In series, Gunn offers wardrobe wisdom

Gunn has had experience coaching women.

WASHINGTON POST

Everyone can’t look picture-perfect, said fashion guru Tim Gunn, but you can always look better.

“That’s often where we start,” he said, “by asking the question. Start where you are now, and do you think you can look better?”

Invariably, the answer is yes. In a new hourlong, eight-week series, “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style” (10 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo), he and former model Veronica Webb will coach women on how to look their best.

The makeovers will include lessons on determining the most flattering clothes choices for individual body types; rethinking a wardrobe (by sorting items in one of four piles: keepers, menders, throwaways and giveaways); shopping for new clothes; hair and makeup sessions; and a dramatic “reveal” at the end of each episode.

Viewers who have seen Gunn mentor aspiring designers on three seasons of Bravo’s “Project Runway” know he “can be incredibly critical but never crushing,” Webb said.

The program has an educational component, said Gunn, who taught at and was chair of the fashion design department at Parsons the New School for Design in New York. But, he added, “there’s a lot of emotion that bubbles up in the course of doing the show.”

Gunn, a District of Columbia native, is chief creative officer at Liz Claiborne Inc. Besides discussing his new show, he also talked with us about:

•Living in D.C.: “I feel lucky to have grown up in Washington because it’s a cultural wonderland. It was like growing up in a giant cultural candybox. And living with the Smithsonian’s resources, and the Corcoran, and the Phillips Collection and the Kennedy Center. My family, because they are really committed to the arts, we took advantage of all those things.”

•The cost of being chic: “One can be fashionable on a small budget. Thanks to places like H&M and Forever 21 and even Banana Republic, it can be cheap.”