Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dress My Tour’ On Hulu, Where Kate Upton Hosts A Reality Competition Where Fashion Designers Focus On Outfitting Musicians

Dress My Tour is a reality competition series where fashion designers compete for a $100,000 grand prize. Unlike similar shows, like Project Runway or Making The Cut , the designers are going to design an outfit for a different musician each week, with the idea that the musician will wear the outfit on his or her next tour.

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Opening Shot: Scenes from Season 1 of Dress My Tour , then we see a caravan of cars drive to the downtown Los Angeles studio, with groups of designers in each car.

The Gist: Eleven designers enter the design workspace and see examples of each other’s designs on mannequins throughout the space. There is also a wall that is called the “Show Case,” which will have mannequins wearing designs that each artist has worn, to use as inspiration.

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The host is Kate Upton, and the show has two mentors/judges: Emmy-winning costume designer Marina Toybina and choreographer Laurieann Gibson. When they introduce themselves to the designers, they reveal the first celebrity guest will be JoJo Siwa (other celebrity guests will be Toni Braxton, Paula Abdul, Ty Dolla $ign, Coi Leary, French Montana and Jesse James Decker).

But before they get a chance to design for Siwa, there will be an elimination challenge. They have eight hours to design an outfit for a dancer, and they will get a text to tell them if the dancer is male or female, and what their measurements are. Expert stitchers are brought in to stitch together the outfits overnight according to the designers’ instructions. Then the next day, the outfits are fitted onto the dancers and they go out onto the floor. Upton, Toybina and Gibson aren’t just looking for innovation, but how the outfit moves with the dancer and other factors.

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What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Except for the music factor, Dress My Tour follows the Project Runway/Making The Cut format pretty closely.

Our Take: As with any reality show’s format that seems to be a clone of another show’s format, there are minor differences. With Dress My Tour, the most prominent minor difference is that we don’t have to see the designers frantically trying to sew together their designs as time runs down. That’s taken care of for them, with the designers only needing to make fitting adjustments. That’s actually a plus.

There’s another difference that’s bigger, but we don’t see it until the beginning of the second episode. Even though it’s up to Upton, the mentors and the guest judge to determine the winner of the challenge (which comes with a small cash prize starting with the Siwa challenge) and the two people who are up for elimination, the ultimate elimination vote is left to the designers. It’s the classic Survivor -style “voted off the island” scenario, but it’s one that we rarely see on these designer series. It does add some intrigue, and it will assuredly break down some of the camaraderie we see on other similar shows, whether it’s fake or otherwise.

Of course, the producers want to take a mix of experienced designers — Rey Ortiz, for example, has designed for much bigger stars than are going to be guest judges on this show — and rookies like McCauley Star. They are also looking for personalities, which is why we have Michael Shead, who is, in the words of our spouse, “in it for the tea.” Shead has the combination of immense talent and no filter that reality competition producers love; he’ll complain, say snarky things about other designers behind their backs, but he’ll keep advancing and staying on the show because he’s good at what he does.

The producers do a good job of concentrating on the designers that will be part of the first episode’s story, and the quick profiles of Toybina and Gibson help viewers connect with the advice and criticisms they give the contestants. Upton is a more than competent host, as well.

Sex and Skin: Some of the outfits are more revealing than others, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: Frustratingly, the credits roll as the winner, the bottom two designers and one other designer are called to the front of the group to be talked to by Upton and the mentors. Leaving eliminations to the next episode is an obvious ploy by streamers to get people to go to the next episode, and it’s annoying as hell.

Sleeper Star: Since we already discussed Michael Shead, we’ll give this to Traviance Dunn, who talked about losing his husband shortly before he entered the competition.

Most Pilot-y Line: The show has a “pull back the curtain” element to it, where they show crew, cameras and lights, and we hear occasional commands from the stage manager. Other shows do this now, and it’s a trend we’re not in love with.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Dress My Tour may be a photocopy of other design competition shows, but with a good host and mentors who give good advice, along with a talented group of designers, it’s a pretty good-looking photocopy.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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