Banking on the success of Project Runway, Bravo has launched Tim Gunn's Guide to Style. In the tradition of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Gunn's show brings his inimitable approach to fashion to the people, employing the now-familiar formula of the sixty-minute makeover. The self-nominated participant has her closet decimated, goes shopping, and returns as a reformed, more beautiful version of herself. Along the way, she confronts her demons, learns to walk like a supermodel, and meets a super designer who tells her that she's beautiful. She is shepherded through this process by Gunn and supermodel Victoria Webb, who seems unsure why exactly she's here or what precisely she's supposed to be doing.

Bravo has aired two episodes of Tim Gunn's Guide to Style; I've seen them both (possibly more than once) and I have to say I'm a little disappointed. I loved Gunn's book, A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style, largely because Gunn espouses a "Make It Work" philosophy that I find appealing. I am also drawn to his insistence that fit matters more than fashion; last week, I heard him interviewed on NPR insisting that a trend was only viable if it fit YOUR body. I love that, and I wish we heard more of it from the fashion industry. Unfortunately, it's not what we're getting from Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, which is more interested in creating drama than in teaching style strategies.

Of course, comparisons to TLC's What Not To Wear and its hosts, Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, are inevitable. WNTW is all about teaching participants strategies for getting dressed, and Kelly and London do a terrific job of achieving this end, both in their presentation of The Rules and in their roles as shopping coaches. It also helps that Kelly and London seem to have a genuine rapport, while Webb and Gunn constantly look as though they've just met and are having a difficult time remembering each other's names.

I am not alone in this sense that Webb and Gunn lack chemistry. Amber at Radar Reviews finds the show both predictable and irritating:

With forgettable supermodel Veronica Webb by his side, Gunn's take on the purge feels more like a dry heave. Instead of hurling heinous items into an Oscar the Grouch trashcan like kingmakers Clinton Kelly and Stacy London of TLC's behemoth What Not to Wear, Gunn hems and haws to his subject, "Are you sure you want to keep that? Reeeally sure?" He then frets that he and Webb care too much and assures the weary, "In the end it's just clothes."

Paloma at La Dolce Vita agrees: "I'm sad to report that I have found the show uninspiring until now. There wasn't anything particularly original about it and as much as I love Tim Gunn, I feel like Stacy and Clinton from What Not to Wear are much more entertaining to watch."

The show also falls flat in the actual styling of the participants. What Not To Wear is, at it's heart, all about finding clothes that work for the participant's life and personal style; Tim Gunn seems determined to recast the women on his show as New York fashionistas, regardless of what they do every day or where they will be going after he takes their clothes and makes them over. In the first show, he sets participant Karen up with a "dog walking outfit," which consists of a snappy halter dress with a shrug, a beautiful handbag and a dainty pair of shoes. Despite the fact that she looked truly lovely, I found myself thinking that a pair of khaki shorts and some athletic inspired shoes might be a better choice for walking the dog.

At hear, though, Gunn does have the right idea; he arms participants with a list of ten must-have items, including a day dress, a trench coat, and a great pair of jeans. While the show seems to err on the side of fashion over practicality, the list can be put to good use by anyone. Amanda at Art of the Steal offers her own version of Gunn's basic wardrobe: ten pieces (okay, eleven, plus a suit, to fill the "bonus trendy item" category) all from Target, for under $500.00. Her choices are chic and classic and versatile, and frankly far more practical than most of what the participants on Guide to Style wound up with.

I'm not giving up on Tim Gunn's Guide to Style just yet; it's worth the effort if only for the moments when Gunn and Webb disagree about what the participants should wear. In the first episode, Gunn met Webb's suggestion that Karen pair a baby doll top with a pair of leggings with a horrified scream that brought back fond memories of Carson Kressley. In the end, though, I don't think it will have the staying power of What Not To Wear; it's a more ephemeral look at what it takes to be fashionable, as opposed to how you can pragmatic strategy session about getting dressed every morning.

Susan Wagner writes about fashion at Friday Style and The Working Closet, and about everything else at Friday Playdate. For the next week, she will be taking the Tim Gunn challenge and wearing ONLY ten things from her closet. You can see what she chooses and how she makes it work here.,