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Fashion Don'tTim Gunn's Guide to Style disappoints.

By Troy PattersonPosted Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007, at 5:06 PM ET

Tim GunnTim Gunn's Guide to Style (Bravo, Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET) introduces audiences to several new dimensions of the television personality's television personality—none of them especially attractive. Fans of Project Runway adore Gunn for the elegant balance of frankness, tact, and pep he brings to den-mothering that show's aspiring fashion designers. He's been nothing but a silver-haired sweetheart, and his catchphrase—"Make it work!"—is as sturdy as a World War II slogan or Bauhaus directive.

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Thus, it was disappointing, when watching this new makeover fantasy, to discover a new superciliousness in his tone and a noxious haughtiness in his demeanor. Downer! And it was off-putting that Guide to Style takes a soporific hour to reform the dress sense of one single lass. Drag! But Gunn still has a warm shine in his eyes, so I'll blame his producers.

What that committee has done is to class up TLC's What Not To Wear. This was its first mistake. What Not To Wear is shamefully watchable precisely because it's just classy enough to be respectable—and not one pearl fancier than that minimum requirement. It's democratic like that—plain-spoken and common-sensical, sweetly squawking and invitingly cheesy—which helps its pop-therapy lessons ("Girl, stop wearing that burlap bag to work and let your inner beauty free!") go down smoothly. Guide to Style is too glazed and slick for its own good, too clinical and forensic to be any fun. Oh, also: It conflates self-help thinking with luxury shopping in a way that makes me want to burn down Saks.

Consider the case of unfortunate Rebecca, Gunn's project in the first episode, a young Manhattan thing who hasn't worn a dress in two and a half years. In her introductory montage, Rebecca moons about her lack of confidence. Watching this tape, Gunn asks his sleek sidekick, the fast-quipping model Veronica Webb, "How can you have confidence if you don't own your look?" The pair coach Rebecca to purchase the clothes on Gunn's list of basics, which he seems to have picked up at Mount Sinai. These include the basic black dress, the trench coat, the classic white shirt, the cashmere sweater, and, my favorite, "the sweatsuit alternative."

This is all well and good—as is the earthy lingerie expert who teaches Rebecca how to buy a bra and keeps the show from feeling entirely bloodless. But what are we to make of the "Life Stylist" who brings Rebecca to a higher plane with an exercise involving funhouse mirrors? (Lesson: "You have to be confident. You have to pick a mirror in life.") Or that creepy feeling that sweeps over you when Gunn, unbidden, presents Rebecca's husband with a platinum engagement ring to replace the dinky thing he'd bought for her a couple years back? Or the fact that by the time Gunn and Webb—and designer X, and name-brand hairstylist Y, and product-placement makeup maven Z—are done with Rebecca, she looks like every third fembot having drinks on Park Avenue South? This show reads like a Pygmalion fantasy by way of Sex and the City and the ad department at Elle. Gunn does not make it work.

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Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.

Photograph of Tim Gunn by Virginia Sherwood/Bravo.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

Having listened to Tim Gunn's podcasts for Project Runway I am not surprised to hear that his new show comes across poorly. He is fabulous on Project Runway, but it is clear listening to him recap each episode that he has no small amount of priggish and fashion world condescension to share. "How can one be confident if you don't own your look?" reads like "How can you be confident looking unfashionable," a mystery I doubt he'd ever solve.

Thanks for the review. I too enjoy the spunk and friendly big sister advice from What Not To Wear. I prefer my fashion advisers not to take themselves or fashion too seriously, I'll skip Tim's show and wait for Project Runway's next season.

--michellereen

(To reply, click here.)

If someone's going to critique the contents of my underwear drawer, I'd take Gunn and Webb over those witchy English broads any day

All of those makeover shows have a creepy American self-actualization by way of consumerism vibe. Although what the image guru said is kind of true: "I can't control how others perceive me; all I can control is how I present myself." Definitely easier if you have a lot of money to spend on self-presentation, however.

The recommended list of items was very sensible and the subject/fashion victim did look better at the end; I don't always feel that way about makeovers.

Lastly, Tim Gunn has inhabited the world of fashion for 30 years; why wouldn't one expect him to have very strongly held opinions? I might not care about or agree with his views on the proper stiletto height -- I think stilettos are ridiculous -- but I'm not surprised that he has them.

--SlateReader

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The show is a disaster, and that's what happens when you have too much ego behind the scenes. Project Runway is a great show and smartly, M. Gunn is neither onscreen too much, nor too little; like a pinch of salt, he's used to good effect there. But too much of Tim Gunn is, well, way too much. Just reading his Project Runway blog gives you a taste of the supercilious bore behind the kindly mentor persona. With one blow, he casually stabs two of the most original designers, Jay McCarroll and Santino Rice, in the back by saying of Santino something like, "Well, he just couldn't win, oh goodness no, not after Jay, or the whole show would be a joke, just some circus act with those two eccentric characters."

I have news for him as well as for the producers of that show: Project Runway was damn lucky to have had those two talented "eccentrics." Jay McCarroll, unloved child of the franchise, remains superbly gifted, my favorite designer of any season, and Santino Rice is happily living his dream in LA, designing for big shots, no thanks to snobs like Tim Gunn, who seemed to have barely understood Mr. Rice's warmth, humility and kindness on Gunn's filmed trip to Rice's home at the end of the second season. Sadly, talented people from the wrong side of the tracks do not seem to inspire folks like Tim Gunn, so I don't trust the guy and wouldn't want to spend an hour watching him redo some lady's closet.

--pattycap

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(9/13)

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