Flaunt your belly in a midriff-bearing top and you'd probably see Tim Gunn freeze in horror.

'Unless you're wearing a bathing suit and you're at the beach, this is a no go,' said the academic-turned-reality TV star in a phone interview from New York recently.

'Showing too much skin is simply not attractive'.

It's a piece of advice you might want to heed.

After all, the 60-year-old has crafted a career out of telling people just how to make an outfit work.

The former head of fashion design at prestigious New York art school Parsons joined American womenswear label Liz Claiborne as its chief creative officer last March.

He shot to fame as the genial mentor on hit fashion design reality TV show, Project Runway, and now has a project of his own - a new television series called Tim Gunn's Guide To Style. It was launched in the United States last September.

The show, which premiers on English language entertainment channel Sony Entertainment Television (Set) on mioTV (Channel 20) next Wednesday, sees him and model co-host Veronica Webb playing both guru and confidant to self-declared fashion victims.

'Basically, they're in a fashion rut and they want to get out of it,' he says of the contestants on his show.

'My goal is to make them better and to enhance who they are, not to change them'.

Tapping onto a press conference Gunn held in New York last year to promote his new show, Urban culls some fashion dos and don'ts from the style guru.

What is the main challenge you face when working with real women and their fashion issues?

It's really about getting that individual to understand that she's responsible for how she's dressing. The clothes we wear send a message about how we want to be perceived and people need to take responsibility for that.

You've made a career out of helping people with their style. Are there really so many people out there who need sartorial help?

I believe that most people need help. Let me put it this way. They would benefit from help. Do they need it? That's their decision. A major fashion faux pas in America is that most people dress for comfort only. That means their clothes are too big for them and that is not flattering.

What do you want audiences to learn from your show?

To make decisions for themselves. When Veronica and I take the contestants shopping, they're making the decisions. Yes, we're certainly commenting about the decisions but it's about whether those decisions work, why they work, why they don't work. We really want the audience to learn something.

What are your main fashion gripes?

Well, overly large clothes is one. My refrain is, if you want to dress to feel as though you never got out of bed, don't get out of bed. On that note about going for comfort, do you have Crocs in Singapore? I wish they would be banned from this planet. Then there are Uggs. If you don't have them in Singapore, I'm glad. I especially dislike midriff-baring tops because I just don't believe in showing skin that people don't need to see. In the same vein, skirts that are too short are also out.

Share with us one sure-win style formula.

Get clothes that fit well. Women can be stunning and ravishing in anything from a basic black dress to jeans as long as the clothes fit well, just like what a good-fitting tuxedo can do for a man.

You focus a lot on classic wardrobe pieces on your show. What is one trend item that you think women should invest in right now?

The thing about any trend is that one can admire it and say: 'Oh, doesn't that look great?' But what you really have to do is ask yourself: 'Will it look great on me?' Bring as much critical analysis to that as possible. Try everything on, get into the dressing room, get in front of a full-length mirror and ask yourself: 'Do I look good in this?'

In your opinion, which celebrity makes a good style role model?

Angelina Jolie is pretty consistent in dressing well. I tend to like to refer to people like Raquel Welch though - a woman who's not 20 and not a size two, but she's absolutely fabulous. Oprah (Winfrey) is another one.

Is there a celebrity out there whom you'd like to give a makeover?

Can I just tell you, a presidential candidate who's disappointing me, or is trying to do so, is Hillary Clinton. I wish that fashion trajectory that I thought she was on as First Lady had continued. I was very excited when she became the New York senator and now I just find her uniform to be, forgive me, a kind of crashing bore. I wish she'd step it up a notch.

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times on Mar 20, 2008.