The Smoking (Tim) Gunn

The Project Runway host shares his thoughts on civility, fashion and the Wintour of our discontent.

By Charlie Gill

It‟s hard to see how Tim Gunn makes his life

work without the benefit of time travel. The

ever-dapper Project Runway mentor and chief

creative officer of Liz Claiborne recently

finished the show‟s eighth season, logged

several guest TV spots, ran the attendant

publicity gauntlet for his second book, Gunn‟s

Golden Rules, and has been on tour as

something of fashion's ambassador to the real

world.

Gunn, on one recent such visit to the King of

Prussia Mall, was kind enough to discuss the

book, reality shows, “It Gets Better” and being

seen as the voice of reason in a notoriously

unreasonable industry.

Gunn‟s first-hand accounts of some of the

more uncouth behavior in the fashion world

drew a ton of early interest in his book, but the

attention skewed its perception—the slim

volume could be titled Gunn‟s Guide to Being

a Rational and Decent Human Being, but the

way the tabloids picked up and harped on a

couple of anecdotes, someone who hadn‟t read

it might assume it‟s more “Manol-oh-no-she-

didn‟t.”

“I have been concerned about it,” Gunn says.

“The reasons these stories are so potent for me

is because they are aberrant—this isn‟t the

way most people behave.” For example, the

now-infamous story of Anna Wintour having

bodyguards carry her down five flights of

stairs after a fashion event was included for the

what-not-to-do lesson of what happened

afterward (Gunn made a joke about the

incident that found its way into print; Wintour

tried to bully him into retracting it and

apologizing).

Still, his brief turn as scourge of the Wintour-

net doesn‟t seem to be of much concern to

him. “What‟s the worst that could happen, she

doesn‟t invite me to a party?” he says. “I‟m

not invited to her parties now, and don‟t care

to be.”

When asked how he would reframe the book,

Gunn says that perception is already changing

“now that we‟ve had this horrible outbreak of

teenage suicides.” He speaks with unusual

candor in his book about his own suicide

attempt as an isolated gay youth, and was

among the earliest and most affecting figures

to record an “It Gets Better” video, sharing his

experience and a message of hope for bullied

LGBTQ kids. It‟s clearly an important one to

him, and he seems grateful that “people are

now talking about that aspect and the Anna

Wintour stuff has more or less gone away.”

Of course, telling it like it is comes with

personal as well as professional risks.

“I‟ll be perfectly honest—my mother isn‟t

speaking to me,” Gunn says, sounding as

upbeat as one can given the topic. Those

who‟ve read the book might have their

suspicions as to why (a little too close a peek

into Hoover‟s drawers, perhaps?), but he isn‟t

interested in speculating. “She has read the

book and she‟s not speaking to me. So I don‟t

know the specifics of what she‟s so cobbled

by—I can guess, but I honestly don‟t know.”

He gives the impression that he expects it will

be all right and it‟s difficult to doubt that

unspoken appraisal; after all, this is the man

who‟s built his fame on doing the best he can

with what he‟s got.

When asked about the tensions around semi-

outcast Michael Costello on the most recent

season of Project Runway, Gunn shoots from

the hip: “I‟ll tell you what troubled me,” he

says without hesitation, “and I‟m making an

assumption that it troubled the other designers,

too. It‟s that Michael, for each challenge,

would create two, three, sometimes four looks

... I have not seen anything quite like that in

the history of the show.” The designers'

response to the judges‟ praise of these hastily

constructed garments was, Gunn assumes,

“Good god, he did that in the last three hours.”

In his seven years at Parsons, Gunn says, he

tried to make it clear to his students that

fashion is, counter-intuitively, a very serious

industry that is bigger than just pretty things

and petty sniping. Fashion “is a sociological

gauge—it happens in a context that is societal

and cultural and historical and economic and

political,” he says. “Clothes don‟t need to

change, but fashion, by definition, must.”

Gunn is passionate about the connections

between what we wear and the environments

we live in—one thing he loves about the

American fashion industry (and it‟s a point

that‟s not always seen as a positive,

particularly in Europe) is its accessibility—

how “we look at fashion through the lens of

commerce.”

But Gunn acknowledges that even the

accessible American fashion industry can still

be alienating to many consumers—after all, it

is still de rigueur for runway shows to feature

prohibitively expensive clothes on “girls who

haven‟t even hit puberty.”

“It‟s just not realistic,” he asserts. “A lot of

people don‟t have either the money or the

inclination for that, and they want real, solid

advice about how to present themselves. I like

women who are real shapes; nothing makes

me happier than working with real women in

the real world and helping them get their

fashion right. I‟m always saying „If getting

your fashion right were easy, everyone would

always look great‟—and, you know, they

don‟t.”

But at King of Prussia and malls across

America, Gunn‟s happy to help them make it

work.