[edit: thanks to mensa member i got rid of an unfortunate accent on "forte". you can read about it in the comments]
the challenge: the four remaining designers had to come up with a garment that would represent their signature style, vow the judges, and could be shot for elle magazine. you'd think that after making dresses out of coffee filters and recycling bags and after designing for pageant contestants, mothers, style icons, and dogs this would have been a piece of cake, but not so. the results were uniformly ...underwhelming. the only design the judges liked was uli's mini dress, the one that had made even jeff feel pretty and romantic. there must have been some unicorn hairs woven into the fabric. that's probably why uli decided to use it again for her final collection.
in addition to making a dress, the designers had to describe their style in a provocative, irreverent, glamourous, adventurous, or sultry headline, and here's what they came up with:*
(a) COME, LIFELONG ENDURANCE CAGE!the judges found it hard to decide who should be out -- not because everyone did great, but because three out of four did not so great. in the first cozy-wozy twist in PR history, they decided not to eliminate anybody and to send them all to olympus fashion week. dear, if uneventful.
(b) COVERT VETERINARIAN, EVICT OR ROMP!
(c) UVENTFUL, IF DEAR!
(d) ESSENTIAL NURSE, SLY US SIXTY!
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*the designers had to come up with three-word slogans (not with headlines), which i fed to an anagram generator. (a) is laura's slogan (her tree words were elegance, glamour, confidence), (b) is jeff's (irreverent, provocative, romantic), (c) is uli's (life, adventure, fun), (d) is michael's (sexiness, sultry, sensuality).
4 comments:
Just FYI: the word "forte" (as in someone's strength/specialty)is pronounced as one syllable that rhymes with "port". The 2-syllable word pronounced "for-tay" is a musical term. Neither has an accent over the e.
Oops! I'll get this corrected right away. According to Merriam-Webster and the OED the word has two pronunciations (one syllable, as in "port", or two). I got carried away by my very poor French. I thought the word "forte" was a participle in French, derived from an imagined verb "forter" (hence the accent), but not so: It's a simple monosyllabic adjective, "fort" in the masculine form, "forte" in the feminine form. Merriam-Webster points out "In forte we have a word derived from French that in its 'strong point' sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation. Usage writers have denigrated \'for-"te\ and \'for-te\ because they reflect the influence of the Italian-derived forte. Their recommended pronunciation \'fort\, however, does not exactly reflect French either: the French would write the word le fort and would rhyme it with English for. So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however." Alas, the accent has to go. Thanks, mm!
The anagram generated phrases was *brilliant*. Bravo! Made me laugh and laugh.
thanks leah. i found the phrases the designers came up with so "blah" that i thought a machine would do better. and it did.
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