Текст книги "Gunn's Golden Rules"

Автор книги: Tim Gunn

Соавторы: Ada Calhoun
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

I didn’t care about preparing for the apocalypse, but I did love the architecture. The shelter was basically a submarine with a big periscope. The thought of a nuclear war terrified me, and I didn’t enjoy the nuclear drills we had to do at my school. I used to think, I don’t think hiding under our desks is a useful exercise. Will it really protect us if bombs fall and the whole building caves in?I was a critic even then.

Ultimately, though, I think leaving your subbasement is well worth the trouble. And what else can we do? We’re human beings. Try as we might to avoid it, and as hard as it might sometimes be to act civil, the truth is this: We need one another.

Physical Comfort Is Overrated

WHENEVER I MEET NEW people, almost without fail they say, “I was so afraid of what you’d say about my clothes!” The truth is: I really don’t take note of what other people wear unless their outfit blows my mind for good or for ill, and even in that case I will rarely say anything unless I’m asked.

When I was taping Extra!the other day, the camera guy said, “Oh God, I just know you’re going to be disappointed in what I’m wearing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re hoisting a camera and down on your knees and moving around. You need to be agile. It wouldn’t be right for you to be in a tailored suit! You’re dressed appropriately!”

I get a little shrill when I talk about it, because it seems like people are either too worried about what they have on or not worried enough. People are really intimidated by fashion, and as an educator and a fashion lover I think that’s such a shame.

Meryl Streep said in a 2009 Vanity Fairarticle that she was over trying to appeal to men. “I can’t remember the last time I really worried about being appealing,” she said.

I don’t totally believe that she doesn’t care. It is true that she’s really eschewed fashion. I think it’s smart, intellectual Meryl speaking, saying she’s too smart for style. But no one’s too smart for it. Providing we leave our cave, it matters to all of us.

When we look good, we feel better. That’s true for everyone. You feel better able to tackle the world. It’s not a good feeling going into an exam without having prepared, and it’s not a good feeling leaving the house without having dressed to be around people. Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you’ll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you’ll run into every ex you have.

The key is not being dressy. The key is being appropriate.

Someone at my neighborhood grocery store once said to me, “Wow, you really do wear jeans and a T-shirt!”

“Yes,” I said, “at the grocery store.”

It’s all about context. I wear a suit to work, to weddings, to funerals, to the theater, and to church. When shopping at the grocery store or running errands, I have been known to wear jeans, because it’s totally appropriate. The jeans fit me and are clean, and I usually pair them with a jacket, but yes, jeans!

Some people think of dressing up or being polite as a burden. They think having to wear a tie or use the right fork or send a thank-you card is a kind of shackle. To these people I say: Getting out of bed is a shackle. If you feel that way, stay in it! Invest in a hospital gurney and wheel yourself around on it when you need to go out.

I get very impatient with this whole “comfort issue” with clothing. Yes, you don’t feel as comfortable in clothes that fit you as you do in your pajamas and robe. That’s a goodthing. You’re navigating a world where you need to have your wits about you. If you’re in a lackadaisical comfort haze, you can’t be engaged in the world the way you need to be.

Would I be more comfortable in a business meeting wearing my pajamas?

No! It would feel, honestly, very weird. I would think, Where’s my IV? When do I take my next meds?

Wanting to look good in public has to do with the respect that I have for myself and the respect that I have for the people around me. One of the things I love about New York City is how much people dress up for one another. Walking down the street is such a pleasure, because people are really turned out. Yes, it probably took them more than five minutes to get ready, but it was so worth it. They make the city a prettier place.

In her wonderful memoir D.V.,Diana Vreeland (who was born exactly fifty years to the day before me—lucky me!) talks about how she prepared nightly for the arrival of her husband. She dressed up for him every single night:

Isn’t it curious that even after more than forty years of marriage, I was always slightly

shy

of him? I can remember his coming home in the evening—the way the door would close and the sound of his step … If I was in my bath or in my bedroom making up, I can remember always pulling myself up, thinking, “I must be at my very best.” There was never a time when I didn’t have that reaction

–ever.

That’s kind of lovely, I think. It’s always better to err on the side of beauty over comfort. It might get tiresome in practice, but it’s a sweet idea. And it’s certainly better than being the dowdy, depressing, slatternly housewife played by Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba.

People who are lazy about grooming make me a little crazy. And I’m not talking about getting a blowout or putting on a ton of makeup or getting a haircut every week. I’m talking about bathing and other basics. What are you saying about yourself and about your feelings for the people around you if you give up on these simple things? You’re saying, “I don’t care.” And if you don’t care about yourself or the people around you, why should others care about you?

Grooming inappropriately can be as bad as not doing it at all. One time I was out to brunch, and a patron at the restaurant started clipping his nails. He was even with someone, who you’d think would have stopped him! It’s such a distinct noise. My gag reflex kicked in. When you see it on the subway, it’s bad enough, but at a restaurant? There was a lot of eye contact around the room, but the staff didn’t throw him out. He just finished, and then left the clippings there on the floor for the staff to clean up. That’s in my bad behavior hall of fame, and it’s a good example of someone being far too comfortable out in public.

I also question people’s definition of “comfort.” Sure, oversize T-shirts feel soft on your body, but you know what’s genuinely comfortable? Being dressed appropriately for your surroundings. It feels good at the end of the day to take off your fancy shoes and put on your slippers, but it also feels good to know that all day you looked good and smelled good and that the people you encountered had a positive impression of you and enjoyed having you around.

For my job with Liz Claiborne Inc., I host a ton of shopping mall events. I’ll be honest with you: I love them. My colleague Leah Salak and I do Liz Claiborne Inc. multibrand fashion shows for the shoppers at the mall. We pull clothes from the mall’s own stores so the customers can actually buy what they see. It’s fun and it’s also intended to be educational. We show people how they can mix and match, how they can take a dress from day to night, and how an item of apparel can be made ever more versatile.

We work with five to seven of our brands, which include Lucky Brand Jeans, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, and DKNY Jeans. I always mix them up as much as possible. The business-side people always complain about mixing and matching on the runway. For them, taking a Kate Spade dress and putting a Juicy Couture coat over it is some kind of sacrilege. But I’m very blunt: People don’t wear one designer head to toe. So we show people how they actually will wear things, and ultimately, I think it benefits all the brands, because you see how versatile each item is.

Then we have a Q&A session after, and I always find it so touching how women will stand up in front of eight hundred to a thousand people, open up their jackets, and say, “Tim, look how thick I am through here. How can my clothing help me with this?”

It’s so wonderful how comfortable they are talking to me about these things. I love hearing about real people with real issues. We live in a bubble here in New York. Of course, I mostly like the bubble! But I also like to get out of it for a reality check, and the reality is that a lot of people are not comfortable with their bodies and need a little help making what they have work for them.

Maybe it will be helpful to hear that even in New York, the women who are supposed to be fashion idols aren’t happy with their bodies. When I’ve gone to the Vogueoffices I’m always struck by how insanely thin everyone is, even the editorial assistants, who aren’t in front of a camera. I think: How many eating disorders are there on this floor?

One former editorial assistant I know says that even though she’s a healthy weight and height and usually wears a size 8 or 10, she felt morbidly obese while she was working there.

Isn’t that a sick statement on the industry?

There is a famous cafeteria in the Condé Nast Building, which houses Vogue, The New Yorker, Glamour,and a ton of other magazines. It’s a feat of architecture, and yet everything about it horrifies me. Everyone there is so thin, and no one is eating the gourmet food on her plate. There are skinny mirrors on your way out. You know, throwing up your food is not healthy, just as obesity isn’t healthy.

I’m always saying I have the greatest respect for whatever size a woman is. We can work with whatever we have. To larger women who want to feel good about their bodies, I’m always talking about the opera divas—those big, beautiful, proud women who are so sexy and powerful. It’s ridiculous that a woman with that kind of build wouldn’t celebrate it. I know I find curves attractive on women, and most of the men I know do, too.

Of course, I also want people to be healthy. The girth issue in America is not about the clothes. You can dress the opera divas, and they can look great. It’s about health. I know how hard it is to lose weight when you drive everywhere and fast food is so cheap. For what I pay for a deli wrap sandwich across the street, I could go to McDonald’s twice, and that makes a big difference if you don’t have a huge food budget. But you have to find a way to stay healthy no matter what your budget is, whether that means exercise or cooking fresh food.

If a very overweight woman asks me to dress her body, I will say, “You can’t remain 450 pounds. Forget about picking the best clothes for your size; we can always help you look your prettiest, but it’s just not healthy to weigh that much.”

For the last three seasons, I’ve worked with finalists of The Biggest Loser,helping the contestants to dress their new bodies. They’re still not small, but they’re certainly half the size they were. And they are so much healthier. But they are faced with a fashion conundrum, because most of them haven’t even been in a department store in years. They’ve just been home in their sweatpants. Now that they have so many decisions to make, they find the amount of choice almost debilitating.

These inspiring individuals are wonderful to work with, but I will say the men are often very difficult. They don’t want to try anything new. They don’t know what looks good on them, and they get into ruts. They don’t want anything that remotely fits. “It’s too confining!” they cry. “It’s too constraining!”

I have to say to them, “Listen, sister. Get over it. That’s what it feels like when a pair of pants fit.”

I’m always shocked by how conservative people can be when it comes to their looks. The worst hairdo ever was the eighties puffy bangs. It wasn’t good then, but everyone had it, so you could kind of forgive it. Now there are no excuses.

When I did The Oprah Showrecently, I helped do makeovers on seven men. They were great with the clothes, totally game. But oh my, when the grooming people came in, it was another story. “You’re not touching a hair on my head!” they yelled. “You’re not touching a hair on my face!” As if they looked so incredibly fantastic being hairy like that.

I am always shocked by that kind of attitude. We’re talking about hair,folks. It grows back! If you want to be Grizzly Adams again, you can. But I’ve noticed that when people take the risk, they often like what they find. In the case of one man on Oprah,there was a whole new person under all that hair, and he was actually pretty hot!

I said this on Oprah:If Mother Nature had her way, men and women would both turn into a giant bush. You have to pay attention to the messages you’re sending out. I think unruly facial hair shows insecurity, or a real disregard for one’s image.

Nose hair is a plague on our culture. Men need to keep in mind that there’s hair growing from everywhere. Tweezing, waxing … there are tools—little electric things can be put into ears and noses. It’s not painful. Everyone needs an additional mirror to help see these things. In our city, we spend a lot of time standing cheek by jowl with others, and it’s hard not to notice when a bush is growing out of someone’s ear.

These guys I met on Oprahwere in their late thirties, early forties, and still wearing clothes from college. It was a Peter Pan complex, basically. They didn’t want to grow up.

I see parents dressing like their children sometimes, and it disturbs me. When we do fashion shows at malls and the juniors’ items come out, I deliver the opposite of a parental advisory warning. I say, “If you are over the age of sixteen, look away! These clothes are not for you.”

From a fashion perspective, I find men are often averse to grooming because it puts their masculinity in jeopardy.

Men in Europe are more comfortable in their skin—or maybe it’s just that they’re more secure in their manhood. Men flirt with one another in France. They don’t want to go to bed together, but they don’t feel like their identity is threatened by finding another man attractive.

A strong division of gender roles is so pervasive in America, and I think it’s dangerous. Liz Claiborne Inc. does a lot of consciousness-raising around domestic violence causes, and one day I contributed to the cause by doing a series of interviews on the topic with bloggers.

One of my questioners told me that she draws a line in the sand regarding gender. She said only men could be abusers. She said we have to take the boys aside and tell them how not to do it and the girls aside and say how not to let it happen to them.

“Everyone needs to know how to recognize whether they’ve become a victim or a perpetrator,” I said. “ Everyone,regardless of gender, needs to know both sides of this.”

“I would never talk to a girl about how to avoid being an abuser,” she said.

Well, I call that sheer ignorance. She’s not looking at the bigger issues. I’m very pro co-ed everything. Everyone needs the same messages. Each gender’s interested in what the other’s doing. We need to tell everyone everything. What they choose to pay attention to is their issue, not ours.

In America, there’s so much pressure to be straight that if men even have warm feelings for someone of the same sex, they suddenly feel they must watch Girls Gone Wildon repeat until they’ve proven they’re not gay. I feel sorry for them, actually, because that’s a lot of stress to be under. We’re none of us all one thing all the time.

Maybe these guys just don’t want to be vulnerable in that way, to put themselves on the line by doing some work on the way they look? Jerry Seinfeld famously said, “People think I’m gay because I’m single, I’m thin, and I’m neat.”

Well, straight men, relax! I know just as many gay men who are big slobs. The rules of attraction dictate that you should cut your fingernails, toenails, and hair. Because I have sensitive skin, I try to skip shaving at least one day a week, but I try to pick a day when I’m only doing groceries and hanging around my house.

Self-interest and grooming intersect. Even if you don’t like it, wouldn’t you do it just to make sure you don’t repel people who might go to bed with you? If heterosexual males are trying to attract a heterosexual female, shouldn’t they maybe at least try to smell nice?

The question is what level of dressing up and grooming is appropriate for the occasion? What you need to do for a wedding versus what you do to go to the movies is different, but you should maintain a decent baseline standard.

Does grooming take time? Yes, it does. But we need to make a commitment. Taking a shower takes time, but if you never take one, you won’t be invited out very much, so you’ll have plenty of time left over. Should you ever blow off showers? Maybe if you’re in a coma … but no, in that case someone will bathe you.

New parents are almost as bad about this as macho men. I hear from a lot of mothers of young children: “I don’t have time.”

I say, “If you think about your family as a brand, are you not a brand ambassador?” When I see frumpy mothers with impeccably turned-out children, I think they’re making their children the family ambassadors, and that’s too much pressure on someone who still picks her nose. And it’s simply not occasion appropriate for a little child to be on the jungle gym in couture.

Speaking of inappropriate, have you seen all the tabloid photos of three-year-old Suri Cruise wearing heels? It’s outrageous. People say, “She’s setting a fashion standard.” I say, “Preposterous!”

At three? It’s not appropriate. If you’re going to the playground to play, you should wear sneakers—Mary Janes at the very most.

Now, I liked playing dress-up just as much as the next kid, and men’s clothes are boring to dress up in, so I think all children should have free range on their mothers’ heels. But there’s a difference between a child playing dress-up and a toddler seriously wearing high heels in her size while out in the world. I agree with the people who have said it sexualizes her. High heels are meant to make women look longer and leaner. That’s not necessary for little girls. We don’t want alluring little girls. There’s something sick about it.

You don’t need to—in fact, you shouldn’t—wear cocktail dresses twenty-four hours a day. You can wear anything, as long as you wear it well. It just comes down to silhouette, proportion, and fit. At every age. You can be in jeans and a T-shirt, but you’ll look good if you’re paying attention to the shape and size that’s right for you. Besides, baggy clothing is dangerous. Isadora Duncan was strangled by her long scarf when it got caught in the wheel spokes of a sports car. Let that be a lesson to us all.

AS MUCH AS I encourage people to dress appropriately for events, I will grant that invites these days can be confusing. Dress instructions can be murky. People seem to stretch to think of new instructions. Fortunately for women, “black tie” no longer means a floor-length gown. It just means dressy. For a man it means a tuxedo. “Formal” to me means the same thing as “black tie,” so why not just say “black tie”? “Semiformal,” I assume, means a suit and a tie for a man and a nice dress for a woman.

The kind of thing I don’t like is a mash-up like “festive formal.” I guess it means a man could wear a bright-colored tie and cummerbund, and a woman could wear a dress that is both nice and fun?

Well, it’s too much for me. I want to be comfortable, so if I see “festive formal,” I’ll just dress black tie and let other people be festive. If someone’s going to break out some amazing dress, they’ll do it whether or not they have the “festive” go-ahead, but for the rest of us, we’re just confused.

When I was asked to present at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards, the invitation specified “Hollywood chic.” What in the world does that mean? I wore a suit.

But nothing’s as bad as “black tie” during the daytime. I’ve seen it, and it’s totally wrong on every level. Technically, if it’s formal and daytime, men should not wear a tuxedo but rather a morning coat, but who owns tails? Nobody. Even I don’t own tails, and if anyone in New York would have such a thing, I would. There should be no such thing as black tie in the daytime. It’s not correct! If a man does it correctly with the morning coat, he’ll look like he’s in an Edwardian costume.

There is a way to clarify weird instructions on invitations. If I’m confused, I will call the host or the planner and ask, “What’s expected?”

Weddings vary so much depending on where they’re being held. If it’s on a beach, you could do a sundress, but if it’s in a church, you’re probably going to want to cover your shoulders. There is an old rule about not wearing either black or white as a guest to a wedding, but I think black can be done if it’s a party dress rather than something that looks like you’re in mourning. In general, I think it’s not a good idea to wear black to a wedding, but it’s not a bitch-slap the way wearing white is.

There is a legendary story in the fashion world about the high-fashion Sykes sisters. Alexander McQueen was doing a wedding dress for Plum, but then her wedding was called off. She asked the designer to do a dress she could wear to her sister Lucy’s wedding instead.

Well, a lot of people said it was her own wedding dress dyed black. She was furious and insisted she was not “the crazy, wedding-dress-wearing psycho-chick” the tabloids made her out to be. It was a unique dress, she said, and made for her as her sister’s attendant.

Fair enough, although the dramatic floor-length dress did echo her twin sister’s wedding dress, but in chocolate brown metallic chiffon, overlaid with lace. So maybe the moral is that if your twin sister is getting married, avoid chiffon, lace, and dark colors lest you be labeled a psycho by the tabloids.

What, you’d like some more universal thoughts on shopping?

The truth is, I buy my own suits off the rack from places like Banana Republic or Hugo Boss. I really can’t afford a tailor. Those Tom Ford bespoke suits are $5,000–$6,000. People might want to spend that kind of money, but it’s never necessary. You don’t have to spend a ton of money to look good. And when it comes to shopping, even incredibly rich people have trouble finding what they want half the time, as I learned when I went shopping with two fabulously wealthy women.

Charities are always auctioning me off. The wife of a record mogul purchased me for lunch and a shopping trip. I usually take people to the Bryant Park Grill and then to Saks Fifth Avenue or Bloomingdale’s, but this auction winner wanted to go to Bergdorf Goodman. So we had lunch there, which I’d never done before. It was expensive but very nice.

My auction winner brought a friend, and they were both extremely attractive women with great figures. One had as her goal a basic black top that would go with a black sequined cigarette pant. The winner was trying to find an upbeat holiday party dress. Three hours later … no luck.

The auction winner put on a $14,000 Yves St. Laurent dress.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I don’t hate it,” she said.

“Off!” I insisted. “For fourteen thousand dollars, you are not allowed to say, ‘I don’t hate it.’”

We had people on all the floors looking for us. Luxury retailers in general have been so upset by the recession that they are acting in a very friendly way. I read in the New York Timesabout an everyday shopper who went to a luxury jewelry store on Madison Avenue and was offered a glass of champagne.

But the recession brings with it a major problem for shoppers: the dearth of inventory. Stores don’t want to get stuck with extra merchandise, so they often don’t have everyone’s size. My incredulity was vocal. “It’s the temple of high taste. These women want to spend lots of money. What’s the problem?”

The thing we kept hearing was, “We’re between the seasons. The holiday delivery is over. We’re waiting for cruise.”

It wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet!

Finally, the auction winner said she would just go buy some new black Manolos because they go with everything. Well, they didn’t have her size.

Whenever people say, “I can’t get my fashion right because I’m on a budget,” I say, “Guess what? Even if you have an unlimited budget, sometimes you can’t do it.”

I’d also like to encourage you to use this anecdote as your own if you’re ever around people who are flaunting their wealth and talking about buying expensive things. Just say: “I go shopping all the time. I’m tryingto spend money. I mean, I tried on this fourteen-thousand-dollar Yves St. Laurent dress and thought: I don’t hate it.Then I thought, At least I can leave with a pair of Manolos,but they didn’t have my size!”

When it comes to strategic shopping, I love a surgical strike. I believe in knowing what it is you want. If it’s a lot of things, go with a list. Don’t get distracted by what’s around you.

I don’t like shopping if I’m looking for something specific. I’d rather do that kind of thing online. But I like doing shopping research, seeing what’s out there at the stores. I look at all the fashion shows, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to what the buyers are buying.

Speaking of which, do you know what the buyers are buying? Crocs.

I can’t imagine a more aesthetically offensive item of footwear than Crocs. That little strap! I shudder.

Plus, they’re dangerous. I was at Bloomingdale’s and saw a little girl sobbing because the escalator had eaten her shoe. The charms (yes, there are charms that one can purchase to embellish those dreadful hunks of plastic) get caught on things, too. I’ve yet to see any condition where Crocs look good, including the beach. Why not flip-flops? I know Crocs are affordable. Well, so are Converse and lots of other brands that don’t look like hooves.

But who knows? I came around somewhat to Uggs. I used to put Crocs and Uggs in the same sentence, but I don’t anymore. The Ugg brand has evolved. They do some much more fashionable things now. I’m not as despondent.

I know I’m in the minority on this. The Crocs people are laughing all the way to the bank. Their profits were up something like 500 percent last year. You’ll still never catch me dead wearing them, even if it is a “casual Friday.”

Casual Fridays are an invitation for people to go too far. One day I went to visit the Parsons board chairman, whom I’d seen only in a suit. There he was in dad jeans—flood pants to boot—and a polo shirt that was way too big. I hadn’t realized it was casual Friday. It was like being the only person not told about Opposite Day. In any case, I was appalled.

The other thing that makes me crazy is the bare midriff. It’s a don’t-let-this-happen-to-you-ever category of problem. I loved the Season 7 Curb Your Enthusiasmepisode entitled “The Bare Midriff,” in which a woman named Maureen goes around the office in a tiny shirt that reveals her whole stomach—and what they call a muffin top. Larry says she’s not dressing appropriately and would she please wear a longer shirt. Maureen gets very defensive and says, “I’ve lost sixty-eight pounds in two years. I’m very proud and I want to flaunt what I’ve got!”

At a gym, a bare midriff is fine. I’ve never been in a gym—well, not since high school. I’m sure there are all kinds of things there that are just fine because they stay there. Things can happen around a pool or at a beach that wouldn’t happen in a formal dining room.

At the office, though, no matter what kind of shape you’re in, showing off that much of your body isn’t right. These days, though, I see accidental bare midriffs more often than intentional ones.

Low-rise jeans are great, but ladies, you need a belt, or a tunic, or a unitard. I say this to women all the time who are very pear-shaped: wear a low-rise jean, because if it fits you in the hip it won’t fit you in the waist. Just wear a top that covers the waistband.

Otherwise, anytime you bend over, everyone sees everything. One of our segment producers is adorable, but she’s so whatever’s-whatever about belts and things that I’ve seen almost every part of her anatomy.

I find myself yelling, “Please don’t bend over. I’ll get it!”

And you know what’s funny: I’ve never heard a woman acknowledge that she’d just flashed me. I think it’s so common now.

Doing as many makeovers as I do, I’ve learned a few things about what makes women feel better about themselves. The starting point is usually getting a new haircut. I don’t want to generalize, because every case is different, but I think it’s best to err on the side of styling your hair shorter the older you get. In my opinion, it’s generally not a good look for women over thirty to have hair way below their shoulders.

I LOVE WRITING MY fashion advice column for Marie Claire. Those are real questions. One question I received was from a woman who said she had a Hervé Leger dress in dark purple, which I assume was the famous Leger color aubergine. She was wearing it to a swanky Beverly Hills engagement party with a beige patent-leather peep-toe stiletto. Her mother said her clutch should match the shoes, and my questioner asked if that was indeed the case.

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.