Liberti, Egaliti, Versace!

Part of that appeal, of course, has to do with E!'s linking fashion and celebrity, the same golden combo that's celebrated in In Style magazine. But it's actually on its celeb-free make-over show, "Fashion Emergency," that E! most successfully brings style to the masses. Hosted by Emme, Mode's Belinda Carlisle-esque model and ambassador, "Fashion Emergency" presents the make-over as religious-quest narrative. There is a prayer: A civilian Joe or Jill sends a plea for style help. There is a Grail: a wedding reception, a job interview, an old high school crush to impress. And there is divine intervention: fashion experts Brenda Cooper and the sprightly Leon Hall, a dapper, middle-aged Virgil who guides the disheveled petitioner from clothing store to salon to the inevitable happy ending.

"Fashion Emergency" is every shallow, commercial thing you could accuse a make-over show of being. It's glib, sappy, self-congratulatory. It's about buying self-esteem at Bloomie's; it's a shameless shill for designers. But it is also maybe the first truly populist fashion show on TV. This isn't just because its subjects are not models but real people with real fashion challenges (I mean, damn are they real! Pasty-faced office drones, an accident victim with facial reconstruction and a heavyset lesbian couple to name just a few). It's because they're subjects, not objects. Whereas on the typical talk-show make-over the subject sits like a passive lab rabbit for the studio audience's observation, Hall lets guests make their own decisions, explaining concepts without condescension. Best of all, Hall -- himself a portly gentleman -- gives straight, unsugarcoated, euphemism-free advice to his less-than-hard-bodied charges. "Any size 14, 16 or 18 can be just as self-confident," he says, "can have just as much a sense of superiority about themselves as anyone."

Aha! Wait! He said "superiority"! Is this not simply reifying the old aesthetic tyrannies? Is this not the whole problem with fashion in the first place? In the utopia of human appearance, should not the high places be made low, and the low be made high, and any uneven spots between them be leveled out inconspicuously with an inexpensive, cruelty-free, hypoallergenic base?

Yeah, whatever. Maybe a few consciousness-raising sessions would help these misguided souls emancipate themselves from the dominant social norms of appearance, discover their inner beauty, blah blah blah. But call me a sucker: What works best about "Fashion Emergency" is that it makes its topic relevant and understandable to everyday people who live neither in a Vogue photo shoot nor in an enlightened paradise where we judge each other not by the labels on our Capri pants but by the contents of our character. The guests on "Fashion Emergency" -- the unconfident tomboy who's turning 30 and has never worn makeup, the chunky schlub who's trying to get respect in his career -- aren't really on the show to figure out how to dress. Like most of us, they're trying to figure out how to be adults: how to build relationships, how to deal with their personal limitations, how to deal with getting older. If a little vegetable dye and a Tomatsu pantsuit help do that for them -- at a cheaper price tag than therapy -- well, God bless Leon Hall's plus-sized heart.

Carson-o-genesis With the January 1999 issue of Esquire, one of America's most underappreciated critics (and if you think that's a logical impossibility, you've already stopped reading this sentence) promises to become, well, if no less underappreciated, then at least less underpaid. Tom Carson, who for years has been the best thing in the Village Voice with the possible exception of the "generous man seeking companionship" ads, begins that testoster-rag's "Screen" column. Carson's blistering and hilarious dispatches for the Voice covered entertainment, the print media and politics (his bemused, empathetic connection with Bob Dole was one of few reasons to follow the 1996 campaign), and Esquire is giving him a similarly wide purview, including television, film, the Internet and generally all things screen-related (for the spring, perhaps, some tips on how to keep those pesky mayflies from massing on your screen door?). Carson's first Esq-riture looks at "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Charmed" and other spook shows, offering a catch-up course for those unfamiliar with his Voice-era preoccupation with the teen-TV genre. An apropos subject perhaps as he enters the glossy otherworld, where good writers imperil their souls, but Carson writes well and carries a big stake.

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