Guest judge Victoria Beckham joined host Heidi Klum, Nina Garcia and Michael Kors, in judging the collections of five finalists: Kathleen “Sweet P” Vaughn, Chris March, Jillian Lewis, Rami Kashou and Christian Siriano.

Generally speaking, the collections were not in keeping with the mood of disheveled, easy femininity and emphasis on sleek, menswear-inspired tailoring that characterized most of the New York collections this week. Instead, most of the five designers showed overdone show pieces in garish colors and fabrics. Few of the collections felt like coherent, winning statements about the designer’s vision and instead seemed to be “made for TV” clothes that seemed to be designed instead to make a splashy impression on camera.

But with plenty of the designers’ friends, family and fans in the house, there were hoots and hollers for each of the designers' final effort.

Kathleen “Sweet P” Vaughn showed the most restrained collection of the group, with ladylike pencil skirts, high-waisted plaid pants and a striped suit with a frilly blouse reminiscent of Nicholas Ghesquiere-designed Balenciaga collection a few seasons back.

Chris March alternated silk halter dresses with Photoshop screen prints with some particularly head-scratching skirt suits with jackets trimmed with human-hair like fringe. The hair fringe popped up in a couple of evening dresses as well, though we can’t say who out there would want to be wearing a wig as a dress.

Jillian Lewis, who told the audience that it's the first full collection she’d ever done, showed a mix of creative knit sweaters, a very futurist-looking knife pleated gold lame mini dress with bustier that looked like it could have come out of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” and military-inspired outerwear.

Rami Kashou has received criticism on the show from the judges for being too repetitive - draping is his thing - and naturally showed a collection with all manners of draping, from tulip draped skirts to draped flutter sleeves. Unfortunately, his particular technique looked more like drapes made for a window, not a woman. And one unfortunate dress in raspberry pink looked like a graduation gown.

The final runway show of the finale was Christian Siriano, whose collection of mostly black and white looks with couture-like, labor intensive construction (millefeuille layers of chiffon, a gown composed almost entirely of bird feathers) certainly spoke volumes about his skills as a designer, but the overly dramatic proportions - too many puffy sleeves - didn’t feel very modern. His ideas for dramatic scale were on the right track, but needed some distilling for wearability.

Post-show, in conversation with Tim Gunn, guest judge Victoria Beckham said there was one person who stood out for her. Gunn remarked that as far as the winner goes, it was going to come down to taste, because he felt all the designers were very talented.

“There was one person – every single piece that came down that runway I would wear myself,” said Beckham. “That person made me smile and I was just amazed, absolutely amazed!”

According to show producers, this week's episode of “Project Runway” hit a season high in total viewers, with 3,631,000 tuning in. The show’s popularity was reflected in the choice of venue at Bryant Park - in past seasons, the final episode had been taped in one of the smaller tents, but this year, they staged the taping in the largest one, known by insiders as “The Tent.” This is where the big guns of American fashion show, including Michael Kors himself, who showed his Fall 2008 collection earlier in the week.

There was no word on who won the competition after the runway show Friday - for that, viewers will have to tune in to the two-part finale of the show, which airs on Feb. 27 and March 5 on Bravo.

Don’t miss any of the action inside the tents. Click here to visit americanexpress.com/style to see live video of over 70 shows at New York Fashion Week.

More fashion week videos and coverage from Saks Fifth Avenue’s Michael Fink here.

Article Courtesy of Fashion Wire Daily

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