Текст книги "Gunn's Golden Rules"

Автор книги: Tim Gunn

Соавторы: Ada Calhoun
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

And I said, without hesitation, “That’s easy. Anna Wintour being carried down five flights of stairs from a fashion show.” He said, not surprisingly, “Tell me more,” and I told him what happened. He ran only one line about it, but I’ll tell you the extended version, including the ridiculous epilogue.

I was at Peter Som’s show at the Metropolitan Pavilion on West Eighteenth Street. It was held on the fifth floor, and there was one large freight elevator. Knowing Anna was a Peter Som fan and knowing she famously dislikes riding in elevators with other people, I thought, How will she ever get down?I didn’t have a seat so I was standing, coincidentally, in a place where I could see Anna sitting in the front row with a bodyguard on either side of her.

An announcement is made—“Ladies and gentlemen, please uncross your legs”—which they do so the people in the front row won’t accidentally trip the models walking by them and so the photographers’ shots aren’t obscured. Anna is the only one who doesn’t uncross. Her foot’s sticking out there ready to put some unsuspecting model into the hospital. But anyway, the show ends. The models survive. And as the lights come up, bam,Anna’s gone!

I was there with a colleague from Parsons, and we had been discussing the will-she-or-won’t-she-take-the-elevator question, so we ran over to the elevator bay to see if Anna would deign to get on. She wasn’t there. Then we looked over the stairway railing. And what did we see but Anna being carried down the stairs. The bodyguards had made a fireman’s lock and were racing her from landing to landing. She was sitting on their crossed arms.

I ran to the window to see if they would put her down on the sidewalk or carry her to the car like that. They carried her to the car. And I thought: I will never forget this.

So the Postprinted the following version of that story on July 9, 2006, a day that will live in infamy: “After leaving a fashion show held in a loft building with only one freight elevator, Gunn wondered how the Vogueeditor, who doesn’t ride with mere mortals, would get downstairs. ‘Her two massive bodyguards picked her up and carried her down five flights of stairs and then—I looked out the window—they carried her into her car.’ ”

I didn’t think anything of it, but then the next day, Monday morning, Patrick O’Connell, Vogue’s director of communications, called and left a message that I was to call Anna Wintour right away. I was too scared to call her back that day, but on Tuesday I called Patrick and was told, “Hold for Ms. Wintour.”

Forgive my language, but I’m thinking I’m about to have diarrhea, I’m such a wreck.

He comes back on the phone and says, “I’m terribly sorry. She’s unavailable at the moment.”

“I can’t handle the suspense,” I said. “Can you please tell me what this is in regards to?”

“Yes,” he said. “She wants you to have the Postprint a retraction of your statement.”

“That would imply it’s not true,” I said.

“It’s not true,” he said.

“It’s very true,” I said, “and I can tell you exactly when it happened.” Thankfully, I keep a diary. I looked it up and told him the exact date, time, and location.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” he says. “I’ll get back to you.”

There are then many more phone calls, each one insisting upon a retraction or at least an apology. I refused.

“I didn’t malign her character!” I insisted, and still do. “My statement was a matter of fact.”

“Ms. Wintour knows how to work a Manolo,” Patrick finally said, angrily.

“Is that what this is all about?” I asked. “If you want an apology from me, here it is: ‘I apologize if I implied that Ms. Wintour doesn’t know how to work a Manolo.’ The goal for her departure from the fashion show was clearly speed, and that’s what she received from these bodyguards. Furthermore, I wasn’t alone in seeing this. Dozens of people saw it.”

In his next call to me, he said, “We’re going to have to get the lawyers involved.”

By this time I am not only a ball of anxiety, I’m also spitting mad. I said, “Well then, you’ll please permit me to get some corroborating witnesses.”

As luck would have it, that afternoon a fashion executive was in my office. He asked me why I looked so distraught, and I said, “I’ve been through hell. That personover there at Vogueis threatening me over a quote in the Post.”

I told him the story.

There was a pause, and then he burst out laughing. “I was at that show!” he said. “I saw exactly what you saw!”

He grabbed the office phone and called Patrick right then. Just like that, my nightmare was over. He told Patrick that he, among many others, could attest to the by-now-infamous stairs story. After days of torment, I was off the hook.

But I knew Anna still must have been seething, so I decided I was going to take the high road. I called Richard, the florist I use, told him the basic situation, and asked for a fabulous and tasteful arrangement of all-white flowers to be sent to her office. I got on the subway and delivered a card of my stationery, on which I said something like, “I apologize if my comments in the Postcaused you any unrest or unease. It was never my intention. With respect and regards, Tim Gunn.”

There was never any acknowledgment, but I felt like I’d done everything I could to put the matter right. And thankfully, I never heard a peep about any of this again. When I met Patrick in person sometime later, I told him, “I am so happy to see you. I was afraid that Anna had hurled the floral arrangement at your head and you were in a coma somewhere. It’s good to see that you are alive and well.”

He laughed, and I felt like I had closure on the whole ordeal. But it made me think that perhaps the devil really does wear Prada. I couldn’t believe how sweet she seemed in that great movie The September Issue.Of course, she did know the cameras were on …

When Times Square was shut down the day before New Year’s Eve in 2009, I suspected it was something inside 4 Times Square, which houses Vogue. As in: She huffed and she puffed. Although it turned out to be a suspicious unmarked van, there exists on that corner a more constant source of fear.

UNFORTUNATELY, THE REST OF the Voguestaff follows in her Manolo footprints when it comes to haughtiness.

On September 12, 2006, I was on a panel at the New York Public Library with Vogue’s André Leon Talley, as well as the photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and PeopleGroup’s Martha Nelson. I don’t know how much the audience learned about fashion, but I certainly learned a bit about how ridiculous people can get when they live in the fashion-world bubble.

André Leon Talley arrived with a sizable entourage. And this was not a large greenroom. The NYPL’s director of public programs, Paul Holdengräber, a lovely guy, comes in and says, “We’d like to have a sound check.”

We’re all filing out to go do the sound check and André says, “I don’t need a sound check!” and he stays with his crowd of hangers-on. Fine. The rest of us do the check. Everything sounds great.

When we return to the greenroom, we see that someone has spread a translucent barber’s bib over André and he’s reclining, his arms at his sides. He’s being fed grapes and cubes of cheese one by one, like a bird in a nest.

I can’t believe we’re witnessing this,I thought.

Well, the best was yet to come.

André is cleaned up. The bib is folded. It’s time to go do the panel.

“The room has been cleared,” André says. It’s not a question; it’s a statement.

“Cleared of what?” Paul says.

André clarifies that he means of people. Apparently he doesn’t like to walk down the aisle of a full auditorium; he prefers it be empty.

Paul is in shock. He says, with a bit of a tone, “Empty? It’s standing room only. We have no place to move these people to.”

The room starts to get tense.

“It doesn’t matter,” I interject. “We don’t have to walk down an aisle. There is a stage door.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” André asks in annoyance.

“I’m telling you now,” I said, “and if you’d come to the sound check, you would have known that, too.”

At the panel, André made a lot of very bizarre pronouncements. Someone in the audience asked why larger-sized women weren’t represented on designers’ racks or in magazines. “Obviously, I’m a large woman,” she said, “and I feel like I’m not marginal, although I think that large women are marginalized.”

It’s a good question, and a common one, but André began praising Mo’nique. “I think there’s no woman more fashionable than Mo’nique,” he said. “I love Mo’nique. And I think that Mo’nique does for the full-figured woman what Rosalind Russell used to do in those wonderful 1950s Technicolor films, and I love Mo’nique, and I say that seriously. That show she had for the large woman, the contest, I thought that was really wonderful, and I always think she’s great on her own show. I think she’s wonderful.”

I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. I tried to tell the woman something useful about sizes in the industry and was glad when Martha Nelson agreed with me.

“Yeah,” she said, “let’s be real.”

At the end of the panel, I let André and his crew go first in the elevator so I wouldn’t have to ride up with them. I just couldn’t handle another moment with him.

Well, I thought I’d seen everything, but then walking through the freight exit on my way to the subway, I pass André’s Maybach parked in the freight room. Apparently, he couldn’t even walk from the sidewalk.

Don’t get me wrong: Vogueis an essential read for all fashion lovers. Anna and her team are very talented, and they are on the cutting edge of trends. But when I see what a bubble they’re all living in, how detached from reality they are, how much money and time is wasted in the course of their work, I worry about the example it sets for people coming up in the fashion world, a world that—let’s face it—is now a lot more crowded and a lot less moneyed than it has been in years past.

I hope that Project Runway,which encourages hard work, thrift, and skill, is part of the solution to that unsustainable excess and hauteur. I am heartened that, by and large, the thousands of young designers I come into contact with are simply trying to make beautiful things to the best of their ability, rather than attain a lifestyle that allows them to be bibbed and hand-fed grapes.

And yet, maybe not. I thought the recession would have more of an impact on the industry, but there’s still a fleet of limousines over there in front of 4 Times Square.

I look forward to seeing what the next generations of fashion designers and magazines look like. Between the demise of so many publications and the decline in fashion company fortunes, I wonder whether we’re heading for a new age of decency and diligence. I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that’s what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn’t be so tragic.

Take the High Road

I DON’T KNOW IF PEOPLE have gotten ruder or if my tolerance level has declined. I recently spoke to a group of high school juniors and seniors at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Teen Design Fair. Those young people are our future, and I believe in them. I love being part of the annual event.

We had a Q&A afterward, and one of the teens stood up and asked what advice I had for them.

“I’ll give you some life advice,” I said. “The first piece is: Listen and listen intentlywhen you’re being spoken to about something. The second: Take the high road. When presented with frustration or anger or discontentment with a situation or a person, don’t reduce yourself to that level. Don’t get into a conflict in that moment. You’ll feel better about yourself for it.”

Well, to my surprise, this created a near frenzy in the room. The students were aghast. I was surprised by the reaction, so I said: “Tell me more about why that seems like bad advice to you.”

“I believe I should stand up for myself!” said one student.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t stand up for yourself,” I said. “I’m just saying, in the heat of the moment, walk away from it.”

One episode of Project Runway’s Season 6 speaks to this. The challenge was for each designer to do a look that complemented his or her best look on the show to date.

Althea Harper thinks Logan Neitzel is copying her zipper-collar design and complains about it to her own model and to Irina, whom she mistakenly thinks is her friend. She starts to get worked up, but then she thinks: You know what? I need to concentrate on getting my own work done and let this go.She takes the high road and doesn’t say anything.

In the end, Logan gets voted off because his garment just wasn’t very good. On the runway, Irina borrows Althea’s words about Logan and turns them against Althea. Irina suggests that Althea has copied herby doing a sweater. Heidi disagrees, and Irina is embarrassed. In the end, Althea wins the challenge.

One moral might be not to trust Irina—and not because she’s a bad person at all, because she’s not. She’s just incredibly tenacious. But the true lesson, one that I hope I eventually convinced those design students of, is that taking the high road is always the best way to go. You feel better about yourself, and the world feels better about you.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. After a recent plane trip, I was standing at the baggage carousel. I’d been waiting a rather long time for my luggage. In fact, no one had gotten any suitcases at all. A rumor started that our bags were lost. This is, of course, very stressful, but I figured getting all worked up would make it only more stressful. But one of the women who’d been on my flight did not agree. She started pacing and trying to recruit an army to storm the airport administration: “Let’s all go together to the office and scream that we’re not going to take it anymore!”

I turned to a passenger standing next to me who seemed tempted to follow and told her, “Don’t even think about it. Take the high road.”

Sure enough, a short time later our bags showed up and no one had to handcuff herself to the ticket counter. There are times for protest, for civil disobedience, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s best to avoid bringing out the big guns.

And yet, I know for a fact how hard it can be to keep your frustration to yourself. Sometimes keeping in feelings can be painful. One time, for me, it proved almost fatal. I was in my twenties and was having an excruciatingly horrible lunch with my mother, during which I honestly saw my life pass before my eyes.

Fortunately, I arrived at the restaurant, Clyde’s of Georgetown, first, because waiting just fuels my mother’s innate sense of martyrdom (unfortunately, this trait is genetic). Also, if she gets there first, my mother will often hand the hostess her credit card as she walks in to avoid a discussion at the end of the meal about who will pay the bill.

“You just love taking the battle out of this thing, don’t you?” I ask when I learn she’s done this. (Twice, I’ve actually gone to the hostess and substituted my credit card for hers, but then it turns into a real fight.)

When she arrived, I greeted her with a hug and a kiss, which was like hugging and kissing a mannequin, because she was as stiff as an ironing board. I love my mother dearly. I’ll miss her when she’s gone. She is filled with emotion and cries during commercials, but she’s never been very affectionate with her children. She doesn’t kiss me. I hug her, but she doesn’t hug back. I don’t doubt how much she loves me, but she’s kind of like a rock. Make that an elegant rock: Nancy Gunn has always been the spitting image of Queen Elizabeth II.

I always wonder if her lack of demonstrable affection is connected to an incident from her youth. My grandmother liked to tell the story of coming home to find the goldfish were dead. When asked what happened, my mother answered, “I don’t know. I just took them out of the bowl to kiss them.”

Was it then she learned that a kiss can kill?

In any case, we were shown to a table. I think we both ordered a glass of wine (and if we didn’t, we should have), and I chose the restaurant’s famous hamburger.

When the food arrived, Mother was carrying on about something about me that was annoying and irritating to her. It could have been anything from not calling her in a month to “I told you that I hate that tie, so why do you persist in wearing it?”

I nodded, eating, attempting to take the high road and pretending to agree with her, but unfortunately, I was internalizing my frustration. Suddenly, I inhaled a too-large bite of burger. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eject it from my lungs. I literally thought I was going to die. I started to gesture wildly.

My mother thought I was simply behaving badly, so she carried on talking and looking at me disapprovingly. Thanks to the ringing in my ears as I started to suffocate, her voice grew silent, as did the ambient voices and clatter in the large room. Panic set in. I was going to die—right there, upright in a chair, with my elegant mother carrying on and on throughout the speedy evolution of my death.

For some unknown reason, my panic abated, and resignation set in. It was at that moment that my constricted throat muscles relaxed and the potentially fatal chunk of chuck catapulted from my mouth—and landed in my mother’s lap.

She was horrified and said so. “What the hell is the matter with you?” she hissed. “If you’re angry at me, just tell me so. You don’t have to spit your food onto me!”

“Spit my food onto you? I almost died! Right here! In front of you! I thought I was going to die, and you’re embarrassed?” I yelled back. “Wouldn’t you have been more embarrassed by a corpse?”

By now I was in tears, and Mother looked contrite. She responded, “Don’t be ridiculous; you didn’t die. You’re here.”

I asked for the check.

Mother said, “I’ll take it.”

“No, I will,” I retorted. “Because if I had died, then you would have hadto take it.”

We never did resolve whatever conflict we’d been having, but at least my near-death experience changed the subject. And I learned a couple of valuable lessons. One: When you’re on death’s door, rules of etiquette should most definitely be suspended. And two: Never try to resolve an emotional conflict over food. I recommend ordering drinks instead—with neither ice nor olives.

In the absence of choking hazards, taking the high road is a good strategy. You never know where the people you’re dealing with today are going to be in twenty years—or next month! Even if you’re a really selfish person and are only looking out for your own self-interest, you should treat people well. Why bitch-slap someone unless you’re leaving the planet for good? Don’t burn bridges; you might need those bridges later.

But there are limits. You don’t let yourself be abused. Even as you take the high road in a perilous situation, you should try to figure out how to keep from being in a difficult position like that again.

For years, my refrain was: I bend and I bend and I bend until I snap. No matter what was dished out I would think: Keep taking the high road … hmm, it’s getting awfully high … the altitude’s really something … I’m having a little trouble breathing… Then I would basically have a nervous breakdown.

Now I’ve learned to set limits and to take cues from people’s behavior.

For example, if someone is always late to meetings with you, you need to ask yourself why you continue to let yourself make appointments with this person. If you hate doing something for someone, you need to ask yourself why you keep doing it.

I used to host a wonderful fashion scholarship dinner. I did it for five years in a row. But the last time I did, it was horribly managed. Every decision made around the event was terrible, and the people organizing it were completely dismissive of every concern I had. I just hated the whole thing.

So I said to myself, “Why am I doing this?” I thought, This is something I was doing to be nice, and it’s no longer fun to do, so I’m going to bow out for next year and let someone else host.

I gave the organization a lot of notice and felt very liberated.

But I wasn’t free yet. The group’s president took me to lunch, and he was horribly abusive, telling me how angry he was that I’d stopped doing the event and piling on other complaints about me for good measure! Then he followed up with threatening e-mails. He was just furious that I wasn’t going to host his event anymore and figured he would try to intimidate me into reconsidering my resignation.

I thought, Well, I’m definitely not going back after being talked to like this!

When someone else from the organization contacted me, I explained how badly I felt I’d been treated. He must have said something to my tormentor, because then I received this syrupy e-mail from the yelling president about how much I mean to the event. He asked me if we could get together again.

I thought about it for a second and then said, “No.”

This was an abusive relationship. If I return to the event,I thought, I am condoning this bad behavior.It sends the message that it’s okay to talk to people cruelly. And it just isn’t.

You don’t want to behave badly back at people like that, though God knows it’s tempting. But you also don’t want to put up with mistreatment. It does no one any favors.

The abuser could be your boss, and in a case like that you just need to try to keep your integrity, even as you’re being mistreated, and try to get out of the situation as soon as you possibly can. Now that I’ve been on television, though, it’s like the whole world is my boss. Everyone has an opinion they want to share about my demeanor on my shows, or who the Runwayfinalists were, or all manner of things over which I have little control. And truth be told, a lot of these people don’t even seem to know who I am. They just know they’ve seen my face before. I’ve found it’s always good just to smile and walk away. Or, in the case of nutcases, run away.

Usually people think of me as a surprisingly nice person as fashion people go, but occasionally someone will corner me on the street and say: “You’re so mean!”

Often this is because people mistake me for Clinton Kelly from What Not to Wear—which I’m sure would disturb him to no end, because I could be his grandfather. When I determine that’s the case, I say, “I think you have me mistaken for—”

Then they’ll interrupt and say, “I’ve been watching that show for years!”

And I will say, “Then you really should know I’m not Clinton Kelly.”

During the Project RunwaySeason 3 auditions, which were held at Macy’s, I went into Au Bon Pain every morning to get a coffee and a croissant. The first day, the woman behind the counter pointed to me and said, “Look, it’s Michael Kors from Project Runway!”

I didn’t want to disappoint her and I didn’t think it mattered, so I just took the high road. I smiled at her and said hello and thanked her for watching the show. But the third morning, she got closer and said, somewhat concernedly, “What happened to your nice tan?” Finally, I told her I was the other guy on the show. She seemed so confused that I almost regretted not having done my best Michael Kors impression and told her, “Good call! I gotta get back to the beach.”

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I had a great uncle who was verbally abusive. I’ve never forgotten a particular dinner he ruined with his bile. I still remember the tone of his voice at that holiday get-together, even though this was easily fifty years ago. I remember the room, what people were wearing, the candles, and then the excuse people kept offering one another: that he was ill. It didn’t make a difference to me. If he was going to be that nasty, why didn’t he stay in bed?

I also have vivid memories of people behaving kindly.

My godparents, Earle and Suzanne Harbison, who are thankfully still alive and well and live in St. Louis, have always been so good to me. When I think of them, it warms my heart.

When I was first in New York, they always used to come to town and take me out for big, delicious dinners. I was so grateful, because I was struggling on my teacher’s salary. Well, usually they would have me over to their hotel for a drink beforehand, but one time I said, “You’ve never seen my apartment. Why don’t we have a drink there this time?”

This was early in December. They came over and were lovely and talked about how nice it was at my tiny little place. They were incredibly gracious about every ratty piece of furniture and beat-up pot and pan. I lived paycheck to paycheck and wasn’t able to save anything, much less to furnish my apartment properly. But it was cozy, and I loved it.

Well, I received a Christmas card three weeks later from my godparents, and in it was a check for $10,000. That money at that point in my life changed everything for me. I was able to get some decent housewares, and I had a financial cushion for the first time in my life. It was a godsend.

Wow,I thought when I saw all those zeroes on that check, they were really horrified by the apartment!

Though I think that was part of it, mainly I think they just wanted me to feel secure. They are wonderful people who really looked out for me, and they wanted to do what they could to make my life easier and happier.

In my own godfathering I’ve done my best to imitate their concern and generosity.

It hasn’t always worked. My mother took the family to Disney World twice. The first time we went, my niece, Wallace, said in a pseudo-whisper to her mother, my sister Bub (her real name is Kim, but I have called her Bub or Bubby since she was born and I couldn’t say “baby” correctly), “Don’t worry about me, Mom. You have your hands full with Mac [her brother] and Uncle Nag.”

“What did she call me?” I asked, horrified. “Uncle Nag?”

Noting my annoyance, Wallace turned to her mother, nodded in my direction, and said: “See?” She was seven or eight.

It was a good reminder that I needed to be more fun with the kids. I’ve tried to be good to them and to put whatever skills I have at their disposal. I always used to make my niece’s Halloween costumes. My favorite was the year I transformed her into a Life Saver.

My mother is a huge pessimist and often says, “If everything is fine, then I’m pleasantly surprised.” Years ago, my mother seemed to take great relish in predicting a doomed marriage for my sister: “It will most certainly end in divorce—soon!”

My sister has been married to her husband for more than thirty years. She’s never complained about him once. They are totally committed to each other. My mother thrives on the negative, so her daughter’s happy marriage is a big missed opportunity for complaint. That’s no way to live.

After all, why would you choose to be the angry great uncle in the corner rather than the beloved godparent with the long and happy life?