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The Signal had a chance to meet with Tim Gunn, fashion consultant and star of the hit show Project Runway, shortly before his lecture at Georgia State last week. A noisy crowd waiting to see Gunn gathered outside of the Student Center Ballroom, but myself and Gunn met in a small sitting room at the end of a quiet hallway on the second floor of the Student Center. He was dressed stylishly in a steel gray suit with a matching vest over a white oxford button down, finished off with a simple black tie. His jacket was off and laid neatly over the arm of the plush red chair.
“I feel naked without it, but it’s so hot in here,” he remarked.
A tall stack of his first book, Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style, lay on the side table next to him, and one by one he signed and meticulously personalized each over the course of the interview.
Signal: Will you be discussing your book during the lecture?
Gunn: I thought I’d talk about the whole journey of the book. It’s a long journey, let me tell you.
Signal: I read about that in the first few chapters, and you have quite an interesting journey from the start. You were a champion swimmer, you got a bachelor’s degree in sculpture at the Corcoran, and you earned money building architecture models?
Gunn: That’s how I made a living.
S: Then you started teaching three-dimensional design at the Corcoran School of Design and moved to Parsons The New School of Design, eventually becoming the associate dean. Did you still teach when you moved to Parsons?
G: What’s interesting about my career in academia is that it was unusual. I was always teaching, and after teaching for two years, I became an administrator as well. So I ended up wearing both hats, and you know, in most academic institutions, faculty and administrators always hate each other. So to wear both hats was interesting because it meant that I could morph into both communities, and I had a place in both.
S: Did you ‘find yourself’ as the chair of the department of fashion at Parsons?
G: Well, I found myself as a student, really, studying fine art is where I found myself.
S: According to your book, you experienced a sort of ‘culture shock’ when you started as the chair of the Parsons fashion department. Something about an encounter with Diane Von Furstenburg and your first high-end fashion purchase of a black blazer…
G: A black leather blazer. Other than shoes, belts, I don’t remember having anything that was black before that. My closet was really very corporate…business suits...but I certainly didn’t look like I belonged in the fashion world.
Diane and I had known each other for a long time, and suddenly she visited me in my new office [at Parsons]. She was looking at me, and her look said: you need to do something. We had a really great relationship, and I could sense that there was some sort of disconnect that we hadn’t had before, and I thought, it’s got to be my wardrobe.
S: Is your wardrobe who you are?
G: For each of us, it’s who we are.
S: So at Parsons you went from having the fashion perspective of an everyday Joe to developing a more sophisticated style. Did you feel your wardrobe played an important function or set an example in your role as an administrator and educator?
G: Well I certainly got a different perspective, and you’re very nice to call it sophisticated. It’s certainly a different perspective, because it’s a different world. In the world of education…I hope if I say this [during the lecture], I don’t offend anybody….but academics in general are, by intent, not fashion people, because they see it as being beneath their intellect. I had colleagues at Parsons who, occasionally when they had a meeting, would show up wearing what looked like flannel pajama bottoms! They seemed to think it was wrong to care about fashion.
S: For example?
G: The head of the economics department and I were at a meeting together. We were introducing ourselves and saying what our roles were, and I said that I was chair of the department of fashion design, and he looked at me, and with full seriousness, said, “Oh, if I’d known you were coming to this meeting, I would have brought my jacket with the loose button.”
S: Just to piss you off? (laughing)
G: Oh, no, he was serious! He was like ‘Oh, the little seamstress is here!’ After the meeting was over, too late, I thought of the right comeback. I should have said…no, I wish I had said: “Well if I had known you were coming, I would have brought my taxes!”
S: So now you wear two other hats: consultant on Project Runway and creative consultant at Liz Claiborne. Which is the biggest hat?
G: Oh, no question, Liz Claiborne Inc. because that’s my day job. That’s what I do, day in and day out. The Project Runway taping is very efficient. From the time the designers arrive until the time that they finish their last challenge takes 30 days. Auditions and home visits stretch the process out to eight weeks, but the bulk of the taping and editing takes a month.
S: You recently appeared as a spokesperson in a rather graphic PETA video protesting the use of fur; especially from fur processed in China. How did you become involved with PETA?
G: It was during my role as the chair of the fashion department at Parsons. When I stepped into my role, the department had been working with the International Fur Trade Association, and more specifically SAGA for Scandinavia. It’s a high-end fashion program. It’s difficult to do high-end fashion without incorporating some luxury materials like fur.
I thought, “I have a responsibility as an administrator and an educator to expose the students to another point of view. I wanted them to make responsible choices that, on one hand, were about their designs, and on the other hand, were about some moral and ethical issues.”
S: Do you absolutely say no to fur?
G: Well, if they’re going to use fur, they have a responsibility to know where it’s coming from. For example, I told them never to touch anything that comes from China. It could be a dog that they just treat and dye to look like something else. I visited a SAGA for Scandinavia fur farm outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, and they treat the animals very responsibly. I prefer that they not exist, but they’ve existed for 150 years. We’re talking about animals that have had their instincts bred out of them, because they haven’t needed to fend for themselves. They’re very nicely taken care of, because if they’re not, it’s reflected in the fur.
S: How did the fashion industry respond to your affiliation with PETA?
G: They went crazy. They demanded that I not bring them [PETA] in, not expose the students to them, and called them manipulative. I found that none of that was even remotely true. I said to PETA, in fact, that SAGA for Scandinavia would be attending a student fashion show, and they were just fine. SAGA went crazy.
We did end up having a collection that the students designed themselves using only non-animal materials, and there just wasn’t a lot left to work with. But they did a wonderful job. It received a lot of press. We had a PETA project and a SAGA project walk the runway together, and it was a huge success.
We were the first school to let PETA in, and they’ve been in several dozen shows since.
S: So your fashion philosophy from the book is about the way style can be used to flatter anyone in any shape?
G: Yes! I say look at the opera divas. They’re not diminutive women!
S: How do you feel couture runway styles are affecting the body images of young women?
G: It’s preposterous! It’s a big conundrum.
S: Should fashion get away from that?
G: Yes! Look at who the agencies are employing. These models are not even out of puberty. The ‘grown ups’ know that this is fantasy land, but it’s the younger women I worry about, because eating disorders are increasing.
The trouble is also about what people think when they first look at these girls on the runway. They think, ‘Oh my God, this is terrible’, and then three seasons later it’s what they expect. At 20, a model is considered to be an old lady.
When Michael Vollbracht was designing the Bill Blass line, he said, “The customer is a mature woman with a lot of money. It’s not a kid. I’m going to have real sized women walk the show.” And he did.
Not only did the press react badly, his customers reacted badly, and so he said never again and went back to the 12-year-olds.
S: It affects how young girls feel they should dress as well.
G: I had lunch with a 12-year-old girl and her mother as part of a charity auction, and she was wearing, as God is my witness, six inch black stilettos, a mini skirt, crazy patterned tights, and a real chinchilla shrug. She looked ridiculous. She looked like JonBenet Ramsey. It was really extreme. I am always saying to teenage girls: “Love these years. Stop dressing like you’re thirty.”
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