Why HJTV’s Glamour isn’t in style
Somebody call the fashion police: The new HJTV fashion guide, Glamour, is a crime against good taste. There is little to recommend it, unless one decides to accept it as a parody, though it is doubtful that was what its producers intended.
Dessia Braithwaite, the runway regular turned beauty queen, adds TV host to her resume. She shouldn’t quit her day job. Her debut can best be described as the equivalent of a spill on the catwalk–you know that you should look away but you can’t help yourself. In between dispensing dispensable advice (buy jeans that fit!), Dessia was ill at ease in front of the camera and her verbal gaffes were numerous.
Like during the segment on designer sunshades, in which she mispronounced the designer brand “Dolce and Gabanna.” (Phonetically, it’s not “Dol-say,” it’s “Dol-che.”) Now, in the case of the layman who doesn’t dabble in designer duds, that is expected, excusable even. But in the case of the supposedly-in-the-know host of a fashion guide, a veritable beauty queen with international experience under her tiara, and a fashion model to boot, its just plain heresy. (Her repeated reference to “a sunglass” didn’t help her case much.) After the initial surprise wore off, one couldn’t help but cringe.
The show’s unscripted format was more than Dessia seemed capable of handling. She lacked fluency during many of the voiceovers–a recurring problem among HJTV hosts–and her attempts to adopting a conversational tone were unconvincing. This was largely due to her unnatural demeanour, which seemed put on. It created a wall between her and the viewers.
But Dessia can’t be blamed entirely for Glamour’s shortfalls. Her missteps were only amplified by the show’s poor production. Throughout, the camera was trained at odd angles, the editing was choppy and the audio and video were out of sync.
The segment on jeans consisted of a series of shots of models in awkward poses over an endless loop of pop songs. No matter how tight you focus on a model’s shapely backside, it still doesn’t make up for a bad shot. And the models themselves didn’t seem to take the taping seriously, smiling and shifting during the takes.
Ultimately, Glamour suffers from the problem that beset its predecessor In Style from the very start: it’s not a TV show; it’s an infomercial. In Style is a half-hour infomercial for Clairans, while Glamour appears to be the same for the Changing Room and Kings Jewellery World. The distinction ought to be made. But In Style excels by the sheer quality of its superior production, including the use of professional models and proper editing. Glamour, on the other hand, desperately needs a makeover.