Fashion designer Henry Holland has gone full-on Gok Wan as the presenter of Channel 4’s latest fashion makeover series, The Changing Room. With cameras rigged in changing rooms across the country (although mostly Birmingham, Oxford Street and London’s Westfield stores so far), Holland is seen lurking around high-street stores (“I’m dusting off my shop-assistant’s badge!”) in order to guide shoppers through “the trauma of the changing room”. Meanwhile, we’re invited to sit back and watch shoppers strip down to their undies like a bunch of sartorially minded peeping toms.
In the age of Asos, no one uses changing rooms any more – but we do watch a lot of reality TV, and that’s where the real appeal of The Changing Room lies. Episode one was easily as well cast as First Dates or Gogglebox, from bezzie mates Carl and Sandy in need of matching outfits for Pride (and unable to get in and out of various tight-fitting ensembles without each other’s assistance), to straight-talking, stylish over-50s Mo and Sheila, who aren’t about to take fashion advice from anyone, least of Holland, who they never actually meet.
In this sense, The Changing Room veers away from the traditions of other makeover shows – there’s certainly no barricading customers, Trinny and Susannah-style, within four mirrored walls until they cry and give in to wearing a waist belt or a blazer. There’s no Pod, singling out shoppers to criticise and insisting that what they choose to wear will make others want to Snog, Marry or Avoid them – almost everyone here shops in pairs or groups, giving each other questionable but, crucially, entertaining advice. Even “Slimmer of the Year” couple Dean and Lucy’s shopping experience seems relatively “trauma”-free and Holland’s radical “intervention” sees him simply suggest that Lucy try wearing – wait for it – monochrome.
Both episodes one and two include the requisite group of “lads-lads-lads”, from whom Holland notably steers well clear, offering advice via a post-production voiceover (where it is presumably of no use whatsoever, but who could blame him.) Even eighteen-year-old Brooke, who’s determined to show an ex-boyfriend what he’s missing (via the medium of bodycon) doesn’t get the Holland treatment, but instead receives fashion advice from sales assistant Sophia.
“I’m psycho,” says Brooke at one point. (Is shopping usually so confessional?)
“I’m psycho, too,” admits Sophia, darkly.
The pair got on so well that it would hardly have been surprising to learn they had sacked off the dress shopping entirely and gone to Faces together wearing whatever they damn well liked. But, more importantly, their changing-room chat made for great telly, and it would be even less surprising to see Brooke scouted for Towie, or the like, at a later date.
The series has its downsides: by the second episode, it’s evident the “Hooray Henry” mock-cartoon strip aimed at solving tired “fashion dilemmas” is to be a regular feature. Lazy stereotyping abounds when it comes to men and shopping, and Holland indulges an intriguing skirt rule that I haven’t heard since my school days: “If it’s above your fingertips, you’re a whore!” Will careless customer comments about covering up with a burka and gratuitous shots of changing-room twerking, which might easily have been edited out, be forgiven with a little Bake Off-style innuendo – “Everyone loves an extra half-inch” says Holland, knowingly, while advising on shoe-heel height – only time will tell.
While Holland can sometimes seem more like a fashion commentator than a presenter, he does play host to his very own “magical changing room” – another recurring feature, where one person really is told that they’re doing it at least a little bit wrong (there it is: episode one, a waist belt). But even he can’t take the dry ice billowing from underneath the curtain seriously, and walks an enjoyable line between fashion authority – “I’m an international fashion designer!” – and man with vague interest in clothes: “I wasn’t around in the 60s, but I’ve seen pictures.”
Episode one goes straight for the big time with a section on wedding dresses, which Holland promptly undercuts by explaining that, “Every single one of these beads and sequins would have been sewn on by hand by a really skilled, artisan … beads person.” For all his famous friends (Alexa Chung tweeted to say she was watching the first instalment – Holland, meanwhile, live-tweeted the whole thing), it’s refreshing to see a host who refuses to take fashion so seriously.
