Dress To Impress review – the horror-filled dating show that won't go out of style

When you’ve been married for 150 years like me, dating shows can be tiresome. I still haven’t recovered from the torpor of the last series of Love Island. Once you’ve seen one girl in an upside-down bikini snogging a recruitment consultant who looks like Andrew Ridgeley next to a fire pit, you’ve seen them all. 

I’ve also never managed to fall in love at first sight with Married at First Sight, no matter how many people froth about it. And My Mum, Your Dad just seemed like a lot of knackered old people wandering around a house in bathrobes and leggings, which is a bit of a busman’s holiday, to be honest. 

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At first, I thought I must be jaded, but I think the problem with dating shows is that you cannot always rely on the couples to provide the spark. Nobody wants to watch semi-sentient Ashley from High Wycombe and dreary Amy from Stockport talking about what their favourite colour is. Unless you employ a crack team of matchmakers, the chances of finding genuine love are extremely low, so what you need is a device that acts as a distraction. Something visual and interesting, like cooking for each other (Dinner Date), taking clothes off (Naked Attraction) or putting clothes on (Dress to Impress).

Naked Attraction has a few too many alarming protuberances for my liking, and Dinner Date always features excruciatingly awkward conversations and a bloke who has never eaten a poached egg before. Dress to Impress, though, has it all. Three hopeful contestants have to choose and buy an outfit for a prospective date in order to win their heart. The date then tries on the clothes in front of their three closest friends, who judge which one most successfully captures their personal style. 

This lucky contestant gets to meet them, usually at a place well within ITV2’s budget (Wetherspoons).

• ‘Love Island’ is so, so much dumber than your traditional ITV2 idiot buffet
• Naked Attraction: Crass, cringe and crude?
• Fact/Fiction: Did online dating really help the world’s loneliest frog?

I can think of many less complex and stressful ways of meeting someone, but that’s not the point. The point is that you get to watch people running desperately around shopping centres, sweating and swearing as they hunt through the rails at Burton. Glamorous girls roam aimlessly around Superdry, while nervous boys with sweaty sausage fingers paw frantically at tiny dresses in Quiz with lacy bits and cut-outs. Will he like deck shoes and a bootlace tie? (No.) Will she hate that crotchless teddy and those platform PVC boots? (Yes.) Everybody is utterly clueless, half-deranged with the agony of making the wrong choice. ‘Do these trousers go with these shoes?’ they wail, crumpling to the ground like a tired toddler in a food court. 

The best thing about Dress to Impress, though, is the horror on the faces of the people who are trying on the outfits. The men invariably look like Inspector Gadget at Next and the girls look like they’re in a window in Amsterdam. Everything is the wrong size, the wrong colour or for the wrong person. Then the date gets upset because the people who chose the clothes, who they have never met, didn’t ‘get’ them. Of course not, Sean from Burton-on-Trent who wears brown brogues with no socks! What did you expect? 

But beyond the vacuous premise, this is deep, deep, stuff. It speaks of the universal need to be seen and understood by others. And in our haste to impress, we make assumptions, and leave ourselves open to ridicule and rejection. We fail to connect with each other, or to find the right Hawaiian shirt from Primark, and in doing so, we are forced to confront the benign indifference of the universe. We are all vulnerable people, wondering whether we will ever meet someone who will appreciate us for our true selves. 

Except this lot are doing it on camera in Westfield, wearing a pair of Crocs and a ballgown. Beat that, Jane Austen.

Lucy Sweet is a freelance journalist.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

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