Fashion guru Tim Gunn offers style tips

Attention all young people, fashion guru Tim Gunn wants you to start wearing clothes that fit, eschew flip-flops and be cognizant of the image you project to the rest of the world.

"It's one thing to paint the house in those gym shorts and that sweatshirt," said Gunn, host of the hit TV shows "Project Runway" and "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style." "It's another thing altogether to wear them to the mall."

Dressed in a dapper black pinstriped suit with silver tie, Gunn offered tips Tuesday night to a packed Old Cabell Hall audience of 800 University of Virginia students, many of whom will graduate in a few months and enter the job market.

"When you're transitioning from college to the workplace, it's a change," Gunn said. "There's a difference."

While college students tend to dress for comfort, Gunn advised the crowd to dress "up up" for job interviews and for at least the first week of work.

"The clothes you wear send a message to the world about how you want to be perceived by it," Gunn said. "That cannot be trivialized. That cannot be understated. ... Does that mean you need to drink the fashion Kool-Aid? Well, yeah, I think you do."

Tip No. 1, he said, is to select a wardrobe that is "polished, tailored and sophisticated." When it comes to style, Gunn's mantra is "silhouette, fit and proportion."

Choose clothes, he said, that fit your individual body shape. Size matters less than finding clothes that fit by "following the natural silhouette of your body."

"Believe me, people can get it right independent of size or shape," Gunn said. "It's all about accentuating your great attributes and mitigating the things that you're not please about. It can be done. Fashion can be a kind of optical illusion."

Gunn visited UVa at the invitation of the Fourth Year Trustees, a club that organizes events for undergraduates in their final year at the university. Not coincidentally, one of those fourth-year students is Gunn's niece.

If Gunn had his druthers, every college student would throw out their Uggs and Crocs, which he called dreaded examples of footwear. "I flatter them to call them footwear," he said.

Gunn added that UVa students have a keen sense of style, calling them preppy, but in an honest sort of way.

He also urged everyone to buy a trench coat. "It can go to the liquor store, it can go to the opera," he said.

Before taking the stage, Gunn answered questions from local media. CBS 19 reporter Hailey Frances asked him to critique her outfit.

"First of all, you're gorgeous and you have a great figure, so generally speaking you can wear anything," Gunn replied. "I love the cardigan, I love the little bit of green showing. I love the scale of the necklace, frankly. If anything, I would raise your skirt exactly an inch. Other than that, I wouldn't change a thing."

"Oh, you're so nice," Frances gushed.

Frances also notified Gunn, much to his surprise and delight, that he had been chosen as the No. 9 sexiest gray-haired man in America by OK magazine. George Clooney was No. 1.

"That's so flattering," he said. "All this happened to me after I turned 50. It's so extraordinary I don't have the adequate words to describe it. What happens after you turn 50, you realize what an incredible phenomenon it is and you're grateful for it. I keep pinching myself and asking, 'When am I going to wake up from this dream?'"