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First Gallery Books hardcover edition September 2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gunn, Tim.
Gunn’s golden rules : life’s little lessons for making it work / by Tim Gunn, with Ada Calhoun.
p. cm.
1. Gunn, Tim. Project runway (Television program). 2. Clothing and dress—United States. 3. Life skills—United States. I. Calhoun, Ada.
II. Title.
TT507 .G858 2010 746.9'2092—dc22
2010012417
ISBN 978-1-4391-7656-6
ISBN 978-1-4391-7767-9 (ebook)
Introduction
RULE 1
Make It Work!
RULE 2
The World Owes You … Nothing
RULE 3
Take the High Road
RULE 4
Don’t Abuse Your Power—or Surrender It
RULE 5
Get Inspired If It Kills You
RULE 6
Never Underestimate Karma
RULE 7
Niceties Are Nice
RULE 8
Physical Comfort Is Overrated
RULE 9
Talk to Me:
There’s Always Another Side to the Story
RULE 10
Be a Good Guest or Stay Home
(I Won’t Judge You—I Hate Parties)
RULE 11
Use Technology; Don’t Let It Use You
RULE 12
Don’t Lose Your Sense of Smell
RULE 13
Know What to Get Off Your Chest
and What to Take to the Grave
RULE 14
When in Rome … I Still Wouldn’t Eat
Monkey Brains
RULE 15
When You Need Help, Get It
RULE 16
Take Risks! Playing It Safe Is Never Really Safe
RULE 17
Give Back (but Know Your Limits)
RULE 18
Carry On!
Acknowledgments
On Project Runway,I enter the workroom and offer my thoughts—as a mentor, not a judge—on the designers’ work. The advice I give most often is to “make it work.”
That’s not just a catchphrase. It’s a philosophy I’ve followed my whole life, and I credit it with all the wonderful and surprising success I’ve had as a TV personality, teacher, and writer. What “make it work” means is that you should use what you have on hand to transform your situation. It’s always possible to use whatever tools you have at your disposal to create something that you’re proud of and that gets the job done.
Far too often in classes I’ve taught I’ve seen students throw out a lot of hard work and start again from scratch. They may wind up with a good garment, but they aren’t learning the skills that are essential to excelling in a creative field: patience, innovation, and diligence.
I love to see students trying to learn as they go along. The designers and artists I admire spend their whole lives learning. Everything they make may not be a commercial success, but every bit of effort they make gets them closer to realizing their vision.
One of the things I admire about Project Runwayis that it’s really about developing creative design work. I’ll never forget a woman coming up to me at an airport and saying that she loved Runwaybecause she felt it set such a good example for her nine-year-old daughter. “It demonstrates that good qualities of character—like hard work and persistence—pay off, and cheaters never prosper,” she said.
Well, that was one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. I love to think that we’re setting a good example in that way.
Few people remember it now, but Project Runwaywas quite controversial in the beginning. It took the mystique out of the fashion world and said, “This is a demanding, gut-wrenching industry. You need a really strong drive and love for the work in order to be successful.”
I guess we shouldn’t have been shocked, but people in this industry did not react well. They thought we were taking the glamour out of fashion. The design world had been enshrouded in a kind of veil of mystery, and Project Runwaypulled it back to let the world see it for what it was, warts and all. We got some very nasty reviews and some very harsh comments from our colleagues.
But we wanted to tell the truth. And the truth is that in this business, crazy crises happen, like when you’re waiting for the knits to get off the boat from China and the show is tomorrow and the boat doesn’t dock. What do you do? Remove fourteen looks from the show? You make it work, somehow. It’s a fashion 911, and you have to respond to it. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
Now the industry has bought in to the show’s concept completely, and everyone pretends they loved Project Runwayall along. Well, I’m happy that the show’s become so popular and that everyone is so full of praise for it, but I do remember those early days, when we were treated as though we were magicians telling everyone how the rabbit got in the hat.