The first time I went on the BBC’s Question Time, in February 2012, I wanted to make a decent impression. The fact that I looked like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone wouldn’t play in my favour – on my Twitter feed, people regularly queried whether I was taking time off from my paper round when I appeared on TV. But my then flatmate Liam took pity, and promised to leave out a special, smart-looking shirt.

Owen Jones before the makeover ... ‘Clothes are not my thing.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

I found it laid out for me in our flat, and felt much more confident when I put it on. Fashion was not my forte, but at least, I thought, I had made a real effort. There I was in Nottingham, with big political beasts including John Prescott and Ken Clarke on the panel with me and, for a change, I had made a concession to expectations. It went well. Afterwards I called Liam to thank him. “But Owen,” he protested, “you didn’t take the shirt, you took my girlfriend’s blouse.”

It’s fair to say that clothes are not my thing. If you need evidence, here it is: in 2016, GQ magazine named me the ninth-worst-dressed man in Britain – worse than Chris Evans. Growing up closeted near the centre of Stockport, I did everything I could to blend in – a massive dollop of gel, hair combed forward, Kappa tracksuits before graduating to Ben Sherman shirts – then, with a hint of teenage rebellion, I bleached my hair and pierced my eyebrow. I looked like a boyband reject, basically. Unfortunately, when I came out at the age of 20 (originally as bisexual, ruining it for genuine bis by fuelling the whole “bi now gay later” shtick), I was not magically endowed with a set of gay skills such as “being spontaneously sassy” or “having a great wardrobe”. A female friend said to me: “Oh great, now we can go shopping together!” But I hate shopping. I have nightmares about shopping.

Thirteen years later, watching the Netflix show Queer Eye is a joy: here’s a show in which five queer men come to the rescue of mostly straight men, who are often imprisoned by their unreconstructed masculinity and struggling to find genuine happiness as a consequence. They teach them how to cook, groom, do up their homes, talk about their feelings and, yes, dress. Before I watched the show – a reboot of the early-00s hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy – I worried that it would reduce gay men to this season’s amusing must-have accessories. It always struck me when I was growing up that the portrayal of gay men on television was either as one-dimensional, desexualised camp clowns; as the butt of jokes; or as would-be sexual predators. But Queer Eye upends all this. I fell in love with the show, and every one of the fab five, instantly. One of my favourites is Jonathan Van Ness, a hairdresser who unashamedly embraces camp: an important role model for gay men who all too often fetishise being “straight acting” (as I once did) and can be horribly prejudiced to those deemed camp. I wish my younger self could have watched a show featuring gay men as superheroes, coming to help straight men struggling with their own heterosexuality.

Seersucker suit, jacket, £148, and trousers, £74, both by Officine Générale from harveynichols.com (sale prices, were £370 and £185); T-shirt, £40, reiss.com ; Brown leather pumps, £79, kurtgeiger.com.

Frankly, though, I’m a proud queer man who needs as much assistance as any of the straight men in the show. I may no longer care about how “gay” I’m judged to be, but I have developed no interest in clothes whatsoever. That’s not uncommon, by the way, among people attracted to members of the same gender who depart from heterosexual norms. Gay, I’m afraid, is not a synonym for sharp dresser.

So it was suggested to me by my colleagues that perhaps I could use some styling; that there could be an afternoon at Guardian HQ that would amount to straight eye for the queer guy. I was a little apprehensive. Spending an afternoon trying on clothes normally strikes me as about as enjoyable as a night out with Ukip’s youth wing. Fortunately, fashion queen Jess Cartner-Morley and stylist Helen Seamons could see I was nervous, and put me at ease.

I turned up wearing a grey hoodie and jeans – standard – and worried they would have got in gold-lined Prada shirts. It wasn’t just the inevitable Twitter storm – CLOTHES LOVING SOCIALIST HYPOCRITE!!! – that I was worried about; I also have an aversion to splashing out more than, say, £50 on a shirt. Anything more just seems like a surrender to rampant commercialism. Thankfully, they had thought about all that, and as I eyed up the clothes, I was reassured that none were more than a notch up from high-street prices. I was relieved that I could imagine myself wearing any of them – other than a bright pink Hawaiian shirt that was a bit midlife crisis.

Wow, I thought after putting on the first set, I’m wearing clothes that actually fit, rather than throwing on some random crumpled shirt hidden under a generic grey jumper before debating a rightwing thinktanker on Sky News. Some of them I quite liked: a swanky green jacket and a navy blue suit that made me look almost respectable. The bright red T-shirt needs a contrast button, and one of the jacket and trouser combos made me look like a not-very-hench bouncer. Throughout, Helen kept skilfully adjusting the clothes, and jokey patter with her and Jess made an otherwise slightly absurd scenario tolerable. I’m not going to lie, though: it was not me.

I guess my perspective on clothes has always been: this is really superficial; why should anyone care; when I go on TV I’m just trying to get my opinion across, how I look is irrelevant. But this is a bit naive. Perhaps it shouldn’t matter, but it does. Leftwingers are at an automatic disadvantage because they are arguing for a radical departure from the current order; therefore, how they present themselves matters. Demanding a crackdown on tax avoidance while wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt will probably attract raised eyebrows more than anything else. It’s OK to look smart and rail against injustice. I’m told some revolutionary sects – such as Militant, of which my late father was a member – encouraged their members to avoid dressing like a radical. John Prescott, meanwhile, has talked of attending Oxford’s Ruskin College as a working-class trade unionist: “I remember our first lecture, all the middle-class guys turned up in their revolutionary gear, we turned up in our suits.”

Last year, I did a photoshoot for GQ to accompany an interview: they didn’t tell me the suit they had asked me to wear was worth £1,000, but several rightwing blogs certainly found out. “Owen Jones discusses the ‘crisis of capitalism’ in a £1,000 jacket,” crowed the Spectator. But actually – even though I didn’t own the jacket – this patronises so many young working-class people who (unlike me) pride themselves on what they wear, and often save up for months to splash out on designer items.

When my Guardian colleagues asked me to do a photoshoot as a gay man who doesn’t exude style, I was a bit bemused. But, weirdly, I quite enjoyed wearing clothes that looked good and fit me. I doubt I will be crowned Britain’s most stylish man any time soon. But there’s nothing wrong with priding yourself on how you look; it turns out it doesn’t make you some superficial bourgeois traitor. Don’t expect me to start embracing Gucci socialism, but maybe I’ll stop treating shopping as a slightly less enjoyable exercise than dental surgery. You can want to change the world without looking like a dishevelled paper boy.

Dressing Owen: ‘Clothes are judged, whether you like it or not’

by Jess Cartner-Morley

GQ were way harsh. Helen and I agree on that, looking through photos of pre-makeover Owen. He’s a good-looking man, he just needs sharpening up a bit. The logic behind his trademark shirt-and-jumper look is that instead of ironing a shirt he puts a jumper over the top to hide the creases. Often, part of the shirt collar is sticking up, or has got tucked inside the jumper, so you can tell he didn’t look in the mirror before going on camera. That tells you everything about what Owen thinks about clothes – he doesn’t.

Owen looks relieved that the clothes Helen wants him to wear aren’t flamboyant. “A style overhaul isn’t about wearing lots of colour,” she explains. “In fact, keeping to a minimal palette will help you look sharp.” The idea is professional and presentable, rather than suited and booted. Black jeans that have faded to grey are swapped for dark Japanese-look denim. A smarter shoe takes a jeans-based outfit out of Student Union territory; a smart bomber jacket pulls a look together in a way that Owen’s grey hoodie doesn’t. Detail is key: Helen turns up jeans, rolls up T-shirt sleeves, quietly but firmly warns him off lumpily stuffing pockets with phones and keys.

I suspect fashion may never be a passion of Owen’s, but the reality of life in the public eye is that clothes are noticed, and judged, whether you like it or not. So it makes sense to try to control, or at least be aware of, the messages you are giving out. Our shoot is tightly sandwiched between speaking engagements – one about Erdoğan, one about Gaza – but when Helen tells Owen the stores these clothes came from (Arket, Cos, new online brand FoR) he writes the names down on his phone for future reference, and I don’t think he’s just doing it to be polite. I don’t think we converted Owen to the fashion cause. But I hope we made him realise we’re not the enemy.