TELEVISION: Fashion's straight-shooter

Tim Gunn has fashion victims in his sights on his new show, writes Karen Tay.

Karen Vito is a walking disaster zone. The 41-year-old businesswoman, wife and mother dresses like an 18-year-old party girl tight white jeans, belly-baring tops, skulls, crosses and plenty of eye-popping cleavage.

"Straight up, this look is stripper. All you need is a pole," Tim Gunn tells her on the first episode of Tim Gunn's Guide To Style, a new series that starts screening this Friday on TV3.

The blunt-talking, straight-shooting maestro of fashion, famed for his stint as a judge on Project Runway (where he was renowned for the catchphrase "make it work") is back. And he is presenting his own show this time taking frumpy, ordinary women and attempting to turn them into style goddesses. The programme is based on his book of the same name.

Together with former model Veronica Webb, Gunn brings his unique sense of "Socratic" fashion therapy to the small screen. Speaking on the phone from his New York home, Gunn sounds every bit as articulate and persuasive as his television persona.

"I'm not a fashion spin guy," he says. "I don't offer up a prescription on how every woman can fix herself fashion-wise. I need to ask a lot of probing questions and together with the person, think about how we'll respond to that."

Gunn's credentials are as impeccable as his fashion sense. He was chair of fashion design at Parsons The New School For Design (with branches all over the US) and lectured on fashion at university for 29 years. Then there is the fact that he's always dressed sharply in tailored suits and immaculate snowy-white shirts.

But even the philosophical Gunn admits Vito tested him in more ways than one.

"She was so intractable in her own way about her issues. Had she been later in the series, I would've been a little harder with her."

Gunn sees her stubbornness and denial as ambivalence, and says it is prevalent in society.

"It's push-and-pull. I want it, I don't want it. The risk with changing is always fear of the unknown. I keep reminding them, you can go right back to where you were if you have to but if you do this, you'll accept responsibility and ownership for the fact that you're dressing a certain way. There's a newfound awareness to it."

But he doesn't believe in sacrificing style for comfort.

He suggests that women can dress down but still look chic.

"What we wear sends a message about how we want to be perceived. So many people tell me `I don't wear clothes that follow my silhouette and that fit my form because I want comfort. My response is: if you want to dress to feel as if you never got out of bed ... don't get out of bed!"

Despite all that, Gunn does not come across as a fashion snob. He is simply a man who loves clothes, and has made them his life.

"I say we need clothes, we don't need fashion. We want fashion, we have a fervour for it. The real difference between the two is clothes don't need to change. Fashion, when it's done well, can have a context that's societal, cultural, historical, economic and political. It gives it an emotional dimension clothes simply don't have."

Gunn reluctantly admits the book and show have been categorised as self-help, but wants to remind audiences he doesn't have a psychology degree.

It gets a little "dicey" at times, he says.

"There have been times when I've thought I don't even want to open that door because of what may come out."

As for his personal taboos, he advocates shopping alone to avoid being swayed by well-meaning compliments.

"My method of shopping is surgical strike.

"But I have wonderful, dear friends who will go with me. And then there's these moments when they go `oh my god, look at this coat, you look so fabulous in it.'

"And 20 minutes later I've bought it and I'm thinking at the time `this is exciting'. But then I get home and think `what was I thinking'?"

- © Fairfax NZ News