Mischa Barton: Of Toilet Paper Dresses and Clown Fish Pants

Yikes!

"I'm scared of children. They are very small."

Exactly, Jonathan! And they have pointy teeth! And they move quickly so you can't see them coming at you with their little tiny knives!

We sympathize, brother.

Model: Brandise Danesewich

But our sympathy ends at the end of the runway. Honey, we don't know WHAT you were thinking here.

On the one hand, you dress up a 6-year-old like a cosmetics company executive making a presentation at a shareholder's meeting...

And then, when you realize you've dressed your tyke up like a 45-year-old, you decide to rectify that by dressing your adult model like the Kleenex Fairy.

There's just nothing we get about these outfits from beginning to end. Jonathan said he'd been planning all along to play it safe until he got to the mid-point and then unleash the crazy on the judges. There are two things wrong with this plan: 1)We're not at the midpoint yet and 2)Unleashing the crazy when there are fewer competitors only makes it more likely your entries will wind up with the lowest scores. Hello? Do we have to teach these contestants EVERYTHING? We're thinking of offering online courses for potential reality show contestants. You can get your T Lo degree in 6 weeks or less and sit back and wait for the money to come blowing through your front door! Offer void in most states.

We laughed at Nina's reaction to putting a bolero on a 6-year-old, "Where is she GOING?" Nina darling, ALL the best kindergartens have after-school cocktail parties, didn't you know?

And unfortunately, this was just a shapeless mess.

Had he managed some sort of definable waist and done something with a little form and structure around the neckline, he could have sailed by but even then, he'd still have the problem that his big girl dress looks nothing like his little girl dress.

Darlings, we had to watch through our splayed fingers. You know what a harrowing experience it can be watching someone you like on television make really bad mistakes that you KNOW are going to result in disaster. Amy Sarabi in an original Lifetime television event: "Not Without my Clown Fish Pants."

When she first started laying out her fish scales, we were all, "Oh, that could be interesting..." But then she mentioned pants and we were all, "Oh no, girl. Get out of the house! The crazy design ideas are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!" But no, she had to go and walk down those basement stairs with the lights turned off. Result?

Model: Alison Gingerich

Horror.

Here's what gets us about this. Once she had all the scales cut and assembled, the main chunk of the work was done. Very early on in the process of affixing them to pants, she should have realized she was making clown clothes. At that point, had she course-corrected by making a clown fish skirt instead of pants? It might have been cute, actually.

How can you put something like this together and not realize how bad it looks? It's like a psychedelic chicken costume. Totally H.R. Pufnstuf.

Our other problem (as if the idea of psychedelic chicken pants isn't enough) is just how raggedy-ass these scales look. It's like she started off with an interesting idea (color scales) and then executed it as badly as she possibly could.

And we do like the color scheme here. Let's bring the lovely and talented Miss Tory Burch out onstage to give her thoughts. Tory?

"I don't really feel these colors work together. I'm not sure that blue and orange are that complementary."

Tory Burch Fall 2010 Collection
Model: Angelika Kocheva

Now, it's possible she meant she wasn't sure that the particular shades of blue and orange used in these clown fish pants don't look all that great together, but Tory was sloppy with her phrasing and thus, we're afraid she can never be allowed back on Project Runway as a guest judge.

Moving on...

This was almost cute, but still a little weird. What's with the half-sweater over a shirt thing? Paired with a skirt over tights, she looks a little "post-apocalyptic ragamuffin." Like a background player in a Disney musical remake of Mad Max.

In the end, she made a couple of cartoon outfits. We don't get them. We don't like them.

As the Duchess said, you can't just be weird for weird's sake and that's definitely the vibe she was giving off this week. She was so wrapped up in her crazy idea that she couldn't step back and see that it looked just plain crazy.

Tim Gunn's Workroom:

Extended Judging: