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Designing Women—and Men
Gathering the final four applicants at the Estée Lauder corporate
headquarters on 5th Avenue,
Mr. Trump gave his wannabes a suitably
stylish assignment. Their
task: to design and manufacture original
staff uniforms for Embassy Suites hotels. The corporations would have their
dueling visions fabricated by professional designers and see them come to
life, courtesy of models strutting their stuff on the catwalk. The winning
designs would be chosen by the hotel employees.
Synergy's simpatico
Allie and
Roxanne acted like co-project managers,
with Allie officially grabbing the brass ring of leadership. Gold Rush was
equally in sync, with
Lee stepping up as PM, hoping to secure
another victory before the final two weeks of the 15-week interview process.
Fashion Victims vs. the Comfort Zone
The corporations received identical marching orders from Embassy Suites'
execs that the new uniforms should be "upscale but informal." Nonetheless,
Allie and
Roxanne of Synergy heard the siren song of
high fashion while
Sean and
Lee of Gold Rush took their cue directly
from the employees.
After extensive interviews with the staff,
Gold Rush decided to update the uniforms' look only slightly, emphasizing
comfort and utility. Sean and Lee meshed well together, with Sean showing a
real flair for fabrics coupled with a straightforward sense of design.
Still, PM Lee worried that "Perhaps the employees want something flashy, but
they just don't know it."
Synergy was more confident, especially fashion-forward Allie, who pushed for
culottes for the housekeepers and short skirts for the front desk staff.
Allie was so forceful, in fact, that Roxanne thought the powerhouse PM was
being
rude to their designer. Adding insult to
injury, after Allie finished bossing him around, she called him by the wrong
name. Still, Roxanne said, "I'm confident we're going to win. We made the
uniforms more stylish, we made them more now, more trendy." Yet ultimately,
it wasn't her call. The Embassy Suites employees would decide after the
runway show whether they preferred the
clean lines and solid comfort of Gold Rush or the fashionable flash of
Synergy.
Suite Revenge and Sparkling Convo
Sean and
Lee felt confident after the positive
reactions of the Embassy Suites employees at the runway show. Sure enough,
Allie and
Roxanne's frocks flopped. Synergy's designs
were deemed "too edgy and not practical" by the staff, who said "Gold Rush
rocks. The style looks fresh and warm." Gold Rush won the vote, 83 to 37,
prompting
Don Jr. to joke that it looked like Sean's
"metrosexuality paid off."
After beating Synergy, Sean dedicated the win to a former teammate and
pizza date. "Tammy,
baby, that was for you darling," he said, and blew her a kiss. Sometimes,
victory is its own reward, but Sean and Lee also got to enjoy an
intimate meal with the two people that know Trump best:
Ivanka and
Don Jr. Dinner conversation turned to
Sean's crush on Tammy and the younger Trumps' take on their dad. When Sean
asked what people don't know about The Donald, Invanka offered, "He wears a
pink bathrobe." And Don Jr. joked that it wasn't always easy being a Trump
kid: "We're in the boardroom almost every day." It probably felt that way to
Roxanne and Allie, too, who would once again soon find themselves at the
mercy of Trump.
Double Whammy: From Bosom Buddies to
Bloody Backstabbers
Wasting no time,
Mr. Trump tore into Synergy's lousy
performance. When
Allie tried to defend their designs as
cutting edge,
Ivanka cut her down: "You did a great job
implementing an
ultimately bad design." Ivanka also pointed
out that Synergy's khaki kitchen uniforms would be impossible to clean. A
defensive Allie countered by saying that her culottes for the housekeepers
and pleated skirts for the desk staff were also partly
Roxanne's doing.
Just before the boardroom, Roxanne had said, "I'm not going to throw Allie
under the bus, just to get one step closer to being the Apprentice." But
after Allie started to push her under the wheels of the bus by making her
the scapegoat, Roxanne returned the favor. "Allie did not have respect for
the experts we were working with," she told Trump. Allie responded that her
friend was "more difficult to work with than me—I'm a chameleon." The back
and forth grew just as contentious as the previous week when they had
ganged up on Tammy. Allie and Roxanne's
profound disloyalty raised Trump's ire. "In all of the boardrooms that I've
had," he said, "I've never seen two people that were closer than you two.
And then at the end, what do you do? Attack each other? Unbelievable..." The
only remedy for Trump's double disappointment was to seriously unload on
this disloyal duo: "Roxanne, Allie—you're
both fired."
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