Mischa Barton: PR: Mila Goes for the Gold

Monday, April 5, 2010

PR: Mila Goes for the Gold

It's Colorforms fun!

Unfortunately, kittens, Mila did not hold up her end of the bargain this week and subsequently, this will be a shorter-than-usual Mila post. No paranoid fantasies or petulant pouting, no driving the gay designers to total distraction, not even much in the way of smack-talking. For some strange reason, Mila got the crazy idea in her head that she's there to make fashion instead of to provide us with material for our blog.

How selfish of her. For that, we're trashing her dress just because we feel like it.

Model: Kristina Sajko

Look at that disgusting piece of trash.

Oh, we're just kidding. Calm down, Milaniacs. We're a sucker for a black and gold combination. There's something charmingly Studio 54 about it and it's a color combo trending upward in the collections (while the ever present black and silver combo seems to be trending downward). So good on her for sticking to her color-blocking aesthetic while at the same time making it look a little more of the moment instead of '60s mod-inspired.

But don't you worry your fluffy little heads, bitter kittens! We still have criticisms! For one, that silhouette is a little weird and looks badly fitted when viewed from the side. Why does she look so thick around the middle?

Also, the bustline is way too wide and cut too low. The straps are placed too far out on her shoulders, which make her look broader up top than she actually is.

Also also: seams. We can see them from space.

But the back, we kind of loved.

Especially the fact that she used more than one gold. The slight print definitely bumps up the interest factor. Again though, there's an awful lot of puckering going on here.

With only some minor tweaking and more time to work on it, this could have been a crazy-cute little dress. The problem is, when you say to the designers, "red carpet," then you're not really giving them enough information. Red carpet at the Oscars? At a summer blockbuster premiere? At the MTV Awards? The CFDAs? The Met Costume Gala? The Golden Globes? A society benefit? "Red carpet" as a design brief is way too broad, which means you have relatively simple dresses like this competing with dramatic gowns. A girl might wear this dress on the red carpet, but it depends on the event. The designers would be much better off with only a few specifics thrown in to the brief.

Then again, we tend to think that the vague instructions on PR are done on purpose so the designers can look confused and stressed trying to figure it out and the judges can make any sort of decision and apply any sort of criteria they like because they get to decide after the fact what the challenge was supposed to entail.

Tim Gunn's Workroom:

Extended Judging: