Project Runway Canada Episode 5: The competition levels up on difficulty with a toilet paper challenge | Canada Voices

As I mentioned last week, now that we’re midway through this season of Project Runway Canada, even the strongest contestants are getting tripped up by challenges designed perhaps less to test skill than to ratchet up excitement for viewers. Are they a true measure of a designer’s prowess? Maybe not – but that’s showbiz, baby.

This week’s brief was to design looks out of toilet paper, a material known as much for its service to behinds as its tendency to disintegrate. Upon the reveal of a Cashmere-branded wall of rolls, the designers are understandably gobsmacked. Working in pairs, they must design two looks that impress the judges, around a theme they blindly select from the wall. While the concept is certainly wacky, there is a precedent for it: The Cashmere Collection fashion show has been put on every October in Toronto since 2004 as a fundraiser for breast cancer research.

The designers pair up with their closest allies – Curtis Matysek and Maya Ginzburg select punk and preppy themes, Delayne Dixon and Cat Préfontaine get streetwear and couture, Charles Lu and Leeland Mitchell choose old money and new money, and Foster Siyawareva and Rome Ramsay get sporty and soiree – only to find out that their friends are now their foes. One half of the team will be crowned the winner, and the other will automatically be up for elimination. Making matters even more intense, it’s a one-day challenge, meaning that if the designers are lucky enough to find a way to work with all of that TP, they’ll only have a matter of hours to create a whole look with it (they are allowed to use other materials in the workroom to give their garments structure, but only minimally).

Project Runway Canada Episode 4: The competition wades into RuPaul’s Drag Race territory with a two-in-one “ruveal” challenge

The designers get to work, and Matysek tells the cameras that he has an implicit understanding of how to make toilet paper stick on account of how he used to wet it, ball it up and throw it onto the ceiling as a young boy (his parents must be so proud!). His concept, though, is something to marvel at: A bell-sleeved, heavily grommeted look inspired by early British punk rockers of the 1970s. The final product resembles leather more than anything used in the bathroom, with many layers of detail that beg a closer look. His partner, Ginzburg, is also going conceptual, designing a rather stiff pleated dress made for a dress-up doll.

Elsewhere in the workroom, Siyawareva’s zipper is ripping apart, Ramsay and Préfontaine have each had the idea to create dresses out of toilet-paper fans, and Dixon is warned by mentor Aurora James that the hoodie dress she has designed is too simple and unlike streetwear.

Meanwhile, Lu is playing dress up in Mitchell’s fabulous fur-like coat creation (somehow these two always have time to spare). The pair designs two unique yet equally wowza sculpted dresses, Lu’s with a Loewe-like curved bodice and Mitchell’s bedazzled with rhinestones and worn under the fuzzy coat.

Then it’s the judges’ turn to be gobsmacked. When the looks take to the runaway, where content creator Mei Pang is a guest judge, it’s hard to believe that the outfits are made of loo rolls. The winners are Siyawareva, Préfontaine, Mitchell and Matysek, the latter of whom is awarded $5,000 and a place in the upcoming Cashmere Collection fashion show. The losers are Ramsay, Dixon, Lu and Ginzburg, who rebuffs the judges when she is critiqued for being too conceptual.

“The ability to take criticism is a matter of maturity,” says Jeanne Beker. “Even though there’s a lot about Maya that is really sophisticated, she’s young in years.” Yikes. Despite this mini tiff, Ginzburg is safe for another week. Shape up, girl – I’m rooting for you!

That means Dixon, the season’s first challenge winner and a contestant who has shown nothing but solid outputs, is voted off. This is the second time in a row a designer who doesn’t heed James’s warning is put in the bottom, but truthfully, at this point in the competition it’s more like splitting hairs than an indictment of any one major fashion crime.

I hope it’s not the last we see of Dixon, because this minor misstep was not worth her punishment (this is where that double save earlier in the season would have come in handy). For now, it really is just as the old Project Runway slogan goes: “In fashion, one day you’re in and the next, you’re out.”