GET IN THE MOOD FOR THE RUNWAY

Ruth Spencer offers a crash course in fashion fluency

Ruth Spencer offers a crash course in fashion fluency

If you’re new to Project Runway, you might need a glossary to keep up with the dressmaking lingo. Here are some of the important phrases from the last 19,000 series.

Make it work

Lol — it’s not going to work. You’ve invested your entire challenge budget in electric yellow tartan and your garment has to work, but it really isn’t going to. This wouldn’t work even if you enrolled it into a WiNZ work scheme. Elon Musk works more than this. That Ford Anglia rusting on your neighbour’s lawn will work before this does.

Clean up your space

Get out, and make it look like you were never here. We’ve been hanging on your every word for weeks, wondering if your feud with the weird haircut girl was going to come to blows, but as soon as you switch off that light we’re going to forget you ever existed. Try not to steal the overlocker on your way out.

My girl

A mythical person the designer has in mind to wear the brown vinyl jumpsuit he’s glue-gunning together. Often part of the famous last words, “I know my girl.” The designer does not know the girl. He has never met the girl. The girl still has chafing from the velour chaps he designed last time.

Unconventional materials challenge

Remember that time you made a hilarious wedding dress out of toilet paper at your cousin’s hen do? It’s that — but with panic. The designers are brought to a godforsaken place such as a greeting card store (Millennials, ask your parents) and told to collect their design materials. They get marked down

if they find any actual material.

Accessory wall

Where plastic bangles go to die. Pity the designers, because they have to choose something from the wall or the sponsor gets fidgety. There’s also a shoe wall. You can choose only from the wall, and you’d think there’d be no wrong choices as they’re all pre-selected. You’d be wrong.

Draping

Not curtain-related; draping refers to how the fabric falls over the body. That’s no guarantee the garment won’t look like an escapee from Venluree.

Button bag

A hated velvet bag containing buttons used to assign designers to teams. Designers typically do not play well with others. Play this at home: use a button bag to assign the kids chores to bring a fun sense of horrified suspense to setting the table.

Thank you, Mood!

Something everyone says when they leave fabric store Mood, because it’s in the script. There’s a dog there called Swatch, who has never quite attained celebrity animal status, probably because it never moves and may or may not be dead. That’s it, Runway fans, you’re covered! Probably by a weird rubber jumpsuit that’s riding up in the crotch. Auf Wiedersehen!