Fashion Model: Seth Aaron's SolarWorld Collection (Updated)

Here comes the sun.

Season 7 Project Runway winner Seth Aaron presented a collection at Portland Fashion Week inspired by sponsor SolarWorld.

"When I toured the SolarWorld factory, I was looking to build on my ideas for a solar-inspired runway collection. As I wandered, I picked up this product here, touched that material there, took a photo of a pattern, looked inside a furnace. Everywhere, I found spaces that looked graphic, rigid, metal. For my designs, I didn't so much form ideas as gut impressions. My interpretations are futuristic, exaggerated and dramatic. I want people to remember them. After all, solar is our future."

With all due respect to Seth Aaron, we don't love this collection and we don't really think it was the right direction for a PR-winning designer to go 6 months post-win. To be fair, there are some pieces we like; like the black and white leather dress, the black patent dress with the red trim, the Dior-esque striped dress with the exaggerated hips and the black dress following that, with its origami skirt and hints of a stripe. But most of the rest of it is a little too conceptual and experimental. It just doesn't appeal to us at all.

EDITED TO ADD: Seth Aaron just told us this ISN'T his Spring 2011 collection as we originally thought. Rather, "This was nothing more then a pure fun project for SolarWorld which was all theater/costume with your not so typical textiles like an art project." Which renders any criticisms we had completely moot. Seth A tells us his first "real" collection will be for Fall 2011. Can't wait to see it!