Mischa Barton: PR: Seth Aaron

Oh, poodles. We're a little speechless over this one. And by "speechless," we mean we're going to write a couple hundred words about it.

Certainly no one can accuse us of having anything against SA. We were fans of his work as soon as we saw his portfolio (and most of the comments in the comment section disagreed with us at the time) and we've been applauding his designs in the competition without fail.

But there are two major issues with Seth Aaron's work, both in the competition and generally. One, that as technically proficient and well-made his clothing is, it does sometimes come across a little dated and two, his work is very, very repetitive.

We'll deal with the first point later (like, when we get to his finale collection), but looking at this week's entry...

Model: Kristina Sajko

There's simply no way we can avoid talking about the elements he uses over and over again. Look, Laura made too many beaded or lace cocktail dresses, Nick made too many fishtail hems, Christian went the puffy-sleeved route one (or two or three) times too many. The nature of the competition practically requires that a designer keep reaching into their trickbag when they're low on creativity.

But we're shocked that more wasn't made of the fact that this coat is not just a retread of previous jackets in the competition, it's more like a combination of all of them so far.

Perhaps the judges were so distracted by this seizure-inducing getup that they forgot to mention. We'd love to point out the parts of this look that we like, but we suggest you click on the "Seth Aaron" label at the bottom of this post to read them, because why bother writing the same thing all over again? We liked the bodice of this coat the other 3 times he made it in the competition. In fact, we'd probably be singing the praises of this coat had we not seen its sister already.

But man, we do NOT love the additions he made to it. Those sleeves are ridic and that collar and yoke treatment are big and clumsy.

And while we agree that this outfit needed bright pops of color, we're not convinced the yellow works because, coupled with the black stripes, we can't help but be reminded of crime scene tape.

And if we were perhaps slightly less clever bloggers, we would tie that into a joke about the crime he did to her ladybits but its Sunday morning and beautiful out so we'll refrain so we can get out of here and stuff ourselves on brunch. Suffice it to say, those pants are the worst single item Seth Aaron has made all season.

Designers always burn out at this point and slap something together just to make it to the finals. It's not a crime that he did a retread. It's just that this is not the first time during the competition he did that, which makes this a retread of a retread.

And what REALLY bothers us about all the entries this week, with the exception of the top and bottom looks, is how they eschewed making clothing and went straight to making dangerously literal circus costumes. Even worse than the retread is the fact that he basically made a slightly jacked up ringmaster's costume, which isn't particularly imaginative of him.

Tim Gunn's Workroom:

Extended Judging: