Текст книги "Gunn's Golden Rules"

Автор книги: Tim Gunn

Соавторы: Ada Calhoun
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Don’t Lose Your Sense of Smell

WHEN PRESENTED WITH BIZARRE circumstances—such as radical (and radically unappealing) cosmetic surgery—I’ll mutter, “That person is living in the monkey house.”

What does the phrase mean? I’m assuming that most readers have been to a monkey house at a zoo. The stench of it is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Every time I visit, I can’t help but declare, “This place stinks!” Well, after about ten or fifteen minutes, it no longer smells as bad. And after half an hour, it doesn’t smell at all.

The trouble with that is the following: It still stinks. We’re merely used to it, so the smell disappears to us. However, anyone walking into the monkey house anew is going to scream, “This place stinks!”

Once I bought a lamp, and the wrong color was delivered. It was pretty garish. But I was so desperate for light that I set it up. I thought: That is horrible looking.But as time went by, I grew used to it, and after a couple of weeks I even started to like it. I began to refer to its garish color as being “unexpected.” Then a dear friend, an interior designer, came over to my apartment for a visit. She gasped when she saw the lamp and said, “What possessed you to get that?”

I’d been living in the monkey house.

You can tell when what you’re doing is what you’re meant to be doing. If it’s fun, and satisfying, and comes together in a great way, then you know that’s something you’re in some way destined to do. If it feels dishonest, it probably is. While I think that it’s good to step out of one’s comfort zone and try new things, if in doing so, the particulars don’t feel right, then they’re not. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new things, just that you should listen to yourself and learn from mistakes and not get so comfortable in a gross situation that you forget it smells.

So many people these days are switching jobs, or looking at new industries, and I think that, as tragic as the circumstances are, potential exists to try new things and find something truly fulfilling. But you really have to be flexible.

I see this all around me. We have been through meteoric adjustments at Liz Claiborne Inc., where I’ve been chief creative officer since 2007. Since the recession began, we’ve received completely new messages from the executive team. They are clear messages, but they require big changes. And yet I see so many associates failing to acknowledge that things have changed. The whole world has changed. And we need to adjust constantly.

We’re going to need to rethink completely what we’re doing in my own department at LCI. I actually really enjoy this kind of upheaval. I like the opportunity to evaluate what we do, and how we do it, and how we could do it better, or do it just as well with less. It’s great to have the opportunity presented to us, because ordinarily we’d just keep slogging on in the same way. So many people I see complain when they’re faced with changes, “But that’s not the way we do things.”

We knowthat. That’s why we’re having this discussion. Put it behind you.

It was like the curriculum development at Parsons. Whenever I would declare that we had to make changes, someone would say, “But this is the way we’ve always done it.” I banned that phrase from my office. You just mustn’t think that way. There is always room for improvement.

LCI’s fabulous and inspirational CEO, Bill McComb, is always saying, “Don’t look back.” He’s right. You can’t bring all that baggage with you.

On my former Bravo show Guide to Style,I found people in a fashion rut with no clue how to get out of it. My job was to unwedge them from their rut, their own personal monkey house, and then to say, “You’re out of the rut now. Where do you want to go? Who are you?”

The worst-case scenario is that it doesn’t work and you go back to where you were before.

On Season 7 of Runway,I found with too much frequency that some of the designers would say, as early as ten p.m., that they were done and were going to surrender the remaining time.

“You’re done?” I would ask them with a tone of shock. “If Leonardo had had more time with the Mona Lisa,it would be even more beautiful. Use the time and make it better.”

There have always been designers on the show who wouldn’t use the full time for whatever reason.

But never before Season 7 had I seen a whole group of people with such a languid approach to time. I call Season 7 the season of the sashay. No matter how close to the deadline they were, no matter how quickly they needed to get their models ready for the runway, there was no physical demonstration of urgency. Everyone just sashayed around the workroom and the sewing room.

Althea Harper was a little bit like this in Season 6. She was very last minute and would get caught up with the lichen on the bark; forget about the forest for the trees. “There’s more to life than this ruched hem!” I would try to tell her.

In the same season, Johnny Sakalis and Mitchell Hall were social gadflies who just wanted to chat all the time. I said, “You two have work to do,” and they would just keep gossiping. “We are late!” I’d be yelling at the workroom. “You need to move it!”

There they were, saying, “I’m coming … I just need to move thisover here…” Slow as can be. All of them! A talented bunch of people, but wow, were they lackadaisical.

JUDGING ON Project Runwayis sometimes about informing people that they are living in the monkey house. Often a designer has worked on something so long that he or she thinks it is the most beautiful garment on the face of the earth, when in fact it is an abomination.

Michael Kors is a great judge, and I think it’s partly because he does such clean, elegant work that he has a great ability to let the designers be themselves and not project his own taste onto them. (Friends of mine who love to wear lavish jewelry are big fans of Michael Kors dresses, because his clothes have such simplicity that they make a fantastic frame for baubles.)

He and Nina Garcia play so well off each other, because they both have a great eye, and they aren’t afraid to say what they think. There’s a great exchange in Season 7 when Nina throws her arms up about a neckline treatment.

Michael says, “Nina! How many necklines do you ever really see? I can count them on one hand!” The two of them have a big debate about how much innovation is possible when it comes to necklines. The Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion(my bible!) devotes ten pages to necklines and collars, but the truth is that clothes today typically feature only a few different ones.

I love these kinds of specific conversations about fashion. It really gets at the heart of these choices the designers have to make, and it’s so satisfying to listen in on these two important fashion people talking about it. Their squabbles are very instructive when it comes to how the design world approaches a burning issue like the boat neck.

It’s a lot harder than it looks to be a judge. And when we have designers as guest judges, it’s often hard for them to keep their own aesthetics in check. Most designers are incapable of understanding any aesthetic other than their own, and they want to impose it on the designers. Unlike most designer judges, Michael is really terrific about seeing each designer on his or her own merits. It’s a rarity.

Nina has a great eye, but there was one time she championed a dress that everyone else hated, and that I would say belonged in the monkey house. Perhaps you’ll recall the green neoprene dress Ra’mon Lawrence Coleman made in Season 6. He was dyeing it in the toilet before I suggested he take pity on the model who had to wear it and switch to the sink. The dress, a hot green mess thrown together at the last minute, was a disaster.

Well, Nina had a forty-five-minute filibuster for the neoprene dress. Nina is so tough and cool that she has the capacity to intimidate Heidi (and all of us a bit, truth be told). Nina’s trump card was her crystal-clear assertion that she would wear the dress. With that said, Heidi went along with it, too. Well, the look I thought was going to send Ra’mon home ended up winning the challenge for him. I couldn’t believe it.

Project Runwayauctions the winning looks of each season, so I bought the dress for Nina. It went for $305. When it arrived in a little cardboard box, I couldn’t believe how tiny it was, just two pieces of neoprene sort of glommed together. Seeing it up close was very illuminating. There were yellow pins sticking out of it, rough edges, spattered dye—and I still haven’t figured out how to assemble the top. Thank goodness I won it rather than some fan, who would have gotten that package and declared, “This won?”

I’m planning to send it to Nina with the suggestion that she wear it for the next event we have to do together. I have a feeling she won’t.

In any case, what keeps the show from turning into one big monkey house is the seriousness with which our judges take the matter of construction and design. During the runway show there is a huge amount of deliberation, far more than most people realize. From the moment that the judges see the work on the runway to the moment Heidi says who’s in and out, five to six hours elapse, not the several minutes you see at home.

I’m frequently wrong not just about who will be chosen as the winner, but also about who’s in the top or bottom three. Sometimes it flips while they’re deliberating. The judges change their minds a lot before they reach a verdict, which I believe is positive and a great testament to the seriousness of their discussion.

Guest judges are real wild cards when it comes to what they like. Sometimes a guest judge will say, “This was my favorite look!” And all the others had it as something that justified sending someone home. That’s why Heidi rarely asks the guest judge to speak first anymore. In the make-each-other-over challenge in Season 2, Santino Rice’s jumpsuit for Kara Janx might well have sent him home had Freddie Leiba not said right off the bat that he loved that look.

It’s all edited out in the final show, but one guest judge told the designers what she would have done had she been designing for the challenge. “I would have picked this fabric, instead! I would have designed it this way!”

That is not helpful. The competing designers didn’t use that fabric or that silhouette, so how can you judge them on what you would have done rather than on what they did in fact do?

In the finale of Season 3, Nina Garcia, not I, was scheduled to give the designers a critique early in the week. But because of the whole Is-Jeffrey-cheating debacle, she came in late on Thursday, instead. The Bryant Park fashion show was going to be held the following morning.

When I arrived after the critique, I asked the producers, “How did it go?” and they said Nina had given the designers a hard time. I was disappointed to hear that, because I thought, What are they going to do? The show is tomorrow. At this point in the game, negativity isn’t helpful.

So I did my routine for the camera, and then I went back to the designers and said, “I heard the visit was hard.” Everyone shrugged. Laura Bennett looked up and wisely said, “As if we could do anything! We didn’t even listen.”

She was correct. Sometimes it’s just too late to rethink and rework, even if the advice is brilliant.

Which brings us back to something I keep finding myself saying in this book: Context is everything—for clothes, for behavior, and for expectations. Truth telling is good, but you also have to accept the conditions as they are.

When someone is about to head onstage or on camera, do you tell her she has parsley in her teeth? Absolutely. That is helpful. But do you say, “That is a terrible dress”?

No! There’s no time to change, and she’ll just go out there feeling bad about herself. Similarly, I stop making comments, especially comments that suggest that an item should be reworked, the day before Bryant Park, because negative notes aren’t helpful at that point, unless you’re addressing matters of accessories or styling or the looks’ order on the runway. To suggest starting over is no longer feasible.

The question I ask myself before giving advice is: Is what you want to say really going to help them?

Sometimes it’s very clear. For example, recently I was doing an interview on camera. The interviewer’s lapel was sticking up, and I could tell it wasn’t just a jaunty affectation, so I said, “Before we start, let me fix this,” and I adjusted his collar.

“Thank you!” he said, rather relieved.

“I’d want you to do the same for me!” I said.

If you’re getting dressed with a friend, you can say, “You should rethink those shoes.” But you need to have supplies available! When Leah Salak, a colleague of mine at Liz Claiborne Inc., and I do shopping mall events together, and she asks, “How do I look?” I take the question seriously. People are videotaping these events, and there are thousands of people in attendance. I don’t want her to regret anything later. And we have a ton of options around here at the office, so I can say, “That cut’s not quite right for you. Let’s see what else we have.” Then we can pick out something truly gorgeous.

Also, I give her advice because—and this is an important distinction—she asked.If someone doesn’t ask, you don’t have a moral obligation to say every thought that pops into your head. As I’ve mentioned, strangers are constantly saying to me, “I was so afraid of what you would say about what I’m wearing!”

As if I just go around analyzing the outfits of everyone I pass on the street! Certainly not. I never say anything unless I’m asked, and then if I’m asked, I consider the matter carefully and offer an honest opinion.

I try to phrase criticism in the nicest possible way, but I also never lie. If people ask, I assume it’s because they want to know. People are not dumb about these things; they can tell when a compliment isn’t sincere.

My grandmother had the most backhanded way of delivering compliments. She was always saying things like, “You look so much better than you did the last time I saw you.”

What in the world does she mean?we were always wondering. What did I look like the last time?Her compliments always left us confused rather than proud.

WHEN YOU PUT YOURSELF out there, whether it’s by delivering a speech, acting in a play, or putting out a collection, you want feedback that’s positive, or at the very least helpful for the next time.

If you want to stay friends with people who put themselves out in this way, it’s often necessary to deliver vague praise that doesn’t actually address the specifics of the production. Examples include: “Congratulations!” or “That was quite a performance!” or “I’ll never forget that!” or the classic: “Oh, you!”

I find myself in the position of delivering a lot of these euphemisms. My favorite is “That was unforgettable!” For the right reasons? (Pause.) Repeat: “That was unforgettable!”

IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO be totally honest when it comes to things that can be changed and that must be changed. As you know, I am passionate about education. When you expect a lot out of children, they will rise to the occasion. Education is so important, and I love when I see children at a school that’s right for them. Having a great teacher can change a child’s life. And while I know how busy parents are today, I love seeing families doing their best to support their schools and work as partners with their children’s teachers.

“Make it work” applies to all areas of life. If there’s something you hate about your school, or your neighborhood, or your child’s sports team, make it work! Get involved in the PTA, contact your representatives in the government, or offer to assistant coach.

Too many of the parents I dealt with in higher education seemed to feel that they had to start a fight to get what they wanted. As the chair of the Fashion Design Department, I was the enemy. If the students didn’t have top-of-the-line resources or materials, it had to be my fault. Well, I was working incredibly hard to improve those things and was making great strides, but with no help, things take a while. What I always loved to hear was, “We need to get the students X, Y, and Z. What help do you need to make that happen?”

It wasn’t like I didn’t know. Frequently, I would disarm students and parents by saying, “You’re right. There is a problem there.” There is no reason to try to hide things; it doesn’t work! I could tell the complainers, “We need this amount of money added to our budget in this area,” or “We need a contact at this organization to get this grant.” If others besides me were advocating for something, it tended to happen much faster than it otherwise would have.

They would expect me to be defensive, but I would say, “You’re right. We need to fix that. Here’s why we haven’t fixed it so far, and here’s our plan to get it done.”

It gets a little trickier when you start talking about faculty. I couldn’t really say, “You’re right. She’s a lousy teacher.” It used to be that you could say, “This isn’t working out,” and let someone go. But when a faculty union arrived at Parsons, I couldn’t even use those sobering words, because I was “threatening” them. I asked, “Who are we serving? Answer: the students. If they’re being disadvantaged by a teacher’s failings, we’re at fault.”

Furthermore, under the new union guidelines, once a teacher had been there for a while, it was all but impossible to dismiss her.

I had one teacher who was a real problem and who was approaching the deadline after which we couldn’t let him go without a great deal of work. So I spoke to the Legal Department and I spoke with HR, and we were all in agreement that I could do the deed after the semester’s grades were posted. We had meetings. We were all set to go. And then both departments backed down. I said, “This appointment shouldn’t have been made to begin with, and I made it. I regret my mistake. Now we have an opportunity to get out of it, and you won’t stand by me?” I had a responsibility to the students. Ironically but thankfully, I left a month later to join Liz Claiborne Inc.

When I used to give tours of Parsons, it was a real dump. I would proudly talk about all the positive aspects of the school and would avoid mentioning the poor facilities. With some frequency, parents would say, “This places looks … crummy.”

Antagonistic tour takers would make me crazy. Sometimes they’d be especially rude, and I always thought, What if your kid winds up going to this school? He’s going to be the Son of That Jerk from the Tour.

But the ones who asked why the building looked so bad had a point. For a long time, I would try to ignore it, like that W. C. Fields line, “Get away from me, kid, you’re bothering me.”

Finally, I realized I had to address it, so I turned it into a joke. I would say, “I’m sure you’ve noticed the state of our building. Well, this didn’t happen overnight. It took years and years—and years—for us to get it to look this way. Ha-ha.”

It didn’t lessen the amount of peeling paint, but at least people would laugh. And it gets directly to my point about the monkey house. If you’re going to live in one, you at least have to keep reminding yourself that it still does stink!

Know What to Get Off Your Chest and What to Take to the Grave

“GET IT OFF YOUR chest” is one of the all-time worst clichés. If you have done something shameful, the logic goes, you should confess and be forgiven.

Hold it right there. Think about it. Would revealing your mistake hurt others? If so, then hold your tongue. It may make you feel better to tell someone you’ve cheated on him, for example, but it makes the other person feel miserable. That’s not fair. He did nothing wrong, and yet he has to suffer while you get to feel cleansed.

I know a woman who said of her husband: “If he cheated on me, I would hope he had the maturity to keep it to himself. Let him suffer with the secret. It’s his penance for doing what he did.”

I’m with her. You hear people say, “I’ll feel better if I tell my spouse I was unfaithful.” Of course youwill. But maybe you’re not supposed to feel better.

On one Project Runwayhome visit, I was struck by how the designer’s parents’ divorce was still weighing on her. Her mother and father had been separated for years and years and came together for the occasion of this home visit to celebrate their daughter’s success.

I thought that was lovely, but I also felt so sorry for the designer’s mother. She was reminding her daughter of what her father had done, and you could tell she was still suffering years after the fact. Then the father walked in, happy-go-lucky and carefree. Clearly, when he revealed to his wife that he was a cad, he felt purged and had his catharsis. Meanwhile, his wife was destroyed by it.

That’s why “getting it off your chest” isn’t necessarily a good idea.

As you probably know, if you are familiar with any recovering addicts, those in twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous typically try to make amends to those whom they have hurt. But in my experience some people don’t pay attention to the second part of the step: “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

I know someone who received an amends call that informed her that her friend had stolen from her for years. The friend said, “Sorry!” And that was the end of the amends.

Well, not good enough. My friend was furious, while the thief felt totally relieved that she’d unburdened herself of this secret. Who was really served by this? The victim had to suffer more, and the perpetrator was vindicated. If the apology had to happen, it should have been followed up with a great big check to make up for all that had been stolen.

When you’re thinking of volunteering advice, you also need to ask yourself this question: Will revealing my feelings on this subject actually help?

My friend Richard Thomas was in David Mamet’s play Raceon Broadway, and one night in 2009 Anna Wintour was in the audience. Richard called his teenage son, Montana, who is obsessed with fashion, and said, “Anna Wintour’s here! You should come over.”

“I’m afraid,” the boy said to his father.

He had reason to be. Anna took Richard aside after the show and said, “I have a note for you about your performance. You’re dressing very poorly. You need a much more expensive suit.”

The suit was Prada. How much more expensive does it get? I can’t believe that a costumer, a director, and all these other people would let an actor out onstage in a starring role if he didn’t look great. She apparently couldn’t help herself from expressing an opinion. In a case like this, if you have a criticism, you really should keep it to yourself.

This question of what to say or not to say is a running theme in my family. One tense holiday season, we had a family conversation about what we could do to have a better time together.

“We could all say a lot less,” I suggested. “Everyone in this family shares entirely too much.Before speaking, let’s ask ourselves if this is something people really need to know.”

As I anticipated, the Gunns nixed my strategy.

There was one night when we were visiting my mother and all hell was breaking loose. She was going after my sister about the inevitability of some problems my sister was having with her son. “I spotted it at a very early age,” my mother bragged.

Not even remotelyhelpful. It just pushed a button in my sister that caused her to lose it. She was sobbing and ran out of the room.

“Was that really necessary?” I asked my mother. “You took a nice little gathering in your hospital room and turned it into The Jerry Springer Show.

“Besides,” I asked her, “why not say something when the situation is actually fixable rather than years later when the damage has been done?”

“I don’t butt in,” she replied.

Translation: When it’s fixable, I don’t say anything. I wait until it’s done, and then remind you about it.If you’re so sure at the time, do an intervention. Otherwise, you should keep your mouth shut forever after.

This is my whole way of operating on Project Runway.After the judging, we’re back in the lounge and sometimes a designer will tell me, “Nina and Heidi were telling me how bad this aspect of the garment was, and you never mentioned it.”

“And I never would,” I say, “because you couldn’t have done anything about that particular aspect of your design.”

At the same time, some secrets shouldn’t be kept. A friend whom I love and adore was diagnosed years ago with a degenerative disease. Somehow, her husband learned about it before she did and kept it from her for some two or three years, until her symptoms were evident to her.

When my friend told me this story, she suggested that this was a tremendously generous and romantic gesture on her husband’s part.

“I hate to respond this way,” I replied, “but I’m not even remotely moved by this story. It makes me angry.”

“Why?” she asked, shocked.

“What if your last wish were to climb to the top of an Aztec pyramid or to rappel down the side of the Empire State Building?” I asked. “What if? You would have had three years to do those things before your illness progressed.”

Plus, I found it infantilizing. My friend is a very strong, very smart woman. Her husband thought the diagnosis would weigh on her, and so he thought it was good that she didn’t know, but I maintain it wasn’t his call.

Still, I know that some of her friends think how wonderful it was of her husband to keep this secret from her for years.

“He wanted to protect you from this,” they say to her, all moony.

Protect her? It was going to happen anyway!

I guess if she’s happy he kept the secret, then he made the right choice, but I still have trouble with that story. Maybe it’s just that it pains me to see people being lied to “for their own good.”

Maybe I’m just extra defensive because I was lied to by a man for many years and still haven’t fully gotten over it. I’ve had only one long-term relationship in my adult life. In my twenties, I was madly, passionately, unconditionally in love with the same man for almost a decade. It was fabulous, I thought, but I was living in a fool’s paradise. What’s the opposite of a monkey house, where everything smells pristine and is not? Maybe it’s just another room in the monkey house.

We were together for nine years and more or less living with each other, but I still had my apartment. We worked together, so I saw him every day and night. One night we were in bed watching M*A*S*H.He turned to me and said, “I don’t have the patience for you any longer.”

“What?”I responded. “What am I doing? What can I do?”

“There’s nothing for you to do,” he said. “I want you to leave.”

Then he told me that he’d been sleeping around—with any guy, anywhere. And of course this was during the advent of AIDS, 1982. So not only was he throwing me out abruptly after I’d spent almost my whole adult life with him, but he was revealing to me that a major part of our relationship had been a sham, and that he’d put my very life at risk.

I still remember driving down Rock Creek Parkway back to my apartment that night. I had to pull over because I was hyperventilating. I could hardly breathe from grief, humiliation, and despair. Those feelings later turned to anger.

His moral behavior was horrible, but he also put my health in real jeopardy. I was monogamous. I was in love, why wouldn’t I be? I never thought he wouldn’t be. To find out he’d been cheating for years was such a slap in the face and also potentially a death sentence. I was tested for HIV every six months for years. Thank God, I was okay, but I’ve never quite learned to trust anyone intimately again.

And then I still had to see him at work every day. It was no fun being in academic meetings with the person who’d broken my heart. I took the high road. But it was not easy. Doing the right thing can be very, very hard, and I think it was also the right thing that I left town as soon as I could. I moved to New York City the following year, and this breakup was most certainly a catalyst.

When people hear that I haven’t had a boyfriend since 1982, they often whisper, “Does he not have sex?”

That’s right!

You know, much of my one long-term boyfriend’s “I’m over this” was about not having the patience for me with regard to sex. I’ve always been kind of asexual. So now I can’t even consider sex without thinking about him and his disapproval. Talk about something that will make you lose the urge. That breakup was a cold shower to last a lifetime.

Could I get psychiatric help and resume some kind of sex life at some point? Probably. But it’s a little late for that. And frankly, I am happy being celibate. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had thoughts. I am a human being. But I love my life and don’t feel any need to change it.

Getting used to being alone was hard, but now that I’ve made a life for myself alone, I really like it. It’s been years since I’ve been interested in anyone. And I really think if you don’t need it, you don’t need it. As hard as it is for a lot of my friends to believe, I really am happy alone.

Okay, there has been one man I’ve had feelings for since then. When I was traveling to Asia regularly, I often had the same flight attendant, a man named Daniel. He was very cute and very kind, and I always looked forward to seeing him. Well, on one flight, a baby broker boarded the plane with—I kid you not—fourteen Asian babies bound for America. It would never happen now. But there were the fourteen babies, and something had to be done, because this broker was completely outnumbered and overwhelmed, as you may imagine.

So a flight attendant got on the intercom and asked for volunteers to take a baby for the international flight. I didn’t have much work to do, so I held my hand up and was assigned an adorable baby boy. For fourteen hours, he sat on my lap and ripped up magazines. I made faces at him, and he slept, and it was perfectly lovely.

Well, I guess this babysitting marathon impressed Daniel, because when we landed in New York, he said, “Would you mind if I called you?”