Текст книги "Gunn's Golden Rules"

Автор книги: Tim Gunn

Соавторы: Ada Calhoun
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

So try to think outside the box and try on colors you would never consider. You’ll probably be surprised that some unexpected color—persimmon, coral, or teal—works like magic with your skin.

And don’t worry about the so-called rules of colors. The No White after Labor Day rule was meant to be broken. But it’s true that white is not very practical in New York City. I have a pair of white jeans that the J. Crew catalog convinced me to buy. What I learned once I put them on: thin white pants need to be lined, because otherwise they reveal the line between your leg and your underpants, and that’s not my favorite look. The jeans have languished in my closet.

What’s another “rule”: Don’t wear black and brown together? That’s ridiculous. You do have to be careful about the brown. It shouldn’t be tan or some midtone, but chocolate brown is really chic. I once saw a woman on the street wearing chocolate suede boots with black opaque tights and a black dress. She looked fantastic.

I will say that I think it’s funny that strangers take my fashion advice when my own family completely ignores it. Case in point: During the holiday season, my family wears Christmas sweaters every single day. Christmas sweaters! Is there a bigger fashion don’t?

But for those of you who do listen to me, here’s my general advice about keeping your wardrobe fresh: It’s helpful just to drop into stores and try things on for information whenever you think of it. It’s essential to get a sense of what cuts and colors look best on you, and you can’t always do that when you have to find a dress for a wedding during your lunch hour. You can learn so much just by asking yourself objectively, “Does this look good on me?”

Size is difficult, because different brands run small or large. So you’re likely to have a range, 8–10 say, or 2–4, or 14–16. But if you don’t spend the time figuring out your range, you’re likely to be very frustrated each time you go shopping, because you won’t even know what sizes to pick off the rack.

Figuring these things out is just a part of everyday life.

You know how I am about all these matters. You can reject any or all of what I say, obviously. These are just the things that I think are good rules of thumb for enjoying your life as a social being. I also have no problem if you want to find a cave and have someone roll a boulder in front of it. To each his own.

In a recent memoir about filming Some Like It Hot,the 1959 comedy with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis says at first he was resistant to dressing in drag for the role. He was a sex symbol and was embarrassed that he had to put on a dress. But then when he did, he had a new concern: He wasn’t pretty enough! He and his costar, Jack Lemmon, went back to the wardrobe people and demanded better makeup, higher heels, and bigger falsies. His logic: If he was going to be a girl, he was going to be a pretty girl, by God.

That’s how people should be about everything: whatever you’re doing, give it your all.

That’s one of the things I love about Project Runway. It’s about each designer being the best at whatever it is he or she wants to do.

Whenever I do makeovers, I like to bring out whatever it is in that person of which they are most proud. I hate almost all makeover shows, because they tend to make everyone look the same: still frumpy, but slightly more upscale and slightly more put together than before.

I like to learn about the person and to find out how she really wants to look, what energy she wants to put out into the world. You can see it in the eyes of the people at the end of the show: they feel like they had a hand in the process, and the look they end up with is really them. It’s not just a costume. It’s about who you are and how you want to be perceived.

When I did a photo shoot for Moremagazine, we had two female lawyers, very different body types. I asked one of them, Karen, “Do you think you’re Hillary Clinton?” All she had were these very masculine pantsuits. She looked so dowdy and off-putting. When I told her this, she said, “I’m fifty-four years old. Aren’t I supposedto be dowdy?”

“No! No! No!” I told her. I don’t believe anyone ever has to look dowdy, and it’s perplexing when they do.

But when it came down to what direction to take her in, I was confused. I took her sister aside and said, “Talk to me. Karen is working a very strong masculine look. In fact, is this who she is?” I didn’t want to put her in flowery prints if she was more of a truck-driver gal.

“I don’t think so,” she said, “but I’m confused by it, too.”

This was interesting, because I’d half expected the sister to say, “Yes, she’s a diesel dyke.” And then we’d have worked with that. But that wasn’t the case here.

So I took Karen aside and said, “What’s going on here? Are these really the clothes you like wearing? Is this pantsuit you?”

“No” she told me, “but I don’t know how to be professional as a woman and not dress this way.” She was in court all the time and felt she had to convey authority. “I’d love to look more feminine, but I just don’t know how.”

In my first book, Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style,I talked about style mentors. It’s great to look around and find people in movies or books or pop culture whose style you want to emulate. Is it Audrey Hepburn, Debbie Harry, or Law & Order’s Mariska Hargitay? It’s helpful to think of your icon when you are constructing your own personal style. But this lawyer was just looking to male lawyers to construct her look.

I told her, “You’re wearing menswear-tailored clothing. Matching jackets and pants. There are other ways to look professional, you know. Right now you don’t look professional. I wouldn’t be drawn to you—unless I saw you at a leather bar.”

Luckily, she was open to showing off her figure and trying new things. She instantly had a whole new world available to her. Well, the transformation was thrilling. She felt unshackled. She realized that it’s looking good that makes you comfortable and confident, not just wearing casual or shapeless clothing.

Now she has the courtroom in her pocket, because she looks so much more accessible and she’s so much surer of herself. And still she gets to wear her favorite leather pants on the weekend.

Talk to Me: There’s Always Another Side to the Story

WHEN I WAS BACKSTAGE waiting to present at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards, I encountered the stunning Kate Walsh from Private Practiceand Grey’s Anatomy.She was wearing an incredibly cute vintage Count Ferdinando Sarmi beaded dress, but the effect of the dress was compromised by her demeanor as she talked on the phone.

“That person is a seat filler!” she was yelling at the person on the other end.

Apparently, her boyfriend arrived at their seats and saw that there were people already sitting in them. Rather than identifying himself to an usher as having been assigned that seat, he got on the phone and yelled at Kate, who was waiting backstage until it was her turn to present.

“They’re not allowed to have an empty seat!” she was yelling at him. “Those are our seats!”

It seemed fairly simple, but she didn’t seem to be getting through to him. She got off the phone and said, “I have to leave and go talk to my boyfriend.”

“You can’t leave,” the backstage staff said. “You’re about to present.”

I turned to my agent, Jonathan Swaden, and said, “She’s too fabulous for this. She needs to start going out with some people who can take care of themselves.”

It was high drama.

But I really did think there was a lesson in there about taking care of yourself and making others take care of themselves. Suddenly, she was expected to help her boyfriend navigate the seating rules rather than do her job and introduce an award on national television.

The boyfriend needed to recognize that there was another side to the story he thought he had figured out. The old expression is totally true: “If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

That applies in a professional context as well.

We have an amazing library at Liz Claiborne Inc. called the Design and Merchandising Resource Center, which falls under my authority as chief creative officer. Well, sometimes designers borrow textiles and then never return them, or return them in terrible condition. Expensive books vanish. And then when I ban them from borrowing things, they plead persecution!

Call me a schoolmarm, but few things make me angrier than people not taking good care of library materials. This was edited out on Project Runway,but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art challenge in Season 7, I lost my patience with the designers when they kept trying to put their paws all over some of the Costume Institute’s most delicate treasures.

Speaking of museums, there was one perfect moment in Project Runway’s Season 6: we went to the amazing J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but it almost didn’t happen. The Getty invited us, and I was just thrilled. I love that museum. But the powers that be were not as eager to go there. The Weinstein Company and Lifetime were saying, “But in Season Four you went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art!”

In a conference call with the producers, who supported going to the Getty, and with TWC and Lifetime, who did not, I said I couldn’t believe they were going to keep us from going to a museum just because we’d been to one before. “Are you telling me if we were in Paris we couldn’t go to the Louvre?” I said.

Luckily, the producers and I won, and we went. It was amazing. The mayor of Los Angeles greeted us. We saw the sun rise there. The designers had the run of the whole place. It was phenomenal. And I seriously doubt that while we were navigating the glorious galleries and outdoor spaces of the Getty, anyone at home complained about our having been to a museum in the past.

I find with complaints in general, you need to know the whole context, including what the expectation was. So frequently, I’ve found that the expectation has been totally false, a creation of the person’s own imagination. They’re disappointed not to get something they were never promised.

I had this happen with my students. They would call their parents to complain about school, and then I would hear about it from the angry parents. But the parents didn’t know the administration’s side. They would be furious that we weren’t accepting their child’s project, but they did not know that the child had missed multiple deadlines. Why don’t parents do their own probing? “Tell me more,” they should say to Junior. “Why wouldn’t they accept it? Do you really not know why?”

I always wondered at the students who allowed their parents to get so involved. When I was in my twenties, I did as much as I could on my own. My parents were generous when they felt they needed to be, but I had enough of an ego that I would turn down their help whenever possible.

The key is admitting that in every situation there’s a lot you don’t know. That’s hard for me sometimes, because I like being an authority. But realizing I can see only a tiny piece of the puzzle is surprisingly liberating.

My father helped me stay humble on this front by being very mysterious my whole life. He was almost never around. He worked constantly. My mother and grandmother were there day in and day out. So when I got into trouble, I always expected my mother would be there and my father would be absent, as usual. But the opposite was true. My father was always great in a crisis.

And I sure did provide my family with plenty of crises. I constantly had issues. He was always there. He was there as a support, not to slap me around and ask me what the matter with me was. He just showed up and took care of business and did whatever he could to help. When I really needed a father, he was there. People who are by your side all the time, like my mother and grandmother—you’d think they’d rally, but they sometimes fall apart. My father could be hundreds of miles away on business, but then suddenly he was there. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And I’ll always think of him as an example of how people can surprise you for the better.

Of course, they can also surprise you for the worse.

I’m reminded of a celebrated young designer. People think he’s a tremendous talent, and he is, but there’s another side to the story.

Few people know this, but this designer was dismissed for academic dishonesty. The trouble started when some of his classmates told me he wasn’t turning in his own work. Again, there are two sides to every story, so I went to talk to his teachers.

“I understand there’s a problem,” I said.

“That’s news to me,” the teachers responded.

I almost let it drop there, but owing to this uprising from the students, I thought, I at least have to have a discussion with the student.

I had my associate Marsha join me, and we sat down with him in my office.

“I’ve heard accusations against you from your peers,” I began. “How do you respond to the claim that you’ve copied work?”

He was staring off into space and looking around.

“It’s either true or it’s not true, or it’s true with mitigating circumstances,” I said. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s true,” he admitted. “It’s not my work.”

He went on to tell me that he hadn’t turned in any of his own work since the beginning of his junior year. He was collecting projects from wherever he could find them—including those from former students, or muslins left lying on tables. He explained that he didn’t have time to do school projects because he was so eager to get out into the real world.

“Well, I’m going to give you plenty of time,” I told him. “Effective immediately, you are dismissed from this school for academic dishonesty.”

This fellow has since had great success, and I’m happy for him. He is incredibly talented. And yet, I’ve always felt a twinge of annoyance when I encounter his work.

One celebrity dress of his attracted an especially great deal of attention. The day after photos of the dress appeared in the papers, a colleague of mine called me to say she wished the celebrity had worn a dress by a different designer.

Recalling the copycat history, I lowered my voice and replied, “How do you know she didn’t?”

Be a Good Guest or Stay Home

(I Won’t Judge You—I Hate Parties)

THESE DAYS, I DON’T have much free time, and when I do, I want to close the door and sit in the dark. If I have a friend over, I usually just brew a pot of coffee, and if I’m feeling very festive, then we’ll have sherry and I’ll throw some Toll House cookies on a baking sheet.

Don’t make fun, foodies! Breaking those things apart requires strength. The last time I made them I had a horrible time separating the dough, so even though I didn’t whip anything up from Gourmet,I had a feeling of real accomplishment when they came out of the oven. My guest and I both enjoyed them tremendously.

But I definitely have made the party rounds, and I’ll tell you about a few illustrative occasions.

One evening I went to a very memorable dinner party. It was held at a grand New York City apartment. The place was beautiful, elegantly furnished, and full of contemporary art. I was quite impressed.

When I arrived, they were serving cocktails, and I was having a nice time. But the cocktail hour just went on and on … and on. There was nothing to snack on, so people were starting to get rather tipsy. I didn’t drink very much, but I was starting to think: Is there a nut or pretzel around here? If I don’t eat something, I’m going to have trouble seeing straight.

I assumed they weren’t seating people for dinner because not everyone was there yet. If I hear I’m supposed to arrive at seven thirty for dinner, I think dinner will probably be served around eight, so the window to arrive is between seven thirty and eight, and preferably on the early side of that. If you arrive at 7:59, you are really pushing it. I arrived at this dinner at around seven thirty-five or seven forty. But people were dribbling in until nine p.m. The martinis were really flowing, and everyone was getting completely smashed.

Now, I grew up in a family of excessive drinkers. There wasn’t a single holiday gathering when some item of furniture didn’t break. One year it was an uncle putting his foot through a coffee table. I was a kid, so I didn’t totally comprehend what was happening. But I remember the dinner being cleared and everyone smoking and someone saying, “Does anyone want an after-dinner drink?” and everyone saying, “Yes, a martini!”

Now that I’m an adult, I know that a martini is not an after-dinner drink. It’s a getting-the-party-started drink. As it turned out, even though my family members had been drinking since five p.m., after dinner they really got started!

Anyway, back to this memorable dinner party: after a good two hours of drinking in a way that would do my family proud, we finally sat down to dinner and were each presented with a steamed artichoke with butter dipping sauce. Also, of course, plenty of wine.

Then the artichoke went away, and I thought, Lovely first course.Then this teeny container of sorbet came out a few minutes later. I thought it was a palate cleanser, but no, the sorbet was dessert. Meal over.

I thought: Are these hosts so bombed that they forgot there’s a chicken in the oven?But I didn’t smell anything cooking. Some of the guests were making eye contact with one another as if to ask: Is this really it?But nothing was said, and the party ended not long after dinner. I think we all hit McDonald’s on the way home.

The next day, I sent a note. I don’t lie, but I can be diplomatic and disguise things in politeness. I told the truth and said it was “an unforgettable party.”

I received an e-mail back that said, “We so enjoyed having you there and thanks so much for coming!”

What I really expected to hear back was, “Thank you. We were so embarrassed when we later realized we forgot to serve the roast.” There was never any acknowledgment about the mysteriously sparse meal. I’m constantly thinking there must be an answer to the sphinx. You wouldn’t sit down at a table formally set with silverware with no food to serve, would you?

I actually was thinking about that modest dinner at a lunch I attended at the White House on July 24, 2009. I was even seated at Mrs. Obama’s table, which was a tremendous thrill for me. She is such a fashion icon and has amazing presence. (At the lunch, she was wearing Michael Kors. I just love how she supports American designers.)

The first course that came out was a tiny salad. The main course was crab cakes the size of silver dollars with cannellini beans and grilled summer squash from the White House garden. A lovely woman sitting next to me made some comment to a table companion about how teeny the portions were, and Mrs. Obama overheard and chose to address it.

“When we arrived at the White House,” she said, “I could not believe how wasteful we were in what we served people and how much we threw away. I’d rather have people leave lunch and go get an ice-cream cone than to throw away so much food.”

Indeed, everyone ate everything. Not an ounce of food went to waste. And I really liked her attitude. First of all, how classy was it that she frankly and warmly addressed an overheard complaint? Mrs. Obama made the guests feel comfortable and taken care of. No one starved. We’re so used to these huge portions, but they’re not necessary. It wasn’t a ton of food, and indeed I did grab a little snack that afternoon, but the food was very tasty, the company was excellent, and unlike my artichoke friends’ meal, the lunch consisted of three courses!

PERHAPS YOU REMEMBER HOW at the Obamas’ first State Dinner there were two crashers, a couple who wanted to be a part of the Real Housewives of Washington, D.C.I won’t mention their names because they’ve gotten enough newsprint already. As you’ll probably recall, they managed to wheedle their way into this exclusive party in spite of not being on the guest list (though they claim a misunderstanding). They even got close to President Obama and Vice President Biden.

Well, I was truly shocked by this on all levels.

Speaking as one who merely went to lunch at the White House, I simply can’t fathom how anyone could get in without being invited. When I went, the layers of security were intense.

Several weeks before the lunch, I had to fill out a questionnaire, giving my Social Security number and my date and place of birth. I even had to call my mother and find out the name of the hospital where I was born. (It was the since closed Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C., for those of you who like those sorts of details.)

At the check-in when I reached the White House, one of my fellow guests arrived with a surprise date. (The audacity!)

The staff was lovely to the uninvited guest and said, “We are so sorry we are not able to have you attend, but we have a sitting room where you may wait for your friend, and we’d be happy to bring you a plate.”

There were many more checkpoints between the door and the event. The final obstacle was the first lady’s chief of staff, Susan Sher, who waited at the top of the stairs with the guest list.

It was probably the tenth time I saw the list. Luckily, I was still on it, and she recognized me and greeted me warmly. It was only then that I relaxed. It was such an elaborate process, I was nervous that they weren’t going to let me in!

And yet somehow these horrid party crashers were able to waltz right into the first State Dinner of the administration. What kind of message are these reality-show hoodlums sending to our young people? “You feel like going to the White House? Dress up and head on over there!”

Where is the penalty for that kind of brazenness? What kind of culture do we live in where someone can say, “I want it, so I’m going to have it now—circumstances be damned”?

People like this want the cheaper version of fame: celebrity. They want to be famous, but not for having done anything. That’s the opposite of what I think our young people need to be taught, which is: It’s wonderful to aspire to things. Aspire to be invited to the White House. Maybe one day you will be. To accomplish such a feat, it’s very important to practice good qualities of character.

Shortly after the crasher scandal, I was interviewed by a blogger who sees these crashers as national heroes.

“It’s what we all should be doing,” she said.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” I responded.

“I’m not joking,” she replied. “I’m altogether serious.”

“This is egregious behavior,” I asserted. “It’s the White House and the president. It’s a State Dinner. One doesn’t crash the White House. One doesn’t crash a wedding. One doesn’t crash anything that’s invitation only.”

“It shouldn’t be exclusive,” she said.

“What?” I said with incredulity. “They’re private events!” I wondered if she thought Andrew Jackson’s 1829 inauguration, at which the public showed up at the White House ball and trashed the place, was a good model. “Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?” I asked.

She assured me that she was not.

“What do you say to your children?” I inquired, fearing the answer.

“I tell them: ‘You go wherever you want to go! You do whatever you want to do!’”

I said I thought that underscored a dangerous sense of entitlement. Young people need guidelines. What are they going to do? Just arrive at orientation at Harvard and say they want to go there and so they will, even though they haven’t been accepted and haven’t paid tuition?

“What’s your feeling about domestic violence?” I asked. “Is anyone entitled to act out in any way?” (I was being interviewed about Liz Claiborne Inc.’s support of domestic violence prevention programs before we’d veered off to talk about the crashers.)

“Having been on the receiving end of domestic violence, I don’t feel that way,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “you have experience that tells you otherwise. Maybe if you were the host of an invitation-only dinner party and people whom you weren’t expecting showed up and you had no place to seat them, you would realize that’s wrong.”

I still believe that to be true, even if people like those terrible White House party crashers are constantly providing a counterexample in which trashy behavior is rewarded. To cheer myself up, I try to remember the difference between short-term and long-term success. Living a really good life and making a real mark on society is a marathon, not a sprint.

NOW, BACK TO REGULAR old parties. I confess to you, and I’m somewhat ashamed of this: I don’t particularly like entertaining. I know I should, but I just don’t.

I love cooking. I cook for myself every day. I like the ceremony of it. It takes me into a different zone. I make a lot of pasta and meat loaf (ground chicken or turkey and only occasionally ground beef). Rather than buying in bulk, I just grocery shop every day. I know my rate of consumption, and that way I can just pick up some produce and whip something up. I haven’t bought red meat in a long time. I’d like to say it’s because I’m so ecologically conscious, but the truth is, I can’t make a good steak.

But cooking for a crowd of five or ten or, heaven forbid, twenty?

No, thank you. I don’t like feeling like a slave to the care and feeding of my guests. Whenever I’ve had parties, I’m in the kitchen mixing drinks for the entire evening, and I never actually get to enjoy and converse with anyone. Maybe that’s why the only people I see with any regularity are my friends the Banus, who drink only champagne. It makes hosting so easy. All I have to do is say, “Want some more?” and pour away.

Honestly—and maybe some of you can relate to this—I just can’t stand the pressure of being responsible for hosting a memorable (and not in a bad way) evening. Martha Stewart, bless her heart, intimidates me. That level of entertaining is so over my head: What do you mean, you didn’t dig up your own potatoes for this dish? You didn’t make the doilies? The plates didn’t just come out of a kiln?

I love Martha, but it gets ridiculous.

And yet, I have learned a few things in my many years of party attendance.

Bad weather is good for parties. You get only those people who really want to be there.

Entertaining shouldn’t be about showing off. It’s all about making people feel comfortable and setting a stage for everyone to have a good time, make new friends, and have stimulating conversations. You want to leave a party thinking: If I hadn’t gone to that, I never would have met this wonderful person, or had that delicious meal, or felt that sense of camaraderie with the people I met at the dessert table.You don’t want anyone looking at the clock, thinking, When can I leave?

NOW, WHERE ARE MY single ladies and men? It’s hard, isn’t it, when you don’t have someone to take to a party full of couples? At office parties and certain events, there is pressure to bring someone. People are constantly trying to hook me up with dates, but I’d just as soon go alone.

Even my own mother (to whom I’ve never officially come out) says, “What about your old age? Don’t you want to be with someone?”

Lately, I’ve started to say, sincerely, “Maybe not.”

The truth is, I don’t have time to be a good partner. Relationships take commitment, and all my energy goes into my work. I wouldn’t want to let someone I cared about into my life and then never be home, or always be distracted. To be a good partner, I would have to give something up. What would it be?

There are a lot of perfectly happy single people in this city. It just matters who you are and what you want. And I would never want to be one of those serial monogamists who have a different partner every year and are always wondering why it never works out. Generally speaking, there’s a reason why people can’t sustain a long-term relationship. They think, It can’t be my fault,when the odds are pretty good that they’re doing something at least subconsciously that tells the world they’re not ready to settle down. At least I knowI don’t want to settle down!

That’s why parties where people are expected to bring a date even if they are single can be so stressful.

It’s not quite as bad, though, as parties where people bring dates who aren’texpected. That’s one of the most egregious social sins anyone can commit. It’s hugely presumptuous.

I’ve been at fairly small dinner parties to which someone’s unexpectedly brought someone with an excuse like, “My sister was in town.”

The host is typically accommodating but secretly seething.

Someone I know had people who showed up to her wedding who had not RSVP’d. She didn’t have food for them or a place for them to sit, so she said, simply, “You should have told us you were coming,” and sent them away. Good for her!

Fortunately, bad behavior by others can sometimes work to your advantage. At events with tables for ten someone sometimes shows up with an unexpected guest, and suddenly there are too few place settings. Usually, this is about the time I’m dreaming of being back home in front of the TV, so I will graciously say, “Please, take my seat! I will just disappear.”

“No, please don’t!” my tablemates will insist. “Stay!”

“No,” I say gallantly, “things happen for a reason. I am happy to sacrifice for the good of the table.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking, I wonder if I can get home beforeHouse Hunters International starts? (I watch a lot of HGTV.)

The only trick is: Don’t look back. Keep going. Pray there’s no coat check. Don’t stop for a taxi. Get around the corner and then hail one.

Honestly, it’s fun to get dressed up, but I prefer simpler affairs. I like it when I go to parties and there’s a pitcher of something sitting out for people who don’t know exactly what they want right away. And I like when you can just go get your second drink yourself. It frees up the host and lends an air of informality to things. Similarly, it’s good to make dishes in advance so you can just heat them up.

I also like having at least one person around who is widely disliked among your crowd of lovely people. You never know who’s going to get along with whom, but you do know people need someoneto gossip about later, and you don’t want it to be you.