This week’s episode was The Wiz­ard of Oz. The show began with Ken­neth Cole’s noir direc­tive for Hol­i­day 2011 — clearly a nod to the per­sonal style of Wicked Witch of East. It was black, black, and more black: black dresses (didn’t we already have the LBD chal­lenge…?), black pants, black faux fur, and black jack­ets. The acces­sories had to per­form their magic against, and at the same time not mon­key around with the Ken­neth Cole clothes pro­vided to the designers.

Tin-Man Brian showed his lack of heart while mak­ing his hand­bag, the sculp­tural horn han­dle of which required so much drilling and sand­ing that the work­room was like the poppy field, mak­ing peo­ple ill with fly­ing resin par­ti­cles and gen­er­ally shift­ing the mood to one of lethargy and much pique. Then there was our lion-hearted Adrian who was try­ing with all his might to tame his wild design nature and find a gen­tler approach. Diego, our man of straw, seemed to have lost his hand­bag know-how. Glenda, The Good Witch of the North was played by Christina, who this week and every week has the keen­est obser­va­tions of the other con­tes­tants’ work as well as per­forms some kind of enchant­ment with one acces­sory or another. Rich, the Wiz­ard of Oz, may appear to all as sim­ply a high-skilled met­al­smith, yet behind his beard and ham­mer is an arti­san who has com­mand of an orig­i­nal muse. And last, but not least, is our Dorothy, Nina Cortes, who wears those ruby slip­pers with the grace and style of some­one far more expe­ri­enced. She is also going to make it home to the final. And it won’t be because of her Swarovski-studded footwear but because of her rosy out­look: there’s no place like home…there’s no place like home…

Nina’s nat­ural incli­na­tions are always to return to who she is as a designer whether or not it works for the judges — hello, Ariel Fox­man. This week she proved that she is think­ing beyond the show and beyond the chal­lenge. While I have to agree with Fox­man, the back the neck­lace didn’t work with the neck­line of her gar­ment, I loved the idea any­way. With a back­less dress, it would have draped beau­ti­fully. This is exactly what the cos­tume designer did with that glo­ri­ous Van Cleef & Arpels Zip neck­lace for the char­ac­ter of Wal­lis in the film, The King’s Speech. There is some­thing to be said for a designer who thinks about a woman’s body as three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arma­ture. Forty-five year Georg Jensen designer Vivianna Torun Bulow-Hube, known suc­cinctly as Torun, also saw jew­elry this way, and she cre­ated fan­tas­tic pieces for jazz great, Billy Hol­i­day, and in 1992 was pre­sented with the Prince Eugen medal by King Carl XVI Gus­tav of Swe­den. Dorothy wins our hearts because she knows who she is and where she needs to be. Nina only has to click the heels of her kicks and she finds her way back to her own aes­thetic and still pro­vides some­thing unex­pected, despite the twists and turns of the journey.

In the end, it was the kind and dig­ni­fied Adrian who found the courage to accept his fate and who he is as a designer. Sur­pris­ingly, Tin-Man Brian won the chal­lenge although his bag and bollo were more bar­bar­ian chic than KC cou­ture, and his well-conceived and exe­cuted pieces gave us more art than heart. Com­mer­cially speak­ing, Nina’s col­lec­tion would have been the savvier choice. One of the last two design­ers stand­ing was Scare­crow Diego and he had bet­ter get his head in the game for the next chal­lenge, or the crows won’t hes­i­tate to pick his straw to pieces. His chande-labra ear­rings, the bril­liance of a chan­de­lier with the unfor­tu­nate weight of a can­de­labra, would be great in a lighter and wear­able ver­sion. Rich’s jew­elry was my favorite this week. Once the cur­tains were drawn, you could see how he incor­po­rated the motif in his ear­rings into his neck­lace; there was syn­ergy in his effort and the beau­ti­fully ren­dered result. The wiz­ard may want us to see the smoke and mir­rors, yet when the effects clear (or last night’s resin dust set­tles), there is revealed the soul of a designer.

And now it is down five. The yel­low brick road awaits…