Текст книги "Gunn's Golden Rules"

Автор книги: Tim Gunn

Соавторы: Ada Calhoun
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

When You Need Help, Get It

I’M CRAZY ABOUT MARTHA Stewart. We’ve done a lot of things together, and I’ve always loved watching her show. But sometimes her domesticity gets a little out of control.

One day I was watching her cooking show. While roasting a pan of nuts, she said something I have never forgotten: “Life has few disappointments greater than a room-temperature nut.”

After Martha had been through the ordeal of her trial and jail time at what was referred to as Camp Cupcake, I asked her if she still stood by that quote.

“I said that?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “I think about it all the time.”

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t say it now!”

FOR A 2009 SEGMENT for The Dr. Oz Show,I went to D.C. and met an extraordinary testimony to courage. My assignment was to help a veteran shop for clothes. Sgt. Reinita Gray is an amazing woman: a mother of five who did four tours of duty and lost her leg to a missile while on a noncombat mission in Iraq, earning her a Purple Heart.

She hadn’t been out of the hospital since the loss of her leg, so we brought a special wheelchair van and I wheeled her in and out of it and through Bloomingdale’s.

We had my usual fight about size.

“It’s too small!” she insisted.

“It’s not too small!” I said. “Look at the sleeves and the shoulders. It fits!”

We talked about all the outfits we thought were a hot mess. We teased each other. It was all such fun—and very moving. She’s just learning to get around on her prosthetic leg, and one time she walked out of the Bloomingdale’s dressing room unassisted.

But where it became even more inspiring was back at the hospital. The bigger picture of inspiration and emotion for me was being at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. While waiting in the lobby for our contact there, we saw people go by who were badly burned, completely bandaged. That was the visual. But when we went to the amputee center, the big wing at Walter Reed, we spent an hour or so in the physical therapy area, and would you believe I didn’t see one person who looked miserable?

The spirit in that room was so uplifting. The room was full of people who had lost a limb or two or even more, and I expected to be met with individuals full of anger and self-pity and depressed by their situation, but instead they seemed so full of life. What they go through is incredibly tough. Sometimes it takes two years for these patients to build up the strength in their stumps so that the prosthetics will work. I felt almost joyous about the spirit of the human will. There was no self-pity in that room. The refrain was: I’m so happy still to be alive. Again and again, people said that to me, and they smiled.

That experience put so much in perspective for me. I tried to remember how many people seemed that happy and grateful the last time I was at a fashion event full of well-off, successful, gorgeously dressed guests eating wonderful canapés and drinking champagne. In high society, you have people walking around complaining that they haven’t had their nails done in two weeks. Well, I want to say to them now, “At least you have nails to do! At least you have a hand!”

Maybe it’s the gift of having become successful late in life, but I feel so incredibly lucky to have the life I do. I am blessed to work in a field I love, to do projects I care about, and to be appreciated for what I bring to the table. When someone hands me a glass of champagne, I sure don’t check the label to see whether it’s worthy of my consumption.

Back to Walter Reed. I thought these soldiers would be furious and sad. I spent a long time with Sergeant Gray, and we spoke very frankly, so I know she has moments of despair, but she pulls herself out of them. She is committed to moving forward. And that’s a quality I saw in all of these soldiers: a total commitment to working hard and figuring out how to make the most of whatever they have.

“How do you rationalize this tragic accident to yourself?” I asked Reinita.

“I don’t even try to,” she said. “Things happen, and this happened. I’d like to think things happen for a reason. We never know why, but this has given me such a sense of who I am, independent of this leg I’ve lost. I’ve focused on my family in a way I hadn’t before.”

I have so much respect for her, and for everyone at that hospital, and for all our veterans. Each day I think about them and the other people I’ve met in the course of my travels who are enthusiastic about their lives, and I try to remember them when I encounter someone who has everything—money, fame, and legs—and yet complains constantly about how hard they have it.

That’s something the staff at Walter Reed has no patience for: whining. They give tough love. They are not coddling those patients with whom they spend so much time. When Reinita was struggling to get up from the mat on which she was doing her physical therapy, I bent down to get her crutches. The physical therapist shot me a look.

“I shouldn’t do that?” I asked her.

She shook her head. And together we watched Reinita learn to stand up on her own.

I am so grateful to Dr. Oz for giving me the chance to go to Walter Reed, let alone to be a part of his core team. I always love appearing on his show, because I genuinely believe he’s having a hugely positive impact on his viewers.

When the producers approached me about being a regular guest, I thought it might be fun. I had seen Dr. Oz on Oprahand liked his bedside manner. But it’s been even more fulfilling than I anticipated. He has genuine warmth and a very clear and articulate way of communicating. He doesn’t dumb things down, but the way he speaks is accessible (his producers have suggested that I with my fancy vocabulary don’t always manage this …). He’s not an alarmist, which is so refreshing.

I love the part of his show that teaches the audience about what is and isn’t normal when it comes to their bodies. The audience has placards with normal written on one side and not normal on the other, and they vote on topics before he explains the truth behind them. I learned that snoring was not normal, for example. There’s a lot of content packed into his show. And I’m not surprised that he has one of the top daytime TV talk shows in America.

Dr. Oz was the one who wanted us to go to Walter Reed to take a look at the place and see what we could do, and it really did change my life. I am tempted to rent a bus and drive a bunch of self-involved New Yorkers down to D.C. to see the physical therapy wing. “We’re going to take a little trip, people! Come with me, all you mopers!”

Can’t you see Martha Stewart standing there in the middle of Walter Reed? She’d kill me for saying this, but I like to imagine the pre-Camp Cupcake Martha surveying the scene and then saying, “This is nothing compared to the disappointment of a room-temperature nut.”

NOW I WANT TO talk seriously about people who aren’t just depressed about their nails, but who are truly depressed or who are going through hard times without a staff of military doctors on hand. I have been there, and I want to reassure you that I know how impossible it feels. I promise you that things will get better if you are committed to climbing out of whatever hole you find yourself in.

First of all, there is no shame in undergoing therapy. I know there’s still a stigma in much of the country, and I think that’s too bad. Here in New York, the questions you hear most often are, “Where’s your apartment?” and “Who’s your therapist?”

I don’t think everyone needs to go all the time (nor can everyone afford to), but I do think everyone at some point or other can benefit from a little chat with a psychologist, whether it’s when the kids leave for college or when you’ve lost your job or when you’ve had a painful breakup or when someone close to you has died or when you’ve for no discernible reason lost the joy in life.

I think people are afraid to admit to problems, because once they admit to them, then those problems become real. But everybody has problems. If you think you don’t have any, then you do have a problem. Being in denial or feeling you can’t talk about things is so dangerous. You have to do somethingabout whatever your struggles are. It’s what gives us resources to move forward. It’s what life is.

People get very defensive if they think you’re saying what they’re doing isn’t normal. I don’t think it’s about normal. It’s about acceptable. When we talk about a situation that we need to change, it’s better not to think about whether or not it’s normal, but instead about whether or not it’s acceptable. Some things are contextual: People blow their noses on the street in India with no tissues. If you’re over there, you can do that. But if you’re on an American main street, you’d best break out the tissues.

Other things are never okay. It’s not acceptable to be abusive to a family member, or for a child to behave destructively, or for a job to make you miserable. You need to figure out what to do about those things, and there’s no shame in admitting you need a shrink, or your pastor, or your family, to help you out. It can make all the difference in the world just to have someone impartial to talk to once a week.

I say ever so glibly, “Go get some therapy,” but the value depends on the quality of the therapist. There’s a huge difference between a good one and a bad one. When I was young, my parents sent me to a lot of doctors, and some of them were far crazier than I was.

You have to shop around for someone who suits you. I think a therapist of the same gender sometimes helps with empathy, but you know when you’ve found someone you click with.

After trying a bunch of duds, eventually I wound up seeing a truly wonderful therapist five days a week—Dr. Phillip Goldblatt in New Haven, Connecticut. His sense of caring was palpable. He didn’t have to say anything; I could just sense his goodness and concern. I had the maturity of a gnat and a lot of issues. He made me deal with them. It took a long time. He would keep returning to things that came up. He absolutely gave me my life back.

Why, you may be thinking, did I have to go to therapy five times a week? Well, it wasn’t my idea, I’ll tell you that. It was an intervention that was thrust upon me. I’ll come clean: When I was seventeen, I made a serious suicide attempt. I was at yet another boarding school—I must have cycled through a dozen schools in as many semesters—and was ever more miserable. I had a debilitating stutter. I had no friends. I was incredibly lonely and depressed. I just wanted to end it all.

In my dorm room at Milford Academy I took far too many pills, then lay down to die with a sense of peaceful resignation.

Then, much to my frustration, I woke up the next morning. This wasn’t supposed to happenwas my first thought when I opened my eyes on a new day.

I hear that people who survive jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge report thinking on the way down that they want to live after all. When they survive, they feel so grateful. But I didn’t have that feeling. I was disappointed that I’d failed.

Now, of course, I’m glad the pills didn’t work.

I learned how to cope. I matured so much. When I got beyond my stutter at the age of nineteen, it reminded me of how I felt about the world when I was given glasses at the age of twelve. Everything changed. I hadn’t known that you could see individual leaves on trees, or that you could read road signs from a car window. Similarly, when I could speak clearly, my world opened up. I could actually be comfortable talking to people. It was like being more fully whole. I realized I had been living only a partial existence.

Going through all that helped me be a better person and a better teacher. I feel so much compassion for what young people go through. It is very hard to grow up, especially when you’re sensitive. You’re so vulnerable at that age. I worry about my friends’ children, and I try to be a good uncle.

The Megan Meier case, in which a teenager hanged herself after being tormented online by her friend’s mother posing as a teenage boy, is an example of the worst kind of inhumanity. That case made me want to unplug the Internet.

Of course, you can’t do that. You have to let young people live their lives. But you also have to do everything you can to show them that their teenage years are going to end and that there’s a world of possibility out there. We all need to do anything we can do to help children realize that they have value and gifts to give the world.

Sometimes people ask me when I figured out that I was gay. Well, for a very long time, I didn’t know whatI was. I knew what I wasn’t: I wasn’t interested in boys, but I reallywasn’t interested in girls. A lot of it was denial, but it was also that I didn’t feel unsatisfied. I’ve always loved working and have made that my priority. For many years, I described myself as asexual, and that’s probably still closest to the truth.

I do believe in a spectrum of sexuality. Some people are completely straight and some are completely gay, and plenty of people are somewhere in between. I think it’s crazy how hung up Americans, especially American men, are on this subject. I identify as gay, but there are women to whom I’m attracted. It’s not like I want to go to bed with them—but I can appreciate when someone’s radiating sexiness.

Things have changed so much in the past thirty years; it’s almost hard for young people today to imagine what it was like to be gay back then. Let me tell you: It was the opposite of fun. You used to feel so alone with it all. If you were even thinking about homosexuality, you assumed it was only a matter of time before someone put you in a straitjacket. In my parents’ home, the term wasn’t even in our vocabulary. I used to think if I shared any of my thoughts, they would lock me up. If I tried to talk about anything even remotely related, my parents would say, “We’ve never heard of this!” But I think they knew that “this” was what I was, and that that’s part of why they sent me to shrinks constantly.

To this day, my mother has never acknowledged that I’m gay. I’m outin public. I mean, I’ve been on the cover of The Advocate. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that she finally stopped talking about women she wants to set me up with. When she met the man I was with for a decade, I introduced him as a dear friend I wanted her to meet. She didn’t ask any questions then, and she never asked me what happened to him when he dropped off the face of the earth. I always half expect her to say, “Gay? I just thought you were happy!”

In fact, if there were ever a moment when my mother and I would have talked about my being gay, it would have been one night when we went out to dinner in the Village. It was the second and last time she visited me. In twenty-six years, she’s been here only twice. I think my move to New York from Washington, D.C., was always hard for her. She found New York intimidating and always joked that she needed to lose a dress size and get a new wardrobe before she could visit.

I took her to Chez Ma Tante on West Tenth Street. We were sitting there waiting to order. She looked me right in the eyes and said, “Why would you take me to a restaurant where there are only men? Are they all homosexual?”

This stopped me cold.

“You don’t know that everyone in here is gay,” I said, trying to psych myself up for the conversation. “And furthermore, it’s New York, in the Village, at the end of the twentieth century. For men to be together is normal and acceptable …”

There was a tense moment, and I thought I saw an awareness dawning on her. Then two women walked through the door, and my mother said, “Oh, never mind, there are some women!” And she went back to looking at the menu as if nothing were amiss. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Today’s young people have Adam Lambert and Lady Gaga and the Internet, where they can find a support system.

That doesn’t mean being a teenager (much less a gay teenager) is ever easy. The physical changes are enough to traumatize a person. I feel such sympathy for teenage boys who have that wisp of a mustache. They’re too young to shave, but they’re starting to look werewolf-y. If you’re gay on top of it, it can be very scary if you live in a place that isn’t supportive.

The Harvey Milk High School in New York City serves gay teenagers who don’t feel safe at other schools. When I moved from the West Village to the Upper West Side, I gave the school my grand piano, which had been a gift from my grandmother. I thought, Those kids need it more than I do.When you don’t fit in, something like a piano, or a flair for design—whatever tools or talents you discover at that age—can show you a whole new world. One truly nice person or one thing that you learn to do well can save your life.

Back when I was a suicidal, seventeen-year-old, misfit boarding-school student, I never thought I would be where I am now. I never imagined that I’d have a beautiful apartment, or a job I loved, or witty friends. I think about that when fans on the street call out, “We love you, Tim!”

I want to respond, “I love you, too!” I mean it. I am so grateful for my wonderful fans’ support. I hope in my honor they will think about the children in their lives who may be struggling and share that love with them.

Take Risks! Playing It Safe

Is Never Really Safe

HOW I BECAME INVOLVED in Project Runwayis a funny thing. The producers were looking for a consultant because they knew little about the fashion industry. They had produced Project Greenlight,about the film business, so this was a new world for them. A few people had given them my name, so they called me at Parsons.

I will tell you that I had my snob hat on as I was talking to them on the phone. Fashion reality?I thought. That sounds disgusting. Who’s telling them to call me—my enemies?

I was reluctant to meet with them, but I agreed to go. Truth be told, I was a little curious. The meeting went very well. I was instantly more interested when they said they wanted to work with real fashion designers. I thought, At least there’s some integrity operating here.

Then they asked me the question that, upon reflection, I realized they were using to vet people. “How would you feel if we told you we wanted the designers to design and create a wedding dress in two days?”

“Well,” I said, very matter-of-factly, “they’d have to design and create a wedding dress in two days.”

They looked at each other meaningfully.

“Did I give you the wrong answer?” I asked.

“No,” they said. “You’re just the first person who said it could be done.”

“Why?” I asked. “What have you been hearing?”

“Everyone says it would take days, a minimum of a week, that they’d need help, that the process is so complicated …”

“Look,” I said, “in two days you’re not going to get an Oscar de la Renta wedding gown. You’ll probably get a basic column without sleeves, but it will be a wedding dress.”

They looked at each other again, and I thought I saw them smile.

I left the meeting feeling really excited about the project and hoping they’d pick me.

Then I waited and waited. I was feeling disappointed when they hadn’t called a week later. But then a couple of days after that they did call, and they said they wanted to work with me. I was thrilled.

We worked together for six months, and there were just two major points of disagreement. During their fashion-industry interviews, they had become convinced that the designers shouldn’t make their own clothes. In this scenario, there would be a sample room full of seamstresses and pattern drafters who would do the actual fabrication.

“Unless the audience sees the designers getting real and metaphorical blood on their hands, why would it care about them?” I asked. “Also, whom does Heidi send home? If there’s any problem with the garment, the designer can just blame it on the seamstress.”

We know I won that. The other point of disagreement had to do with the workroom. Originally, it was going to be in the Atlas apartments, where the designers would live. The belief was that they should have twenty-four-hour access to it. I said that would make the show a stamina test beyond the stamina test it already is. I insisted they be forced to go home at a specific time and then return the next morning.

Not only was it marginally better for them mentally and physically, it would give them some fresh perspective on their work, a break from what I call the monkey house.

I won that, too. (Essentially, the Bravo show Launch My Lineis all the things I didn’t want for Project Runway.)

In the end, they didn’t have the budget to outfit Atlas with a loftlike workroom, so they were scrambling for an alternate space.

“Do you want to look at Parsons?” I asked.

Once the show was a success, people started speculating about how Parsons scored such a huge coup. Well, now it can be told!

I called downtown to Parsons headquarters and said we wanted the uptown design building for filming over the summer. I asked what the feeling would be and how, if it was indeed okay, we would facilitate it. The auditorium space where the judging happens had been used by outside people conducting seminars, and, ahem, sample sales. A staff person, Margo, was in charge of it. We talked to her about it, and Project Runwaymade a deal to pay the fee plus the cost of extra security and all the other expenses associated with keeping the building open after hours. Everyone was happy, or so I thought.

Two days before wrapping, one of the university’s executive VPs called and yelled at me. “I’ve just heard about this show!” she ranted. “You’re putting this entire institution at risk!”

I didn’t see the danger, but she kept insisting I had single-handedly destroyed the college.

“We’re coming up and stopping this right now,” she said.

I went to see Margo, who had received the same call I had.

“What do we do?” she asked, starting to panic.

I thought about it for a second and then said, “I’ve been in academia long enough to know that when they say, ‘We’re on our way up there,’ it will be a couple of days.”

Sure enough, wrapping was long finished by the time the VPs arrived with their torches and pitchforks to shut it all down.

But I was still kicking around, so they took their anger out on me. I was royally raked across the coals by the Legal Department and by the president’s office. They scolded and shamed and told me what a disgrace I was and how much jeopardy I’d put the college in. Finally, I asked, “What did I do wrong? I called and asked you about it. You said to work it out with Margo. We worked it out. You got a hefty chunk of change. What’s the problem?”

Naturally, when the show was a big success, they were congratulating themselves on how bright they’d been to get in on the ground floor. I didn’t remind them how they’d almost fired me over it. I just said, “You’re right! Good job!” Take the high road.

The Runwayproducers were very hesitant to have me go on the auditions, because it was a lot of time and they weren’t paying me, but I really wanted to go anyway. I was curious and wanted the show to succeed, and I said, “I’ve invested this much time and energy into this project. I’d like to stay involved through each phase and help get the right people for this.”

So I followed them around to see the applicants. It was really interesting, and very hard work. We were doing twelve-hour days, looking through hundreds of portfolios and garments. In New York City, I did prescreenings out in the courtyard of the Soho Grand Hotel, where the interviews were being conducted, and I saw a procession of odd people who just wanted to be on a television show. They had brought clothing, but in some cases they were items from their closets, or pieces they had designed but not made. In some cases there were no clothes at all, just some drawings or photographs. It was a big potpourri.

I would say three-quarters were design students, and while I don’t object to that in theory, they’re still in an incubator. They almost never have their own point of view yet.

Some of the future stars of the show were in that line, and I had no early indication that they would make it on the show. Jay McCarroll, who went on to win Season 1, arrived pulling a wagon containing what I recall were dolls. Austin Scarlett was in the line looking incredibly androgynous and strange. Looking at the two of them, I thought: Is this going to be a freak show?But of course we wound up discovering some amazing talent, including Austin and Jay.

In Miami, on the last day of auditions, the producers came to my hotel room and said, “We think we need a mentor to be with the designers in the workroom. Would you be interested?”

I thought about it for a second and then asked, “Do I have to live with them?”

They laughed and said no, I wouldn’t have to live with them.

“In that case, sure!” I said.

When I called my mother to tell her I was being considered for a TV show, she responded, “But you’re so old.”

“I think I’m meant to be a counterpoint to the young designers,” I said. What I was thinking was, Gee, thanks, Mom.

But even then I still had to prove myself. Bravo needed what’s called B-roll of me talking on TV. Luckily, I had done a couple of little fashion-related interviews that they could look at, including one on CBS Sunday Morning.Based on that, they gave me a chance. As you know by now, I’ve always been shy. Project Runwaywas either going to kill me or cure me. But I thought it was a great opportunity. I had to just do it and hope I didn’t die from fright. It made it easier that I didn’t think I was actually going to be on camera much, if at all.

No one has ever said this, but I am pretty sure that the producers speculated that if they just sent the designers alone into the workroom with a challenge, no one would talk. They would just work, heads down and eyes on their garments, and the tops of these designers’ heads wouldn’t make for must-see television. Sending me in to probe and ask questions would at least elicit some dialogue.

Accordingly, the entire time we were taping, I had every confidence no one would ever see me or hear my voice. I thought they were cutting me out and just leaving in the designers’ responses. So I was very relaxed, assuming I was just a ghost on the cutting-room floor.

As we now know, they wound up leaving me in as a character. I was pretty shocked when I saw the first season and realized I was not a disembodied voice or a mere prompter. But I was happy with how smart the show was and how much it revealed about the creative process. The rest is history.

I was an unpaid consultant for the first two seasons, and then I signed with an agent and began being paid for my work, which made the situation even better.

People are often shocked to hear that I was unpaid for so long, but I did it for the love of it, and (please don’t read this, anyone associated with the show) I would do it again for free in a heartbeat. And it all worked out. My West Village apartment was falling apart, so even though I couldn’t afford it at the time, I joined a waiting list for a more expensive place called London Terrace Gardens on West Twenty-third Street. I was nervous that my name was going to come up before I could afford it, but luckily, it wasn’t until I was given the appointment at Liz Claiborne Inc. that my name was called, and by then I had the means to move.

Yes, those early days of Project Runwaywere hard work, but they were also deeply fulfilling. What if I’d said no because I wasn’t being paid? I would have turned my back on an incredible opportunity. I wanted to help them because I was concerned with the quality of the show. I wanted it to show reverence for this industry I love and prevent anyone from making a joke out of it. Luckily, the producers were all about quality and integrity. It was a great marriage.

What do they say: Do what you love and the money will follow? It’s always been true for me. I had no expectation of personal success through this show. I never expected there would be a second season, much less a seventh. And I never expected to get famous in a million zillion years. While we were making Season 1, I just thought, If nothing else, this is going to be great cocktail-party-conversation fodder.

Lauren Zalaznick arrived during the taping of one of the Season 1 shows. I didn’t know she was the president of Bravo and so, technically, our boss. We were just two people standing there together in the back of the auditorium watching the judging together. She turned to me and asked rhetorically, “Who’s going to want to watch this?”

“You’re corroborating my worst fears,” I responded. It was hard back then to see the shape of the show. I didn’t know what was going on when I wasn’t around. I thought, Is it going to be about sexual escapades at the Atlas?

But now we know how it turned out: a smart, fun look inside the creative process of fashion designers. I was so happy about it. It proved the point I keep insisting on: You don’t need to dumb things down for the television audience. People are smart, and they want to see intelligent shows. People have come up to me and said Project Runwayis the thinking man’s reality show, an idea I love. The audience for the premiere of Season 1 was 354,000. For Season 6, it was almost three million.

It was very satisfying to come back to some of the snarkier people in the industry—the ones who said way back during the airing of Season 1 that I was wasting my time or that the show wouldn’t amount to anything—and to tell them, “Remember that show you were so dismissive of? It was just nominated for an Emmy.”

To date, the show’s been nominated for sixteen Emmys. There’s a bobble-head doll of me for sale. I am well known enough that there is a ton of misinformation floating around about me on the Internet. There was something about my going to the deli across the street from my office with Andy Roddick. They said we were dating and had a lover’s spat at the counter. Well, I’ve never even met Andy Roddick but he’s married to a woman, and I haven’t been on a date in decades, so no chance of that! But I’m flattered that people think of me enough to take the time to make up insane gossip.