attended as well:

And for once, we have nothing bad to say about her outfit. Nicely done, Frau Seal.

So much for our vacation.

Entertainment Weekly has named Project Runway one of its Top Entertainers of 2006. Everyone looks gorgeous in the photos even if we question some of the styling choices.

What you probably didn't know is that a couple days before the photo shoot, Laura called us and said "I need my gay posse there!" Just guess what we said.

Anyway, fate, torrential rain and an overturned tractor trailer on the Jersey Turnpike prevented us from getting to the shoot on time. We did however arrive in time to get one rain-drenched photo.


After that, we went back to Laura's for a while and then on to Malan's party. We do it all for you, darlings.

By the way, Laura made her own dress and if we recall correctly, Uli is wearing Vera Wang.

Edited to add:

Watch the Access Hollywood video about the EW photo shoot here.


Also, don't miss Bravo's exclusive behind-the-scenes video at the EW shoot. It's a great video!

Ripping the Collections: Uli, Part Zwei

This dress is growing on us. At first glance, we weren't so sure that this was flattering to a woman's body and truth be told, it probably wouldn't be for anyone over a size 4, but it has a great clingy, sexy, curvy quality to it. This is such a godawful cliche at this point, but Uli "really knows a woman's body" (we hope so, she lives in one).

Kind of a clunker. Not only is it too typical for Uli, it's too evocative of her last challenge dress. It's an okay dress, but way too sheer. Under the lights it was tootie-riffic. The silver trim bumps it up a notch.

HOT! MEGA-HOT. Even our pants moved when this came down the runway.

Heidi agrees.

That is a total "I covet" face. You can see her doing the math. "Let's see, I'm dropping this baby in late November and I can usually shed the weight and see my abs again after about 6 days, so...Holidays in St. Tropez!"

This is the only look that we flatout didn't like in her collection. It seemed like the color just came out of nowhere, the front and back parts of the skirt don't even look like they're connected, making it seem like a very long loincloth and the contrasting fabric around the bottom of the top is just a hair too thick, cutting her in half.

Then there's the "bone" (or whatever it is) trim. The use of the heavy trim was a through-line for the whole collection but on a couple of the dresses, this one being the most obvious, the trim looked way too heavy for such a light, airy fabric. It's to the credit of Uli's construction skills that she was able to fix such heavy trim on the dresses and not distort the lines, but on this dress in particular it was too much, to the point of distraction.

We both had the same thought when this came down the runway. "Didn't we just see this dress?" It's fine - and even expected - to have variations on a theme in a collection, but when you've only got 12 pieces to show they probably shouldn't be so similar. It is gorgeous though and we love the contrasting fabric on the bottom.

Nazri, you fabulous creature, our television is depressed that you no longer grace it with your presence.

For those who always ask "Why do the models walk like that?" take a look at the bottom half of that dress. She's not standing in front of a wind machine, people. That fabric is flowing and swirling and moving solely through the power of her hips. Come the energy crisis, we should just hook models up to a generator and make them walk up and down a runway. You could power a small city.

Anyway, the dress. Y'know, this just isn't doing it for us the way it's supposed to. Don't get us wrong, it's a pure impact dress and a good one, but Lorenzo's first thought was "J Lo Versace Grammy dress," and Tom's first thought was "Why is she wearing a chili pepper around her neck?"

It took us a while to figure it out. From a design and construction point of view it's a perfectly fine, even beautiful dress but that's not where the impact comes from. It's the print and if you don't like the print or the print's just not doing it for you, then the impact is lessened greatly.

In the end, it was an exciting, polished and surprising collection. The biggest surprise was that her patented flowy print dresses were not the most interesting things coming down the runway. As cohesive as the solids were, her prints were all over the place and the colors didn't come together the way they should have. Some of the models looked like they wandered in from a different show. Still, as a collection it was absolutely gorgeous and while we're not shedding any tears about being forced to watch the finale at the TRESemmé party, there's a part of us that wishes we could have sat on the couch with our best gals just to hear them gasp at each dress.


[Photos: FirstView]


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Ripping the Collections: Uli, Part Eins

Alright, let's get on with it, bitches.

It would have made sense to take each collection in the order they showed, but the first collection was Jeffrey's and we've all talked about him enough in the last 10 days. We'll get to him later but we thought Uli would be the perfect way to start the week.

We'll say right off the bat that Uli put on the best show out of the four. Laura was a close second, but Uli managed to do everything right, from the styling to the model selection to the music. The models were all uniformly gorgeous and Uli seemed to be the only one out of the four who understood how to pick music to walk to, which isn't as easy as it sounds. She chose a perfect four-on-the-floor beat which allowed the models to walk the way models are supposed to walk. Plus, it was pure Uli; a light, whimsical composition that enhanced the clothes and gave insight into the designer's personality. Ironically, Uli is the only one out of the four who used a music selection provided to her by PR.

As Heidi would say, "Let's start the show."

Not exactly a "wow" dress to kick things off. Don't get us wrong, it's beautiful but it's also exactly what you'd expect from Uli. It demonstrates Uli's typical facility with prints, but what makes it stand out is the bone collar and layered hem. Not so sure about the shoes, though.

Great-looking outfit. We really loved the whole silver and camel combination she was working with. Sophisticated, modern and fun. Love: the belt, the hem and the length of the sleeves.

And this model was WORKIN IT. Looking side to side into the crowd with a big smile on her face like she was picking out her bedmate for the night.

This was probably our favorite Uli look (or a very close second) and one of our favorites out of all four collections. Perfect proportions, with a cool sexiness and clean, modern feel and exactly enough detailing to make it interesting without overwhelming it. Loved the layered hem, the high collar, and the trim in the top and the way it goes off at an angle unexpectedly to draw the eye to the bone detail in the belt. Funny how the model was styled almost exactly like Uli.

"Mom, Jan keeps using my creme rinse!"

This dress was a little "bleh." Pretty enough, but the only thing that makes it interesting is the fabric and coming as it did right after a similar dress, it lacked impact. The MarciaMarciaMarcia styling didn't help.

Hot. At first glance, this seemed simple to the point of boring, but there's more going on here than a first glance reveals. The layering of fabrics, the sheer extended hem, the pleat on the front and the impeccable beadwork and bone clasp make this dress a stunner. It must be gorgeous in person. Perfect model too.

Hard to judge this one because PR didn't do such a great job of shooting the runway and we have yet to see a picture of Amanda wearing the jacket, which we suspect makes the outfit. The dark brown against the silver doesn't work as well as the camel does. There's some sort of pleating going on around the waist and in the jacket but from what little we could see. it looked a little overdone. The back of the top was interesting, if a little unwieldy.

That tiny cropped jacket fits over that? We're confused by this outfit.

Amanda's still hot, though.

Part Zwei coming soon!


[Photos: FirstView]


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Surreality Television

Okay, let's get one thing out of the way first. Tom left the Garnier Nutrisse on about 5 minutes too long and that was NOT meant to be a Laura Bennett tribute; got it?

Honeys. What can we say? We'll tell you what we can say because we must have said it about 30 times to each other last night: "Ohmigod, this is so surreal." To watch the finale at the TRESemmé party with the final four - like a foot away from some of them - was just...so odd. We only started this blog a couple of weeks into the season, so to end the season sitting where we were...just, wow.

Give us a second to compose ourselves. Talk amongst yourselves.

...


Okay, we're back. Let's get to it. First off, with the exception of Michael who is exactly as good-looking as he appears on TV, the rest of the final four are surprisingly more attractive in real life. It hit us later that of course this would be the case, since 99% of the time we saw them onscreen they were exhausted and stressed out.


Laura. Like always, we have a lot to say about Laura and since it was she who invited us to the party and then invited us to spend a couple hours at her place with her sitcom-ready family, we're saving most of it for a later post. Or the Enquirer. She is EXACTLY who she appears to be on television in terms of her personality. Funny, intelligent, blunt, take-no-shit, unpretentious and fabulous. She's also more than that of course, but we'll get to that later. Love her more than ever and LOVE her husband, Peter. They both sat directly behind us.


Michael is exactly Michael. Cute and cool and poised and polite as polite gets. He sat a couple seats down from us with a fabulous and stylish posse, including his dropdead gorgeous date, who was also quite sweet to us when we complimented her on her outfit.


You will never meet a more adorable person than Uli. Ohmigod, what a sweetheart. And quite the Chatty Katerina. Just talkstalkstalks in that airy germanic English of hers. You ask her for a picture and she immediately wraps you in a full hug, tilts her head towards you and poses, spouting Uli-isms the whole time.

"Uli, we heard you don't have an email address."
"I have one, I just don't give it out to people."




Jeffrey is taller, cuter and nicer in person. He was downright sweet. We can't say we ever had more than a fleeting conversation with him because for obvious reasons he was the darling of the press all night and the only time we didn't see him talking to the press was when he was watching the episode. He sat right in front of us, next to Uli.


You know how you watch the show with friends and talk over it or comment on the action while it's happening? We all do that, right? How weird is it to sit there and listen to the final four do it? To hear Laura cheering on Michael or complaining about how long the judging took or talking about the beadwork on Camilla's dress. There was a lot of "oooohhh"ing and laughing during the "scandal" portions of the show, exactly the same as there would be watching it in your living room, except it was Laura, Jeffrey, Uli and Michael doing it. Surreal, right?


The absolute strangest part of the whole thing occurred after Michael and Laura got eliminated and it was down to Jeffrey and Uli. The entire front of the theater filled up with press, all with their cameras aimed at the two of them to get a shot when the winner would be announced. We could barely see the screen and forget about paying attention when you've got this wall of cameras staring back at you. The pic above doesn't do it justice.

It was thrilling, as Tim would say, when the room erupted into cheering and applause at the announcement of the winner.

We have much more to talk about in the days to come and a ton of pics to show y'all so don't worry, we're not going anywhere. We actually need to watch the episode again, because we probably saw only about 30% of it. Our necks are killing us from whipping our heads around and staring at everyone else in the room like an antsy kid in church. But darlings, it was so worth it. The one thing that echoes through our heads is what Tim said to us as we bid him goodnight. "You two are in the inner circle now!"