I’ve Got Nothing to Wear (2007)

So, I just caught the first two episodes of “I’ve Got Nothing to Wear,” a perfectly awful reality TV show that debuted tonight on TLC.

The concept for the show is great. Three fashion students take a few less than attractive items from a woman’s wardrobe and each make two brand new outfits for her. A fashion professor from the Fashion Institute of Technology mentors the students. And in the meanwhile, a fashion stylist helps the woman shop for a few basic wardrobe pieces, and creates a handbook showing her how to mix and match specific pieces in her wardrobe to form a plethora of different outfits.

Sounds great right? Maybe theoretically, but as any high school student can tell you, communism sounds good theoretically.

The production value on the show was so low, I felt like I was watching something made in the AV studio of a high school, or for a public access cable station. The show is riding on the popularity of other fashion and makeover shows, like Bravo’s “Project Runway” and TLC’s “What Not to Wear.” I love Project Runway and What Not to Wear. I did not love “I’ve Got Nothing to Wear.” And yet I watched it, mostly to delight in how perfectly terrible it was, and because it inspired me to write this ranting review.

The show is a half-hour long, and a lot of things happen in that half-hour. We see a lot of the fashion stylist, Jorge Ramon, sorting through the woman’s closet and taking her shopping. We see a lot of the woman inspecting her new creations. What is missing is really the process of how the three student designers take the old pieces and create new outfits. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Project Runway, where we see the designer’s process of creating an outfit, from sketching to draping material on a dress form, to sewing it, to making last-minute alterations on the model.

The three student designers were different in each episode. They were all 20-something fashion students who mostly were attending the Fashion Institute of Technology, where I believe the show is filmed in a room the size of a large bathroom. All three designers are working in one very small room together, and I literally felt claustrophobic while watching it. For the most part, all the designers and the woman whose wardrobe they are recreating had pretty decent screen presences. And Jorge Ramon, the stylist, was nothing if not enthusiastic.

The guy who seemed so indescribably painfully awkward on camera was the design mentor, George Simonton. Imagine your high school math teacher, the one who wore the big glasses and had the pocket protector and sounded a whole lot like Ben Stein’s character from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Now combine that image with the one of a dorky uncle of yours, one who tries to make jokes but nobody laughs. That’s who is hosting the show. Except instead of wearing a pocket protector, he wears a lot of bracelets, and throws around the word “fabulous” like it’s going out of style. Needless to say, he’s no Tim Gunn, or Stacy London and Clinton Kelly.

Sadly enough, if the show doesn’t get cancelled, I will probably keep watching it. It’s kind of like rubbernecking at the scene of a car crash. You know you shouldn’t look, but it’s so hard not to.