Absolutely slay power move.

You’re born naked and the rest is Legally Distinct Diva Week.

Fringe With Benefits

Kicking off Definitely Not Drag Week, Don’t You Worry Your Terribly Cut Little Fringe, Babe was a pattern challenge inspired by Tina Turner’s iconic fringed mini dress. The pattern for which looks like every GCSE maths question I ever fluked my way through with all the skill of a marginally intelligent pigeon who worked out if it presses the correct square on the screen it gets food

the thought of having to sew yard upon yard of fringe that has a paladin-like dedication to causing you nothing but misery as well as an invisible zip AND doing straps is enough to chill the bones of any sewer. And it did

all except one, and you’ll never guess *who* was feeling particularly confident having been given access to Pandora’s Haberdashery box

if you came into this episode thinking it was all a long con to get Luke a Garment of the Week and treat them to the music cue of their dreams, well, pour yourself a glass of Kylie Minogue branded Rosé like the modern Oracle of Delphi (my diva of choice)

and their flamingo pink dress was pretty damn spectacular, the making of which miraculously went without much of a hitch

and a little part of me believes Luke could possibly have made this dress just as well with one of their hands tied behind their back. But Luke wasn’t the only one feeling confident going into this challenge. And you’ll never guess who came strutting into this challenge in a pair of zebra print boots and *so much* misplaced optimism…

but how could she not feel confident, after all she had conducted a haberdashery-based seance and been given the blessing and guidance from the spirit herself

and she wasn’t the only one contacting the spirits because Ailsa was temporarily possessed by the ghost of Yoda (another unsung Diva)

I was surprised by how well Ailsa’s came out in the end because her fringe was unceremoniously dumped into a heap of amorphous Elmo which seemed like a recipe for maximum tangling

we sewed about 2 metres of double layered fringe to the bottom of a dress because *SOMEONE* forgot she was 6ft and the Zara models are a mere bouncy baby 5’7″ and needed to protect her modesty

and that was enough to drive us to the gin cabinet, I cannot imagine having to do that 7 overlapping times WITH a zip to align it with

that red was also a good choice on Ailsa’s behalf and hers was probably the most Tina Turner of the bunch.

Pascha wasn’t quite so lucky in the fringe wrangling department, having decided to risk putting her zip in freeform instead of taking the time to style the fringe like an 8 year old girl on non-uniform day

naturally this resulted in her machine treating it like a bowl of glittery ramen

this was definitely not Pascha’s favourite challenge, as you could tell by the way she just threw the dress at her mannequin like it was a washed up jellyfish

but despite the sewing faults, I LOVED her decision to go for an alternating layers of silver and pale pink fringe

it makes it look a lot more contemporary and less like Lady La Sonya’s drag brunch number. It did still result in Pascha’s lowest percentile pattern challenge ranking but she still managed to avoid bottom spot, that was reserved for the three acts of Suzy’s One Woman Tragedy

I imagine a lot of Suzy’s excitement for this challenge came from both her love of fringe and the fact she didn’t have to contend with the automatic buttonfoot. Unfortunately, that trauma lulled her into a false of security in the presence of the invisible zip and sure enough, while the fringe of her Tina Turner as the Big Purple One in Quality Streets: The Musical dress was very nicely laid

her invisible zip was more obvious than Esme never getting that Strictly Come Dancing Invite

but don’t worry, there’s still a sliver of hope for Patrick who was getting more than a little kick out of shaking the fringe

quick, someone dangle Amy Dowden dressed as a pot scourer in front of him like a wildly shimmying carrot and lead him to the Elstree studio

it is my one mission in life to force Patrick Grant to do Strictly. He’d be a terrible dancer, but he’d be *my* terrible dancer.

Lastly we have Alex who landed perfectly in the middle with her pale gold dress

she hadn’t got off to the best start with her fringe immediately pulling her dress slightly out of shape

however she was saved by the fact Suzy was being haunted by the disembodied voice of Tina Turner and Pascha was doing some thematic Mariah Carey roleplay

she said red M&Ms ONLY!

An Official Fringed Dress Ranking:
1. Definitely Not Drag Week: The Rusical
2. Ailsa’s Proud Bloody Mary
3. Alex’s Gold Bronze Medal
4. Pascha’s Contemporary Jellyfish
5. This Spot Is Reserved For Suzy

Lounge Lizards

My favourite thing about incredibly specialist weeks like The Drag Week We Have At Home is that they’re clearly designed Made to Measure and Pattern Challenge first, then they get to the Transformation Challenge and have to scramble something together like you’re making a frittata the day before The Big Shop™. Thus Diva Week’s transformation challenge was to turn up to three pieces of animal print clothing into… diva appropriate loungewear?

the best way to start a challenge is to immediately make it sound like a randomly generated prompt from the ~aesthetic generator~

at least have them turn the animal print into an outfit for a samba that toes the line of decency and good taste on Strictly. But alas, it’s the nebulous unknown of whatever Kim Kardashian wears on her day off

Luke last watched Keeping Up With The Kardashians in 2008 when Kim was still hitting her sisters with a Birkin bag because they were rude about her buying a Bentley (none of these words are in the bible)

and clearly they haven’t kept up with Kim’s descent into only wearing beige and decorating her house like she lives in a minimalist Dr. Seuss asylum

so of course Luke was going ham on the animal print – blending snakeskin, cow hide and leopard print like Echidna, Mother of Monsters, giving birth to whatever infernal abomination Perseus had to fight next

and slowly it dawned on Luke that what they’d made was not the easy breezy statement lounge suit they’d set out to make but instead a sort of nuclear bomb of bad taste [tone indicator: camp]

someone on reddit recently posted a collage of what the contestants of ANTM cycle 2 wore on the “red carpet” for their finale in 2002 which is the very specific temporal pocket that Luke’s outfit would fit into

2002 was the Year of the Boots With The Fur in the Minor Media Event Zodiac.

Luke was not the only one huffing animal print diva fumes, as Pascha took one look at the zebra-print knickers she’d made and descended into madness like she’d just gazed upon the incomprehensible visage of Cthulhu

or as we know her, Cher

I would very much like a dissertation on Divadom from Pascha given what she thinks a Beyonce stage outfit is and that Cher would go anywhere near an outfit that looks like it’s starring alongside Marcus’s Muscle Tube in 10,000 BC: The Porno (you decide what the BC stands for)

I’m going to write a 50,000 word fanfic about the tumultuous relationship between these two INSANE outfits. Although by the end of the challenge Pascha had managed to regain a moderate amount of sanity points and had worked out that it was probably best to not go the Superman-ing Wilma Flintstone route

admittedly the top does look kind of cool, and it’s a miracle that it works as well as it does considering Pascha’s absolutely lethal self-own

I tried to look up a famous own goal to make a joke here but all of these websites look like they’d instantly brick my computer and ruin my newsfeed algorithm

and I’ve only just cleansed it from the chaos caused by me googling muscular snakes for last week’s recap.

Suzy had gone down a similar road as Pascha, going for a midriff exposing two piece that would end up being the championship belt for the Lady Gaga vs Elton John cage match she’s hosting

all proceeds go to charity, and by “charity” I do mean, the Luke Losing The Diva Week Transformation Challenge Emotional Support Fund

they truly had no other option than to go all out in the Made to Measure Challenge lest they be barred from every gay bar in the UK.

Much like Luke, Suzy did at least realise that intention does not always lead to actualisation with her final outfit being less Lady Gaga and more Kat Slater: no leopards left behind

except, Suzy’s was more of a fish print than any of the rare big cats that Kat Slater hunts in her spare time (where’s that controversial Eastenders plotline?)

of course Suzy would walk into Fabrics Galore and ask them where the Panther Grouper stonewashed cotton is

and in true Suzy-style, it was all going relatively well up until the final 2 minutes when she pulled the shorts too hard and ripped them a new one. But you know, one woman’s hole is another woman’s…. treasure, let’s just say treasure

Marcus’s speedrun through the weird side of PornHub clearly left a lasting impression on Patrick.

The most explicit piece of loungewear came from Alex who’d created the sort of negligee you’d only ever see in one of those boudoir photoshoots from the 80s

of course, I do mean the Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition of the word “explicit”

Suzy obviously wins in terms of the second definition

we’ve got both ends of the Bad Sexy Valentine’s Day Gift Spectrum.

Lastly we have Ailsa who decided her target diva was the Number 1 cow rustler of the wild frontier

that kimono coat is a thousand times more fabulous than it has any right to be and the whole thing can only be truly summed up in the immortal words of Mo Heart

I’m also not *entirely* sure how lounge-y the outfit is because with just a touch more glitter this is absolutely something I could see Chappell Roan wearing as a stage costume while doing a very gay cover of Jolene. Which is probably also the most Ailsa an outfit could possibly be.

An Official Animal Print Loungewear Ranking:
1. Brown Cow Supernova
2. Lingerie Week 2: Boudoir Boogaloo
3. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s… Cher?
4. Suzy’s Backdoor Diva
5. Luke’s Chimeric Hoodie

Welcome to The Stage….

The final challenge of The Drag Week We’re Selling Under The Table was for the sewers to make a stage outfit for their favourite diva. Of course we managed to tick off 2 of the obvious biggest pop names as Luke and Suzy showed down with 2 different Gaga eras while Pascha took on Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and sadly nobody did Katy Perry so I have no segue to discussing Katy Perry’s Flop Era 2: Misguided Attempt At Feminist Critique Boogaloo. Alex was going the most left field, with a superb choice of Orville Peck who I was dismayed to learn Patrick and Esme had no knowledge of! Patrick sort of just stared at her like she was trying to explain to her nan that the image of the Ghanaian boy who made the sculpture of Jesus out of bottle caps and banana skins she saw on Facebook was not a real photo and had been made by AI

BOO! he’s only the hottest cowboy since Bravestarr

you can decide which character I’m talking about.

A Word of Warning: from here on out, I was writing after 2 cocktails. We’re nothing but professional here at Ariadne Reviews Inc.

Given that Orville is Canadian himself, Alex was going the route of the Canadian Tuxedo: denim, fringe and rhinestone patches. Of which she’d dedicated a huge amount of time to perfectly placing her fringe to the detriment of the outfit’s buttons meaning her model had to sort of pretend he was grabbing an imaginary belt

there are two major cornerstones of Orville Peck’s carefully curated image: being really hot in that sort of 80s genre specific pornstar kind of way and also being hot in that anonymous 2000s Craigslist hookup kind of way

none of which I’m sure quite gets captured in Alex’s Party City Rhinestone Cowboy costume. She probably would’ve been better off bringing in some novelty sunglasses, 5 yards of turkey feathers and a Kiss Me Quick hat and saying this was for Elton John who the show was clearly banking heavily on *someone* referencing

I do wish they’d done Diva Week earlier on because I need to know who Dom and Neil would’ve used for their diva inspiration. I reckon I could place a safe bet on one of them being Cilla.

Alex wasn’t the only one going a little bit country, as Ailsa came in with a very well timed Shania Twain reference. Although, this was more Shania Twain: After Dark as she proceeded to unpack lengths of chain and definitely not equestrian approved stirrups

Marcus may be dead, but kink certainly isn’t

and now Patrick Grant is but one sleepless night, an intrusive thought and a curious google search away from accidentally discovering what Pony Play is.

The big features of Ailsa’s costume were the all in one gloves sleeves and a sort of dominatrix utility belt complete with whip, saddle and whatever you imagine you could do with a pair of stirrups

for having had to make the sexy polyurethane scuba suit in 5 hours, it fits phenomenally well

There’s a bit of pulling around the shoulders but for how impeccably tailored the fit on a garment like this has to be, we can cut her some slack. I will then proceed to say I wish she could’ve lined the hood. The judges did feel like it was more of a music video outfit than something for stage because of all the little details. I don’t think that would be a problem in a world where Taylor Swift can wear the smallest accessory and you can guarantee one of her fans would notice it on someone else’s grainy 240p TikTok footage and write a 10 page thesis about what it means.

I would’ve bet a fair amount of money that Pascha would’ve gone the Taylor Swift route – she has the energy of a Folklore to Midnights era girlie. However, she was going for Renaissance Tour Beyonce, which she adorably attended with her dad

I don’t know if my dad can name a Beyonce song. I certainly wouldn’t be brave enough to take on Beyonce, mostly because making a bodysuit under any amount of pressure seems a one way trip to see the Crotch Terror. Pascha was heaping on the pressure but adding an exposed skeletal pannier to accentuate the hips of her Beyonce-in-training

I remember seeing this outfit in the episode 1 sizzle reel and being very excited for Intergalactic Sexual Liberation Week. I don’t think I would’ve ever have guessed that the bishop sleeved, Marie Antoinette in the Year 3000 bodysuit was intended for Beyonce

it’s damn well sewn though and her model looks absolutely fire in it, which is the biggest compliment you can pay to someone that could’ve ended up looking like Brendan Cole was about to swing you around like he was playing discus with the Christmas turkey

I’m still pitching my SNOWDANCE biopic starring Jodie Comer as Lisa Snowdon if anyone out there is interested.

On to the Showdown at the Gaga Corral with Suzy and Luke opting for 2 very different approaches to the Gaga aesthetic. Luke channeling her Chuck Tingle motorcycle phase

and Suzy going for that time Lady Gaga was about one of 3 people who actually understood what the Camp Met Gala was meant to be about

with maybe a few more buttons this is a complete slay and absolutely Suzy’s best work on the show. I say this with complete sincerity, this looks like the sort of thing Chanel should be making at the moment, but they’re too busy having an identity crisis and insistently dressing Kristen Stewart up as a business casual volleyball player

I know they’re looking for a new creative director so, send them a CV Suzy. Do it for Kristen.

Then we have Luke who came into this week like a mayfly with only 5 minutes to live, create a Lady Gaga costume and die. With a little Splinter Cell side mission of trying to convince Patrick to give Rocky Horror dress up a try

c’mon Patrick, it’s only a small step from sock garters to suspenders.

Luke was definitely going all out on this challenge with a hefty workload of tailoring vinyl and trying to get the Darth Maul flogger toy past production

we knew Luke was going to snap, but this is like Thanos doing Cell Block Tango. It is absolutely impeccable, and even more so for only having 5 hours to do it all in. AND, she’s very useful if you put her in your kitchen cabinets

Esme had far too much fun being given the opportunity to boop the kinky Care Bear belly badge

“this better not awaken anything in me.”

too late.

An Unofficial Diva Stage Costume Ranking:
1. Luke’s Road Safe Darth Maul Kinkster
2. It’s Not Really Beyonce, But It Is Really Good
3. Horse human outfit *search* *drops phone on face*
4. #Suzy4CreativeDirectorOfChanel omg, who said that?
5. More Orville the Duck than Orville Peck

The Made to Measure Challenge was a runaway success for Luke and I defy anyone to say they didn’t deserve Garment of the Week

the quarter final is always when eliminations start getting that much more tense. It was a bit of a shock his week, I had Alex down as a definite for the Final however her Orville Peck outfit just didn’t come through for her

but she’s been great and on the plus side and she’ll always go down as being the hottest anyone has been on TV

this reset my brain chemistry.

And so, the semi-final is Fashion Icon Week which is very different from Diva Week, allegedly…