In the summer of 2021, my sister Lauren and I appeared on the second season of LEGO Masters on FOX. These breakdowns delve into each episode and talk about the process behind the build, the challenges Lauren and I faced, and the stories of our finished products.
When we saw popped-collar Will posing with a photographer as we walked in, I had two thoughts: 1) he’s weirdly good at this, and 2) uh oh. We have to build fashion.
My first guess was that we might have to build an item of clothing, like a dress. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought we’d be asked to build a hat that could stand on our heads hands-free for 5 seconds, and make it down a catwalk. Just insane.
Then we heard the dimension requirements for the challenge: 100 studs (2.5 feet) wide by 60 bricks (two feet) tall. What?!?
Lauren and I pulled the color red from our garment bag. It’s a bold, bright color that actually posed quite a challenge for us. Red is dramatic, seductive, powerful, violent--not the usual emotions we go for in our builds. We took longer to figure out our concept in this challenge than any other. Lauren is a fashionista, but crazy LEGO hat fashion is a bit different than real fashion. No ideas were hitting, until finally, I reached into the depths of my fantasy-obsessed brain and pulled out...a phoenix! It’s powerful, striking, and of course, red. I also liked the dynamism of a phoenix rising from the ashes. It seemed like a strong image, and would make Dumbledore proud. Lauren took a bit of convincing, but soon she was on board.
I got to work building a ring that could fit around Lauren’s head. This was our first challenge where we weren’t building off a baseplate, which comes with its own challenges when the baseplate is your teammate’s head. I then built a curved brim stretching out 100 studs wide--to make sure we had that requirement locked, and to hopefully add a fashion flair with the curvature. I imagined the brim and dome of the hat would be black, to look like “ashes” for the phoenix to rise from. While this was happening, Lauren started working on the phoenix wings with red wedges and lots of translucent orange, yellow, and clear plates.
One thing I was very concerned about was weight. I knew Lauren would have to wear this thing down a runway, and I didn’t want it to crush her skull. So I tried to build the main dome of the hat with SNOT technique, using lightweight plates on the side. But then I remembered...the hat needs to be strong, too. It needs to support an entire phoenix build on top. So I started over from scratch, and built up the base of the hat with straight brick (sorry, Lauren’s head!) This technique is a little more blocky, but also creates a smoother look that enabled me to build translucent “embers” crawling up the dome.
While this was happening, Lauren got to work on the fire ribbons: a late idea to make our creation look distinctively like a hat, and not like a phoenix model on top of Lauren’s head. They ended up being one of our favorite features!
Something that changed significantly over the course of the build was the pose of the phoenix. When the Brickmasters came around halfway through the build, I told them I was planning to have the phoenix wings stretched backward, to be more like a feathered cap. The judges suggested that I give the phoenix a more dynamic pose, where we could clearly see its face and all the work we put into the fiery wings. I then adjusted the pose to have the head facing sideways, so its eye was clearly visible, and moved one wing to be at a 90 degree angle from the other. This was an awesome note from the Brickmasters that definitely made our hat better!
With 3 hours left, the judges and Will hit us with something we knew had to happen eventually: a twist. They said we had to not only build a hat, but an accessory as well. Lauren and I looked down at all her fire ribbon panels, and knew we could build a big necklace out of them, connected by Mixel joints. I went to build an amulet, which we decided should look like the eye of the phoenix. What it ended up looking like was the eye of Sauron, but I didn’t mind. I’m a HUGE Lord of the Rings fan, so this felt like a perfect way to pay homage to my favorite film trilogy and favorite LEGO theme.
With an hour left to go, I scrambled to finish the phoenix eye amulet while putting finishing touches on the phoenix tail. We had spent a lot of time building up the flames on top of the “ashes,” so I did some touch-up work to make sure the fire looked vibrant and alive. Lauren had effectively draped the fire ribbons around the hat, and we crossed them in the middle for a more striking composition. Thank goodness for the flexibility of those Mixel joints! Lauren also built pools of lava on the brim of the hat out of translucent plates. Finally, the build time was over, but we couldn’t rest easy. We still had the runway.
Lauren had practiced with the hat a couple times, and we found that it was most comfortable and fit the best when she wore a beanie underneath. We got really good at picking the hat up and putting it back down on the mannequin, and thank goodness the bricks held together each time we did. When it was time for Lauren to go out on that runway, I gained a whole new appreciation for stage moms.
Lauren did incredible. She was completely confident the entire time, and worked the runway like she’s been doing it for years. She did a striking pose at the end--we had done some coaching sessions on just how to pose the eyebrows--and she was able to easily balance the hat for 5 seconds. She turned back very quickly, giving me a minor heart attack, but the hat stayed together! The ribbons added a nice flair at the back, and you could still see the phoenix’s eye staring you down, even when she turned around. She effortlessly did one final pose, and was done. I was so proud of her.
We then had to put the hat on one more time for a runway walk with all the contestants, and thankfully it still held together for judging. This challenge was easily the hardest thing we’d ever been asked to build out of LEGO, and the most outrageous. I still am not quite sure how we pulled it off, but I’m really proud of what we were able to build, and even more proud of my sister for making that phoenix rise on the runway!
As Will said during her walk, “the Pheonix never goes out of style. It always finds a way to rise from the ashes.”
