by Tim Gunn
I began by saying I love Hervé Leger and I love aubergine, but why would you wear beige with that? Matching is hard. Make it easy on yourself. Go with a metallic! Beige dresses things down. Really, a good rule is no beige after five.
If it’s after five, people call it “nude,” but that’s not in my vocabulary because it’s a racist color name. Depending on what your skin tone is, that beigy color may or may not be nude.
Now, wearing a true nude, meaning matching your skin color, is a whole different matter. You usually look odd, I think. It’s like a body suit even when it’s a voluminous dress. Kirsten Dunst does that all the time, and I don’t consider her a fashion role model. (Sorry, Kirsten.)
You don’t know what colors work for you until you try a bunch of things on. If you’re pale and you look at Iman and think, That color’s fantastic on her. I’m going to get that dress, stop right there!
Dark women are blessed in many ways, because they have so many more colors that look great on them. Lighter women don’t know it, but there aren’t as many colors that work with fair skin.
So try to think outside the box and try on colors you would never consider. You’ll probably be surprised that some unexpected color—persimmon, coral, or teal—works like magic with your skin.
And don’t worry about the so-called rules of colors. The No White after Labor Day rule was meant to be broken. But it’s true that white is not very practical in New York City. I have a pair of white jeans that the J. Crew catalog convinced me to buy. What I learned once I put them on: thin white pants need to be lined, because otherwise they reveal the line between your leg and your underpants, and that’s not my favorite look. The jeans have languished in my closet.
What’s another “rule”: Don’t wear black and brown together? That’s ridiculous. You do have to be careful about the brown. It shouldn’t be tan or some midtone, but chocolate brown is really chic. I once saw a woman on the street wearing chocolate suede boots with black opaque tights and a black dress. She looked fantastic.
I will say that I think it’s funny that strangers take my fashion advice when my own family completely ignores it. Case in point: During the holiday season, my family wears Christmas sweaters every single day. Christmas sweaters! Is there a bigger fashion don’t?
But for those of you who do listen to me, here’s my general advice about keeping your wardrobe fresh: It’s helpful just to drop into stores and try things on for information whenever you think of it. It’s essential to get a sense of what cuts and colors look best on you, and you can’t always do that when you have to find a dress for a wedding during your lunch hour. You can learn so much just by asking yourself objectively, “Does this look good on me?”
Size is difficult, because different brands run small or large. So you’re likely to have a range, 8–10 say, or 2–4, or 14–16. But if you don’t spend the time figuring out your range, you’re likely to be very frustrated each time you go shopping, because you won’t even know what sizes to pick off the rack.
Figuring these things out is just a part of everyday life.
You know how I am about all these matters. You can reject any or all of what I say, obviously. These are just the things that I think are good rules of thumb for enjoying your life as a social being. I also have no problem if you want to find a cave and have someone roll a boulder in front of it. To each his own.
In a recent memoir about filming Some Like It Hot, the 1959 comedy with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis says at first he was resistant to dressing in drag for the role. He was a sex symbol and was embarrassed that he had to put on a dress. But then when he did, he had a new concern: He wasn’t pretty enough! He and his costar, Jack Lemmon, went back to the wardrobe people and demanded better makeup, higher heels, and bigger falsies. His logic: If he was going to be a girl, he was going to be a pretty girl, by God.
That’s how people should be about everything: whatever you’re doing, give it your all.
That’s one of the things I love about Project Runway. It’s about each designer being the best at whatever it is he or she wants to do.
Whenever I do makeovers, I like to bring out whatever it is in that person of which they are most proud. I hate almost all makeover shows, because they tend to make everyone look the same: still frumpy, but slightly more upscale and slightly more put together than before.
I like to learn about the person and to find out how she really wants to look, what energy she wants to put out into the world. You can see it in the eyes of the people at the end of the show: they feel like they had a hand in the process, and the look they end up with is really them. It’s not just a costume. It’s about who you are and how you want to be perceived.
When I did a photo shoot for More magazine, we had two female lawyers, very different body types. I asked one of them, Karen, “Do you think you’re Hillary Clinton?” All she had were these very masculine pantsuits. She looked so dowdy and off-putting. When I told her this, she said, “I’m fifty-four years old. Aren’t I supposed to be dowdy?”
“No! No! No!” I told her. I don’t believe anyone ever has to look dowdy, and it’s perplexing when they do.
But when it came down to what direction to take her in, I was confused. I took her sister aside and said, “Talk to me. Karen is working a very strong masculine look. In fact, is this who she is?” I didn’t want to put her in flowery prints if she was more of a truck-driver gal.
“I don’t think so,” she said, “but I’m confused by it, too.”
This was interesting, because I’d half expected the sister to say, “Yes, she’s a diesel dyke.” And then we’d have worked with that. But that wasn’t the case here.
So I took Karen aside and said, “What’s going on here? Are these really the clothes you like wearing? Is this pantsuit you?”
“No” she told me, “but I don’t know how to be professional as a woman and not dress this way.” She was in court all the time and felt she had to convey authority. “I’d love to look more feminine, but I just don’t know how.”
In my first book, Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style, I talked about style mentors. It’s great to look around and find people in movies or books or pop culture whose style you want to emulate. Is it Audrey Hepburn, Debbie Harry, or Law & Order’s Mariska Hargitay? It’s helpful to think of your icon when you are constructing your own personal style. But this lawyer was just looking to male lawyers to construct her look.
I told her, “You’re wearing menswear-tailored clothing. Matching jackets and pants. There are other ways to look professional, you know. Right now you don’t look professional. I wouldn’t be drawn to you—unless I saw you at a leather bar.”
Luckily, she was open to showing off her figure and trying new things. She instantly had a whole new world available to her. Well, the transformation was thrilling. She felt unshackled. She realized that it’s looking good that makes you comfortable and confident, not just wearing casual or shapeless clothing.
Now she has the courtroom in her pocket, because she looks so much more accessible and she’s so much surer of herself. And still she gets to wear her favorite leather pants on the weekend.
Talk to Me: There’s Always Another Side to the Story
WHEN I WAS BACKSTAGE waiting to present at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards, I encountered the stunning Kate Walsh from Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy. She was wearing an incredibly cute vintage Count Ferdinando Sarmi beaded dress, but the effect of the dress was compromised by her demeanor as she talked on the phone.
“That person is a seat filler!” she was yelling at the person on the other end.
Apparently, her boyfriend arrived at their seats and saw that there were people already sitting in them. Rather than identifying himself to an usher as having been assigned that seat, he got on the phone and yelled at Kate, who was waiting backstage until it was her turn to present.
“They’re not allowed to have an empty seat!” she was yelling at him. “Those
are our seats!”
It seemed fairly simple, but she didn’t seem to be getting through to him. She got off the phone and said, “I have to leave and go talk to my boyfriend.”
“You can’t leave,” the backstage staff said. “You’re about to present.”
I turned to my agent, Jonathan Swaden, and said, “She’s too fabulous for this. She needs to start going out with some people who can take care of themselves.”
It was high drama.
But I really did think there was a lesson in there about taking care of yourself and making others take care of themselves. Suddenly, she was expected to help her boyfriend navigate the seating rules rather than do her job and introduce an award on national television.
The boyfriend needed to recognize that there was another side to the story he thought he had figured out. The old expression is totally true: “If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”
That applies in a professional context as well.
We have an amazing library at Liz Claiborne Inc. called the Design and Merchandising Resource Center, which falls under my authority as chief creative officer. Well, sometimes designers borrow textiles and then never return them, or return them in terrible condition. Expensive books vanish. And then when I ban them from borrowing things, they plead persecution!
Call me a schoolmarm, but few things make me angrier than people not taking good care of library materials. This was edited out on Project Runway, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art challenge in Season 7, I lost my patience with the designers when they kept trying to put their paws all over some of the Costume Institute’s most delicate treasures.
Speaking of museums, there was one perfect moment in Project Runway’s Season 6: we went to the amazing J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but it almost didn’t happen. The Getty invited us, and I was just thrilled. I love that museum. But the powers that be were not as eager to go there. The Weinstein Company and Lifetime were saying, “But in Season Four you went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art!”
In a conference call with the producers, who supported going to the Getty, and with TWC and Lifetime, who did not, I said I couldn’t believe they were going to keep us from going to a museum just because we’d been to one before. “Are you telling me if we were in Paris we couldn’t go to the Louvre?” I said.
Luckily, the producers and I won, and we went. It was amazing. The mayor of Los Angeles greeted us. We saw the sun rise there. The designers had the run of the whole place. It was phenomenal. And I seriously doubt that while we were navigating the glorious galleries and outdoor spaces of the Getty, anyone at home complained about our having been to a museum in the past.
I find with complaints in general, you need to know the whole context, including what the expectation was. So frequently, I’ve found that the expectation has been totally false, a creation of the person’s own imagination. They’re disappointed not to get something they were never promised.
I had this happen with my students. They would call their parents to complain about school, and then I would hear about it from the angry parents. But the parents didn’t know the administration’s side. They would be furious that we weren’t accepting their child’s project, but they did not know that the child had missed multiple deadlines. Why don’t parents do their own probing? “Tell me more,” they should say to Junior. “Why wouldn’t they accept it? Do you really not know why?”
I always wondered at the students who allowed their parents to get so involved. When I was in my twenties, I did as much as I could on my own. My parents were generous when they felt they needed to be, but I had enough of an ego that I would turn down their help whenever possible.
The key is admitting that in every situation there’s a lot you don’t know. That’s hard for me sometimes, because I like being an authority. But realizing I can see only a tiny piece of the puzzle is surprisingly liberating.
My father helped me stay humble on this front by being very mysterious my whole life. He was almost never around. He worked constantly. My mother and grandmother were there day in and day out. So when I got into trouble, I always expected my mother would be there and my father would be absent, as usual. But the opposite was true. My father was always great in a crisis.
And I sure did provide my family with plenty of crises. I constantly had issues. He was always there. He was there as a support, not to slap me around and ask me what the matter with me was. He just showed up and took care of business and did whatever he could to help. When I really needed a father, he was there. People who are by your side all the time, like my mother and grandmother—you’d think they’d rally, but they sometimes fall apart. My father could be hundreds of miles away on business, but then suddenly he was there. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And I’ll always think of him as an example of how people can surprise you for the better.
Of course, they can also surprise you for the worse.
I’m reminded of a celebrated young designer. People think he’s a tremendous talent, and he is, but there’s another side to the story.
Few people know this, but this designer was dismissed for academic dishonesty. The trouble started when some of his classmates told me he wasn’t turning in his own work. Again, there are two sides to every story, so I went to talk to his teachers.
“I understand there’s a problem,” I said.
“That’s news to me,” the teachers responded.
I almost let it drop there, but owing to this uprising from the students, I thought, I at least have to have a discussion with the student.
I had my associate Marsha join me, and we sat down with him in my office.
“I’ve heard accusations against you from your peers,” I began. “How do you respond to the claim that you’ve copied work?”
He was staring off into space and looking around.
“It’s either true or it’s not true, or it’s true with mitigating circumstances,” I said. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s true,” he admitted. “It’s not my work.”
He went on to tell me that he hadn’t turned in any of his own work since the beginning of his junior year. He was collecting projects from wherever he could find them—including those from former students, or muslins left lying on tables. He explained that he didn’t have time to do school projects because he was so eager to get out into the real world.
“Well, I’m going to give you plenty of time,” I told him. “Effective immediately, you are dismissed from this school for academic dishonesty.”
This fellow has since had great success, and I’m happy for him. He is incredibly talented. And yet, I’ve always felt a twinge of annoyance when I encounter his work.
One celebrity dress of his attracted an especially great deal of attention. The day after photos of the dress appeared in the papers, a colleague of mine called me to say she wished the celebrity had worn a dress by a different designer.
Recalling the copycat history, I lowered my voice and replied, “How do you know she didn’t?”
Be a Good Guest or Stay Home
(I Won’t Judge You—I Hate Parties)
THESE DAYS, I DON’T have much free time, and when I do, I want to close the door and sit in the dark. If I have a friend over, I usually just brew a pot of coffee, and if I’m feeling very festive, then we’ll have sherry and I’ll throw some Toll House cookies on a baking sheet.
Don’t make fun, foodies! Breaking those things apart requires strength. The last time I made them I had a horrible time separating the dough, so even though I didn’t whip anything up from Gourmet, I had a feeling of real accomplishment when they came out of the oven. My guest and I both enjoyed them tremendously.
But I definitely have made the party rounds, and I’ll tell you about a few illustrative occasions.
One evening I went to a very memorable dinner party. It was held at a grand New York City apartment. The place was beautiful, elegantly furnished, and full of contem
porary art. I was quite impressed.
When I arrived, they were serving cocktails, and I was having a nice time. But the cocktail hour just went on and on … and on. There was nothing to snack on, so people were starting to get rather tipsy. I didn’t drink very much, but I was starting to think: Is there a nut or pretzel around here? If I don’t eat something, I’m going to have trouble seeing straight.
I assumed they weren’t seating people for dinner because not everyone was there yet. If I hear I’m supposed to arrive at seven thirty for dinner, I think dinner will probably be served around eight, so the window to arrive is between seven thirty and eight, and preferably on the early side of that. If you arrive at 7:59, you are really pushing it. I arrived at this dinner at around seven thirty-five or seven forty. But people were dribbling in until nine p.m. The martinis were really flowing, and everyone was getting completely smashed.
Now, I grew up in a family of excessive drinkers. There wasn’t a single holiday gathering when some item of furniture didn’t break. One year it was an uncle putting his foot through a coffee table. I was a kid, so I didn’t totally comprehend what was happening. But I remember the dinner being cleared and everyone smoking and someone saying, “Does anyone want an after-dinner drink?” and everyone saying, “Yes, a martini!”
Now that I’m an adult, I know that a martini is not an after-dinner drink. It’s a getting-the-party-started drink. As it turned out, even though my family members had been drinking since five p.m., after dinner they really got started!
Anyway, back to this memorable dinner party: after a good two hours of drinking in a way that would do my family proud, we finally sat down to dinner and were each presented with a steamed artichoke with butter dipping sauce. Also, of course, plenty of wine.
