Fashion police to patrol campus

Specific to East Tennessee State University’s campus, Buc TV is ETSU’s campus channel. The channel is completely run by ETSU students in the Broadcasting and Radio, Television and Film programs, and features local, international, sports and entertainment news. Each show lasts 25 minutes and is filmed live on Fridays in the production studio, which is located in the RTVF department in Warf-Pickel.

This semester, Buc TV will be seeking a change to its regular broadcasting. “Fashion Police: Campus Edition” will be replacing the entertainment segment of Buc TV and will be closing the broadcast each week.

“Fashion Police: Campus Edition” was inspired by the popular TV show “Fashion Police,” which ran on E! The show is the brainchild of ETSU students Brandon Brewer and Hillary Edwards, who will be hosting the show. Both Brewer and Edwards have a passion for fashion. Brewer ran a fashion blog for two years and Edwards currently runs a fashion blog called “Simply Intricate.”

In an interview with Brewer, the ETSU senior gave some insight into the new show, as well as his and Edwards’ reasons for pursuing it. When asked why they chose to pursue the show, Brewer said, “I have been the entertainment news anchor for Buc TV for almost a year now. I’ve worked hard to get that position, but I felt as though I was running out of creative ideas,” he said. “And I honestly got bored reporting from behind the desk about the love lives of celebrities week in and week out.

He went on to say, “The producers of the show knew of my love of style and fashion, and proposed that I do a show that incorporated that into the premises. I discussed it with Hillary, as she is my best friend, and she was on board as fast as she could say, ‘Louboutins are a girl’s best friend.’

“Fashion is a great way to express yourself, and to be able to sometimes make the most mundane of days a little more fun,” Brewer said. “I love that with fashion, you can literally change your mood by what types of clothes you wear, so I’m really interested in getting more people to see this locally, and get students involved. It should be loads of fun, especially with the new warm weather that is soon to come.”

Brewer said that the show will parallel the E! show in several ways.

“Hillary and I will be hosting a segment in which we will talk about current things in fashion news for the week,” said Brewer, “such as ‘who wore it better,’ ‘red carpet looks,’ as well as celebrity fashions for the week, and profiling new and up and coming trends. We will be having guest panelists each week to help contribute to the conversation.

Brewer and Edwards plan to get students involved in the other portion of the show.

“Tuesdays we will be out on campus with a small film crew, hunting for outfits on students that we both love, and hate,” Brewer said. “We will ask the students about their wardrobe choices, get insight from students about their own style, and discuss things such as how to dress for campus, the weather, trends that ETSU students are picking up on, etc. We will also be asking the students ‘who wore it better?’ as we show them pictures of celebrities who are wearing the same dress/outfit/etc.”

Both Edwards and Brewer plan to make the show unique by combining their personalities with the show’s content.

“I’m going to be taking my witty, sort of dark sense of humor, and blending that with Hillary’s,” Brewer said. “We have a really great chemistry. I sort of fancy myself as a gay Joan Rivers, which basically means I don’t hold back on my opinion, but of course, done so in a humorous way.”

Brewer, who is 24, will graduate with a degree in broadcasting this May.

“Although I love broadcasting, I plan on attending grad school here at ETSU in the fall for communication studies, where I’m either going to study the relationship between social media and human behavior, or topics of homosexuality in society. I haven’t quite decided yet,” he said. “I’ve been a fashion and pop culture geek ever since I was a kid. When I was little, if I got grounded part of my punishment was that my mom pick out my outfits for school every day for a week, because she knew how much I hated that.

“I’m not one of those people who refer to ‘mall clothes’ as ‘designer.’ I’ve got a deep knowledge of fashion, fashion history and of all of the relevant trends and designers that have continued to shape our culture for hundreds of years. I’m usually pretty easy to spot out — I’m usually the guy in all black wearing a Hermes belt or a Jill Sander shirt while carrying some sort of bag, usually Louis Vuitton, Prada or Celine — my new favorite.”

When asked what he would wear if he could only wear one outfit for the rest of his life, Brewer said, “It would probably be something really simple. Hudson jeans, a vintage black Chanel blazer and a black v-neck paired with some sort of great shoe — either a Frye boot of some sort or some stellar kicks, like my Kanye West for Louis Vuitton red sneakers that came out in 2009.

“I don’t like to be flashy per se,” he said, “just put together and simple. I would describe my style as being very urban, but with a touch of androgyny to it. I don’t ever aspire to look like a woman by any means, but I do enjoy clothes that tend to fit me more slim.