So when Salt Lake City designer Keith Bryce, owner of the Filthy Gorgeous boutique, talked on Wednesday night's show about life in Utah - and uttered the words, "being gay in Salt Lake City is really difficult" - things weren't looking good for him on this week's challenge of making an evening dress inspired by a New York City street scene.

Later, when he told a competitor, "I'm not even close to being done," it was like hearing a cop in an action movie say he's two days from retirement. (Even worse, Bryce learned at the last minute that his model had dropped out of the competition.)

Sure enough, when Bryce's design (pictured at left) - suggested by a torn-up magazine he spotted on a New York sidewalk - hit the runway, it got trashed. "Like toilet paper caught in a windstorm" is how judge Michael Kors described it. Bryce was in the bottom 3 competitors facing elimination.

But, somehow, Bryce avoided host Heidi Klum's "Auf Wiedersehen," so he lives to sew another day. Instead, Emily - a 27-year-old designer from Sacramento, Calif. - was eliminated.