And I took that personally.

I did not know there were so many songs with “Coco Chanel” as a lyric.

Hanging In The Balenciaga

It’s Fashion Icons Week, which is definitely legally distinct from Divas Week which was still definitely not Drag Week. So everyone had come dressed as their favourite fashion icons for the occasion

the primary school teacher who definitely knew you were queer, Violet Beauregarde’s raspberry flavoured cousin, a really nice Airbnb granite worktop and the slightly scary GP receptionist who runs the practice like a Naval frigate.

Kicking off a whirlwind tour through a minefield of the most discoursable fashion houses was a visit to the Balenciaga archives with a Chinese finger trap of a dress that exemplified Cristobal Balenciaga’s tendency to dress women a little bit like elaborately packaged leftovers from a Teppanyaki restaurant

and just as a measure of how insane this fitted, draped and liberally gusseted dress is; on average the animated explanation of the Pattern Challenge instructions last 32 seconds. This dress’s explanation went on for 50 seconds which is why everyone treated their instruction packets like they’d just met the most solid cat in the neighbourhood

CHUNKY BOI! AN ABSOLUTE UNIT! MY BIG LITTLE MAAAAAAAAAN!

In order to achieve both the fitted waist of the dress and the clerical drape of the cape in the back, fabric choice was everything! And because the sewers were relatively limited in what they could choose, I do wish they’d got a few more colours in because we ended up with 3 dresses in nearly identical shades of blue and Ailsa taking the leftover crap

OH! Crepe… accents are difficult.
This wasn’t the only time Ailsa went in a completely different direction to the other sewers

sadly her mad dash to the exit was thwarted and she would have to continue on with the strange and unusual punishment that was trying to solve the riddle Esme had used to trick a troglodyte into giving her a magical ring

does… does this accidentally make Suzy The Gollum of Sewing Bee? Much to consider.

As everyone’s brains turned to mush over what they were meant to be doing about the armpit gussets

Patrick had to conduct welfare check-ins

whether it helped or not I can’t say, but nobody has announced a sudden and slightly petty defection to ITV so I think we’re all good!

Ailsa hadn’t quite managed to get the hang of the gusset having rotated them 90 degrees like they’d just finished the first verse of the Macarena which is why her sleeves looked a little bit like old grapes that don’t have the conviction to make it to raisinhood

but she was not the only that became a cropper to The Great Gussetting of 2024. Pascha certainly wasn’t making friends with any armpits this episode

however, Suzy was hoping she could sweet talk the ghost of Cristobal Balenciaga, who definitely haunts a converted mill in West Yorkshire, into helping her through all of this

but not even the most well dressed members of the spirit world can prevent Suzy from being The Suzy

however, while Suzy may have been last place in this challenge, it was by no means a bad showing for her. The dress still looked like a dress

which is such a vast improvement from 8 weeks ago when Suzy lost her mind sewing a denim skirt

however, some things will always be a constant in life: me thinking The Simpsons references count as a personality, Channel 4’s dedication to Everybody Loves Raymond and Suzy’s unique machine gun fire approach to buttonholes

I hope she never stops doing this. I’ve watched every season of Project Runway and conjoined buttonholes would be one of the more normal things someone has tried to make their fashion signature. Angela’s butt flowers, Tessa claiming unhemmed clothes were her thing two thirds of the way through a season and of course Ven “Origami Rose” Budhu

nobody will ever be as naturally good a reality TV judge as Michael Kors was.

Luke ended up with a very similar dress to Suzy, the only real dead give away as to whose was whose is that Luke’s didn’t have boob darts that made you look a fembot who could take someone’s eyes out if you turned around too quickly

Luke was however pipped to first place by Pascha and her Balenciaga branded hospital scrubs

it is giving Sarah Paulson in that really pointless Nurse Ratched origin story series Netflix made in which the clothes were 80% of the reason to watch it at all.

An Official Balenciaga Inspired Dress Ranking:
1. Pascha’s Ratched Cosplay
2. Luke’s Fully Rendered Balenciaga
3. Ailsa’s Macarena Sleeves
4. Suzy’s Low Poly Balenciaga

All Tied Up

For this week’s Transformation Challenge, the sewers were going for Gaultier as they took inspiration from his tendency to do weird and wonderful things with unusual materials. This challenge looking towards his tie collection in particular

and now we go live to my prophecy 8 week ago

sadly I seem to have got some of my Cassandra-esque lines crossed and we live in the thongless timeline as everyone went as normal and tasteful as you possibly can when your materials look like job interview spaghetti

and the ties would be their ONLY materials with the Fabric Hammock and The Honorary Damien Haberdashery both being closed for business. They were however allowed to use any fastenings they wanted because we’ve decided that the Transformation Challenge creations have to be entirely wearable and not just creations from the Serena Cha Cha School of Soft Sculpture

the wearability angle scuppered Ailsa’s chances most of all as within the last few minutes of the challenge she got itchy fingers and decided to add a choker that took the choke angle a little too seriously

it’s a shame because the outfit was *really* cool, or at least the back was, the front looked a bit like someone had taken Tie Rack Ltd hostage

but turn around and BAM! Erotic Paisley Strudel!

I’ve watched enough Bake Off to know that this would not be an effective method of strudelling.

It was a tricky challenge to balance because Esme and Patrick wanted to be able to tell that the outfit had been made out of ties. Which is why I was a little bit worried for Luke when their outfit came out looking like a really high end sexy witch costume

it’s SO GOOD, especially that sweep across the bustline

I really can’t get over how good this is and how much work they managed to get done – the construction of the outfit, putting a zip in and of course getting started on their 3 hour video essay about the tie as a symbol of the patriarchy

as someone who also wore ties at school (but only on Fridays because God was really fussy about us looking formal for 2 hours of chapel) I fully understood the flight or fight response they triggered in Luke when they unveiled the single tie on a mannequin

✨queer trauma✨

Nobody really managed to rival Luke in sheer ingenuity but Pascha had made really good use of the folds in her unpicked ties to give her skirt a really nice pleated effect

it’s very The Seychelles Flag if the Seychelles Flag Had Been Designed By A Cottagecore Lesbian

and Esme was particularly impressed by Pascha’s use of velcro to make the skirt into a dramatic reveal that not even Nina West could possibly fumble (the downside of not recapping Drag Race anymore is not being able to talk about that absolute carcrash)

Speaking of velcro, we now present a Shakespearean Tragedy in Two Screenshots Or Your Money Back

Suzy: *says anything*
The Sewing Room: “and I took that personally.”

Suzy, I love you even if the editors clearly do not.

Suzy’s was the most ordinary looking outfit, she had a very nice looking bandeau-esque top at the front

and then because she’d seen Ailsa making german pastries out of ties, Luke making their Halloween Elphaba drag look and Pascha doing Pascha things, she’d added a cape to the back that Patrick was *really* trying to oversell

Patrick Grant has not seen a single episode of Game of Thrones because nobody, not even the absolutely dripless Margaery Tyrell who dressed like an armchair would wear this

yeah, I said it. I’m brave. You didn’t like her outfits, you just liked that Natalie Dormer is hot.

An Official Tie Garment Ranking:
1. Luke’s Business Formal Witch
2. Happy Cottagecore Pride Month
3. Ailsa’s Bondage Strudel
4. Patrick Grant’s Game of Thrones AU Fanfic

Crossing the Chanel

For our final stop in the High Fashion Minefield, the sewers were creating Made to Measure outfits inspired by Chanel for which Amber Butchart had been ousted from History Bit duties imaginably because she kept shouting “NAZI!” like an allied forces foghorn. So instead Kiell taught us about Coco Chanel’s quirky little antics…

“controversy” is a dad posting about refusing to teach his daughter how to use a can opener. “Nazi sympathiser” feels like more of a… complete indictment of your moral compass? Why open this can of worms in little black dresses when you could’ve just done Thomas Burberry? HE INVENTED GABARDINE! Why is nobody talking about the gabardine?

Alas, Chanel and her baggage it is! Which did of course mean a mostly black and white runway with Ailsa being the only one to bring any colour. And by “colour” I do mean a neutral beige boucle tweed, so get your sunglasses ready!

I loved the direction Ailsa was going with the masculine-feminine inspiration of Chanel’s 2017 resort collection where everyone looked like 1 part cricket umpire and 1 part Swedish-based cult member

but it became very apparent that she’d bitten off a little more than she could chew with 4 separate pieces to make and her three tiered organza skirt being big enough for an entire polycule to camp under

and because of the volume and weight of the Sisterwifehood of the travelling skirt, it ended up sitting a little oddly on Ailsa’s model

and as the skirt demanded more and more of her time and energy, she wasn’t able to sew her black tie and SOMEONE had used all the black ties in the Transformation Challenge…

so Ailsa had to grab an emergency scrap of voile to create a sort of gestural bow tie instead

it may not have been the best sewn outfit in the world and a fair amount of it was made more out of prayer than sewing BUT it’s a damn cool outfit and exactly how I wish I could dress

but if I put on a waistcoat there’s a 50/50 chance of me looking either like a Victorian apothecary (the goal) or your weird uncle who has a collection of non-functioning typewriters (decidedly not the goal.)

Luke also ended up with an outfit that I would very much like to wear and do in fact own something quite similar – while Luke’s is in a fun Dynasty title card font

mine is very much more “I put this on thinking it was funeral appropriate and only realised how French maid adjacent it looked a little too late”

my love language is a mid-level slay.

I do think Luke’s looked the most obviously Chanel inspired – there were a lot of really great details like the extra boucle tweed trim on the waist

and the addition of the gold chain to weigh the hem down, which I personally didn’t know Chanel did so at least we learnt something this episode

however sewing in the chain had sucked up a lot of Luke’s sewing time which is why the collar looks a bit like it was sewn on after two shots of tequila

I did admire their model for walking with her head at a weird angle the whole way down the catwalk to make it look less egregious

I hope it was worth the spasming trapezius.

While Luke gave their LBD a bit of 80s flare, Pascha was sticking to traditional 1930s Chanel (not like that) with a really stunning silk and satin dress that looked better than it had any right to

the fact she managed to wrangle silk AND satin so perfectly in 5 hours without any unsightly puckering is truly impressive sewing. I do think it could’ve used a little extra Chanelification because I feel like I could throw a stone at the average wedding and hit at least 4 women wearing his exact Phase Eight dress. It is undeniably a timelessly elegant piece which is what I think a lot of people associate the Chanel aesthetic with. Which is what makes every single thing they’ve made post-2019 SO BAFFLING.

Lastly we have Suzy, who you might remember I pitched for the role of creative director of Chanel last week. I promise you, I did not know how quickly that statement would come back to slap me with a glove and challenge me to a duel. Suzy knew she had to pull off some immaculate sewing to save herself after having bottomed in both previous challenges. However, Suzy also has a little leprechaun on her shoulder that routinely falls just short of asking her to burn the sewing room to the ground

despite Suzy “this is fine”-ing her way through her alterations, the dress did look very interesting in that sort of “only Audrey Hepburn could truly make this work” kind of way

I do agree with Esme on not really getting Chanel from it. It leans a lot more Givenchy / Balenciaga to me, but that might also just be because of the styling. If Suzy isn’t responsible for the hat and gloves, I’m calling sabotage

it’s always the fourth place girlies.

An Unofficial Chanel Inspired Outfit Ranking:
1. Pascha for Phase Eight
2. Luke’s Chanel in Italics
3. Suzy’s Audrey Hepburn Dress
4. Ailsa’s Chanel Pin-up

There were two garments this episode that I think should’ve been up for Garment of the Week – Pascha’s Made to Measure for how clean and well sewn it was and Luke’s witchy tie dress for how unique and interesting it was. I *personally* would’ve slung it Luke’s way, but I can’t begrudge Pascha the win because it was some darn good sewing

so with Luke and Pascha very much safe, it came down to deciding between Suzy and Ailsa. It really could’ve gone either way because while Suzy’s first two garments did come in last both times it wasn’t by a great margin and there’s no denying that her Made to Measure was in a better state of completion than Ailsa’s. However, it just wasn’t enough to clinch her that place in the finale as she drops out in a more than respectable fourth place

Suzy has been one of my favourite contestants to date – I love someone who just swings for the fences and brings something interesting to the table every time and I think she’s made a lot of truly inspired pieces throughout the competition. I know she hasn’t had the best of time on social media and I hope that hasn’t ruined the experience for her, because she should be really proud of how far she’s come

going from slashing buttonholes into a denim skirt like Freddie Kruger and placing last for it in the first pattern challenge, the getting Garment of the Week for that same premier episode and finishing in fourth place overall with a reasonably well made high fashion garment? It’s the Chaos Suzy Special and we’ll never see another like her. I’m not sure I could handle the stress of another like her.

And so, we have our Final 3 for Loosely Party Themed Week