[about an hour later...]
Aha! I finally found the episode. What fun to watch. I see why they gave the victory to Seth Aaron, though there were a few of his styles I didn't like. He has the best-structured garments, notably that red coatdress and the scarf dress. (I do covet that coatdress.) Korto always has something that is graceful and easy to wear, and Elena's clothing concept, with the openwork and topstitching, is tremendously appealing to me though I admit the collection didn't vary much from piece to piece. Since I like Elena's basic design theme, I didn't mind that so much. One detail no one pointed out in her collection was the gloves that every model wore, in colors keyed to the collection. I really enjoyed them--some gray, some yellow, some blue.
I'm not sure I liked the idea of actually holding the show at the U.N. Somehow the moment of Alyssa Milano facing those U.N. delegates (who are dealing with monumental problems in their respective countries and in the world as a whole), and chirping about how great the collections are, and how much money a single designer would get for appearing on the show, seemed just this side of insultingly trivial. Maybe I've just been watching the news too much. I hope the producers made some sort of contribution to UNICEF and the WHO, two U.N. agencies whose hands are full right now. For example, I think it's the World Health Organization that has to deal with the heartbreaking resurgence of polio among children in Syria during this current war.
I did like the actual opportunity of presenting the U.N. to viewers, and I wish the show had featured a bit more input from the delegates. I would have loved for the Liberian delegate to mention the current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who's a reformer and the first woman to head Liberia's government (she may also be the first woman head of state in sub-Saharan Africa), and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I think that to mention her in context with Korto, a woman of accomplishment from a country where women didn't generally have much of a chance to rise, would have been entirely apt.
It made me smile to think about how the producers figured out the heritage aspect of the episode. Elena and Korto are obvious, but a guy named Henderson doing designs from Spain was interesting. I was imagining what they'd ask me to do. The countries my ancestors spent time in didn't want us, and many of these places aren't even part of the original countries any longer. I like to call my grandparents' home town Six Flags, because it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and considered part of Poland, but it later ended up the property of the Soviet Union and ultimately of the Ukraine, except the town probably doesn't exist any longer and I'm sure no one from my family survived the century there. Would they have made me use Israel? (Well, two thousand years ago, I guess my folks did come from there, but the link is kind of tenuous now.)
I really like Korto as a personality. She is practical, witty, and able to rise above frustration. These are good traits for someone running a business to have. Elena I worry about. Seth Aaron seems pretty resilient also, but there's an originality to Korto's perspective that I find enjoyable to listen to. She's just one of those people one would enjoy getting to know, I think. by the way, I loved Victor's mother's motto: Don't drown in a cup of water. I will try to remember that the next time I think that some small roadblock means all is lost and life is impossible. I may need it on Monday or Tuesday, in fact.