Top Gun Arguably America’s hottest style guru, Tim Gunn sounds off. By Una LaMarche
Photographs by Thomas Whiteside
Classic-fit, two-button navy wool suit ($1,095) and Sansforth button-down shirt ($165), Burberry. 1155 Connecticut Ave. NW; burberry.com. Royal Oak self-winding chronograph watch, Audemars Piguet ($34,600). Lenkersdorfer Fine Jewelers, Tysons Corner Center; lenkersdorfer.com
Long and lean, with ramrod-straight posture, a snow-white complexion and a regal halo of silveryblonde hair, Tim Gunn, in the flesh, recalls a ’20s vaudevillian playing a prim professor. He moves back and forth and side to side during the Capitol File cover shoot, performing a graceful box step as he raises his hand to his chin, drops it, then pulls his glasses down the bridge of his nose and cocks an eyebrow just so. He’s relaxed without being silly; studied without seeming rigid. When the shoot wraps, Gunn dispenses hugs and European-style double kisses to each member of the crew, declaring the experience “joyous, simply joyous.” It’s clear that the feeling is entirely mutual. “I say to people, treat everyone with respect and dignity,” Gunn says later, decompressing between bites of a tuna sandwich. “You never know what opportunities may exist—or where that person you were obnoxious to may land!” The 57-year-old Project Runway star and chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne dispenses etiquette and fashion advice in his new book, Gunn’s Golden Rules, and isn’t shy about sharing his opinions on topics ranging from the wild (reality TV and The Real Housewives of D.C.) to the practical (good posture). Over the course of 90 minutes, he gave us a refreshingly uncensored take on the Michelle O. versus Jackie O. debate, the need for new Congressional page uniforms and why he’ll never design his own line. Given that you became famous through Project Runway and have spent almost three decades of your life living in Manhattan, it’s easy to assume that you’re a New Yorker.
No, I’m the product of five generations of Washingtonians! What was it like for you growing up in DC?
My father was an FBI agent, and my mother began the library at the CIA. Once she got pregnant with me, she became a real estate broker. Washington is such a transient town that there’s always someone buying and selling. So it was fun being with her and going to her listings. She’d always cart me around with her to see inside a lot of big politicos’ houses. I can’t remember any names, but there were a lot of diplomats. But I remember the delegate from Samoa because the whole place was decorated like Trader Vic’s.
I have to say I feel very lucky to have grown up in Washington. It provides so much culture. Although downtown was very different when I was growing up; it wasn’t gentrified the way it is today. There are places people are living [now] where I wouldn’t even have driven my car, let alone walked around because of what could happen at the stoplight. It’s changed dramatically. As a child, were there any signs that you had a future in fashion?
Well, my favorite toy growing up was Legos. I would build and unbuild over and over again. I spent every dime of my allowance on Lego blocks. I also had a plastic castle that came with toy soldiers, and I personalized it; I made little balsa wood furniture and covered it with felt, put curtains on the windows. And of course the soldiers looked pretty blah, so I made little costumes for them. I was a very solitary kid, so I spent a lot of time by myself—and didn’t dislike it, which worried my parents. Were you shy?
I had a very bad stutter. When I get tired, it still comes out. That must have been awful.
I’m such a happy, lucky guy. But I would not have said that when I was growing up as a teen, which devastates my mother, because she thinks she did something wrong or that my father did something wrong. For a public figure, you maintain privacy about your personal life. Is that difficult?
You know, people always say to me, “People don’t know very much about you. And you seem very open, but you’re very private.” It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, but I mean, unless asked, I don’t go there. I don’t even assume anyone wants to know anything. One of my golden rules in my book [Gunn’s Golden Rules, which came out in September] is, Learn how to keep your mouth shut. People who say, “Oh, I just need to get this off my chest….” Well, maybe you do, but maybe the person you’re telling doesn’t need to know this. It’s like indiscretions in a marriage: “Oh, I’ll feel so much better if I tell my wife.” Well, you may, but will she? What’s your stance on reality shows? Too much information or guilty pleasure?
People who were once anonymous who then go on a reality show, like one of the Real Housewives franchises, and put their whole life out in front of everyone’s face… that is really repugnant. And I will confess that I am going to watch The Real Housewives of D.C., mainly because of the Salahis, I hate to say. They are repugnant characters. And she must be a sociopath! She still claims she was invited to the state dinner. Really? Why didn’t you stay? You didn’t stay because there wasn’t a place for you at the table and you knew it. Having been to the White House twice for lunch, I had to go through a lot of red tape before even arriving in Washington. They needed my Social Security number, place of birth, date of birth... because you knew they were doing a background check. And that was two weeks before even going there! As a non-White House crasher, tell us about your lunch with the president and first lady.
It was very, very nice. I sat next to Mrs. Obama! And I’ll tell you what I said to her. I said, “I’m so thrilled to meet you for many, many reasons, but the first is to thank you for what you’ve done for American fashion.” And she was very diffident, just shy and playing it down. I said, “No, you don’t understand. The only other moment in American history that has had such a profound effect on this industry was the closing of the Paris couture houses during World War II.” And it’s really true; the effect that she’s had is phenomenal. And I become woeful when people put Mrs. Obama and Jackie Kennedy in the same sentence and say, “Oh, the first first lady since Jackie Kennedy to really bring a focus to fashion!” While I don’t disagree with that statement, Jackie Kennedy had a completely different impact and effect, and none of it was accessible. She was like a rare hothouse flower under a bell jar, versus Mrs. Obama, who’s nothing if not accessible—and wearing accessible apparel! She’s been a career-maker. And she’s a real woman with a real woman’s figure—a gorgeous figure. She’s not Jackie; she’s not some little starved porcelain doll. She’s a phenomenal individual, she really is. The Obamas have certainly brought fashion to the national stage in a sense. How else has fashion in Washington changed in recent years?
When I was on the Hill a number of years ago, I was dumbfounded by how horrible everybody looked. I was like, Look at Nancy Pelosi! Use her as a gauge of how you can dress well and still be feminine. All these women walking around in boxy, menswear-tailored suits and looking slumped over and drooling. I had this Congresswoman go running from me, saying, “I didn’t know you were coming, and I’m not a fashion person.” And this happened with some frequency. So I finally said to someone, “You know, you’re an elected official. You’re basically an ambassador from your jurisdiction. Don’t you feel a responsibility to present yourself to the world in a certain way?” But the sweetest thing happened. I had a page come up to me and she said, “Can I ask you a question? What do you think about our page outfits?” And I looked her up and down and I said, “Well what do you think?” And she said, “Do you have a minute?” And we went around the corner and there were 25 girls, all of course dressed in these page uniforms. And I looked at them and I couldn’t help it. I said, “You ladies are wearing men’s clothing!” And they were, including men’s brogues. When women were allowed to be pages, they didn’t change the wardrobe! So I said, “You’re not permitted to wear a skirt? This is appalling. This should be a Project Runway challenge!”
I went to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner once during the Bush administration and have never seen so many hideous evening outfits in my life, including antebellum hoop skirts. I mean, it was pathetic. And who doesn’t look great in a tuxedo? But most of the men were wearing tuxes that were two sizes too big! I make certain assumptions about people in the political arena—that they’re smart. And I know that some people with certain intellectual capacity think, I’m too smart for fashion or I’m too smart for clothes, and I maintain that it’s all about semiotics. People must constantly approach you and ask for your opinion on what they’re wearing.
I spend a lot of time on the road for my day job at Liz Claiborne Inc. doing multiplatform fashion events. There’ll be a crowd of thousands of people and inevitably a woman will stand up and open her jacket and she’ll say, “Tim, look how thick I am through here. How do I mitigate or disguise it?” And I think, Oh my God, the level of trust and confidence to feel that you can just put yourself out there in that way. It’s very moving, it really is. Have you always had an innate sense of what looks good on you?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. My sense of style completely evolved through my experience. And I have to credit Diane von Furstenberg for part of that. She and I were meeting in my office at Parsons shortly after I started as the chair of the fashion department, and I’d known her for a long time but she was looking at me differently. And I thought, Oh, I’m wearing the same old quasibaggy suits I was wearing at the dean’s office. And she’s looking at me in this new capacity and she’s thinking, You better do something. She didn’t say it, but she said it with her body language. And the next time I saw her I was wearing a black leather blazer, a turtleneck sweater and a pair of jeans. And she gave me a big wink. She nodded. I mean, we’re always evolving; part of it is lifestyle, part of it is career, part of it, frankly, is age. Which is not to say anyone should ever be dowdy, but there’s a point when one should no longer be wearing a bare midriff. Have you ever considered designing clothes?
Never. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it, it’s just that I’ll never do it. Right now I’m like Switzerland; I’m nice and neutral. No one can hold up something and say, “Well he designed this!” Speaking of critiquing design, let’s talk about Project Runway. Legend has it you had a major impact on the format of the show.
Well, the producers had been interviewing dozens and dozens of people in the industry who had told them that the designers shouldn’t be making their own clothes, that there should be a sample room. And I said, Unless the audience sees these designers getting real and metaphorical blood on their hands, nobody is going to believe this. And whom will Heidi send home? The pattern drafter?
But the concern was that there wouldn’t be enough people out there who really knew how to make clothes. And I said, “That’s ridiculous. Take any designer out on Seventh Avenue and they know how to make clothes! They have to, otherwise they wouldn’t be successful!” You may not know this about the first season, but it had a very polarizing effect on the fashion industry. People either loved it or hated it. Designers tended to love it because they saw the reality of it. The people who really hated it were the editors. Because they liked that veil of mystery over the industry and they liked the fact that it had this aura of glamour and mystique. And Project Runway came and ripped off the veil, essentially saying that it’s dirty, it’s grimy, it’s incredibly difficult. Unless you love it, don’t do it! Are you proud of your work on the show?
What I’m proud of is that I am a positive voice for the American fashion industry. I love the industry, and what I love about it is that we do look at fashion—and, I think, all areas of design—through a lens of commerce. That doesn’t mean we’re not innovative. That doesn’t mean we’re not creative. That means that we’re realists, we’re pragmatists. Because if this is about some rarefied art object, then call it wearable art and stick it in a museum.
I’m thrilled to be a positive voice for this industry. So when people ask me to do red-carpet reportage from a snarky, making-fun perspective… never. I say no, no, no. I won’t. And I turn down a lot of interviews when I hear that they include, “Oh here’s a picture of Kirsten Dunst. What do you think of what she’s wearing?” And I don’t do that because I have too much respect for people. Am I blind? No. But there are enough other people who do that stuff. And also I’m very fond of saying, “Don’t be critical of the person on the street who’s dressed like a circus clown— because they may be!”
Fashion comes out of a context. It’s societal, it’s historic, it’s economic and political, too. It’s of a time and a place; that’s why it’s fashion. Those things are always changing. Fashion really strikes at the most emotional chord in one’s viscera. So you’ve got to be so careful with it. I am so aware of how difficult it is to get fashion right. If it were easy, everyone would look great. And they don’t. Your new book, Gunn’s Golden Rules, was just released. What made you want to write another?
When I did the first book [Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style, 2007], it was at the request of Abrams. They came to me. And I was thrilled that they thought of me, because I had my own idea about what kind of book I wanted to do. And then I had the meeting, and they weren’t interested in that book. They wanted me to do something for the self-help category—and I don’t even like saying that. I said, “What do you mean, self-help?” And they said, “You know, like a fashion makeover thing.” [Groans] And I was trying to hide my disdain for it. So I wrote the whole thing, and then Abrams sliced and diced it. They took out almost everything that was a personal anecdote, and the ones that they left in they put in small italic type at the bottom of the page, like a footnote—most of them having to do with my mother. And I thought, They took the soul out of it, basically. Though I will say I like the book. I think it’s helpful because it’s not a prescription; it’s not didactic. It’s not about me dressing you up; it’s about you dressing yourself up.
But I wanted to do a book that had some soul. And I didn’t want to write an autobiography. I wanted to send some messages, and I thought the best way to do that would be to pretend that I was sitting in my office with students who were about to graduate, and to give them some advice about how to navigate the world with respect and responsibility. That’s what guided me in this book. I’m a nervous wreck about it. I write about a lot of things people don’t know about me. I’ll put it this way: At the Liz Claiborne events there are a lot of women who bring—I’m going to well up—who bring with them a teenage son who’s struggling. And they say, “Meet this man.” [Fighting back tears] And it’s… deeply touching. So I think that’s why I wanted to say in this book, “You can have a lot of pain, you can have a lot of personal suffering and you can get through it.” But there’s a lot in it that’s also funny. And everything’s true. I take it you’re referring to seeing Anna Wintour carried down the stairs by bodyguards at the 2006 Peter Som fashion show, or seeing André Leon Talley being fed cheese cubes and grapes.
We already went through this when it was first published in The New York Post three years ago. I was struggling with Patrick O’Connell, who was then director of communications at Vogue, and his intractability about the whole thing. You can be as intractable as you want to be, but I know what I saw! I mean, that Vogue is a freak show. Did you see The September Issue? What surprised me is that André Leon Talley actually got out of the Maybach at the tennis court! I thought, He’s going to be waving the racquet through the open car window. Freak show! Do you think it’s harder for men to be adventurous with fashion?
There are ways of doing it that are so easy: cuff links! A necktie! There are ways of doing it without feeling like you are a circus clown. There just are. I don’t know how many men would be comfortable physically or psychologically wearing a Thom Browne suit. I wouldn’t be; I’d look like Pee-wee Herman! There are those quasi-extremes. But for the most part, menswear is so easy—so easy! It’s a top and a bottom, and a jacket maybe. Generally the most important thing is fit. I had a guy come up to me on the subway platform and say, “Oh, I’m so glad to see you. I need to ask you a question. Where do I find suits that fit me?” And I looked at him and said, “Do you mind if I touch you?” He said, “No….” So I pushed his shoulders back and I said, “Straighten your spine.” And he did. And his suit fit him fine. It was his posture. And what do you do about that? You can’t design a suit for someone who’s slumped over. It’s not all about comfort. I always say, “If you want a dress that feels like you never got out of bed—don’t!”
Styling by Mimi Lombardo
Grooming by Berta Camal at Jed Root Inc.
Fashion Editor: Benjamin Liong Setiawan
Styling Assistant: Jessie Bandy
People must constantly approach you and ask for your opinion on what they’re wearing.
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