Mischa Barton: PR:The Three Faces of Mila

Sunday, March 28, 2010

PR:The Three Faces of Mila

Rainblow.

Oh, Mila. You saucy little minx, you. You defy categorization like a reality show sphinx. On the one hand, there is the crazy, paranoid Mila who has meltdowns because models don't pick her first for dodge ball or who pouts because no one praised her for making 2nd place. On the other hand, you have the quiet, competent Mila, who turns out judge-orgasming work over and over (even if we can't quite work up the moans to join in). And then on the extraneous third hand, you have the designer who can't seem to do anything but make exactly one style of garment over and over again, to the judges' disappointment. It's like getting 3 contestants for the price of one.

This week, we got an appearance by Mila #3, who has been the dominant Mila for a few weeks now. It's color-blocking time, kittens. Again.

This is, by far, the least sophisticated of the prints offered this week. And that's saying something, because while we thought the challenge was fun and the results eminently discussable, sophistication wasn't the name of the game for a lot of the print-designing efforts. Lots of blacks and really bright, saturated colors with bold graphic elements in that pool of offerings.

Model: Brandise Danesewich

And yet, here's Mila, outdoing them all in the race away from sophistication this week, with a dress that looks like it was designed by an 8 year old with an 8-count Crayon box and a piece of scrap paper.

Minions, we hate this print so much and were so appalled at its lack of effort - this looks like what every single person did the very first time they opened MS Paint - that we felt she should have been auf'd on it alone.

This is, after all, a design competition and while none of the other print designs were going to win applause for intricacy or anything, everybody else tried to something a little more interesting than identical equidistant parallel lines in a range of a handful of drab colors. It's like a rainbow flag for really depressed gay people.

Oh right, there was a dress too. We forgot about that. And really, how could we have forgotten this dazzling, unforgettable dress, kittens? Any woman wearing this dress can be assured that every man in the room won't be able to take his eyes off her. Mainly because she'll remind them all of their favorite lawn chair.

From a strict design perspective, we don't mind the jacket. But with this dress? Totally incongruous.

But then she did THIS, poodles. Ew.

To be fair, we did like the straps. It was, no lie, the ONLY thing we liked about this entire look.

It was a stiff, poorly designed (BARELY designed), uninteresting mess and in our opinion was easily the most auf'able of the looks. Anthony's was not good and we knew he was going to go sooner or later, but this was worse by several orders of magnitude.

But, she's been handpicked by the judges. It's possible she won't make it to the finals, because they have made a point of criticizing her constant color-blocking, but they clearly liked her early on and find it hard to send her on her way because of that initial favorable impression.

Tim Gunn's Workroom:

Extended Judging: