February 26, 2025 • 58 mins
Join me as we sit down with Tim Gunn, the iconic fashion expert and star of Project Runway. Tim opens up about his childhood and upbringing, revealing how his early years shaped his path to success. He shares insights into his time as a teacher, how he joined Parsons School of Design, and the journey that led him to the world of fashion. Tim also reflects on his fashion evolution, the birth of Project Runway, and how he became an integral part of the show. He recounts how the show began and dives into the origins of his famous catchphrase "Make It Work." Tim also shares valuable fashion tips, trends and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What is up, Runner Gang, Welcome back to Post run
High Today, I'm sitting down with Tim Gunn. You may
know him as the impeccably dressed mentor from Project Runway.
He was always in a suit, always giving the most
thoughtful critiques and if you're not familiar with Project Runway,
the show first aired in two thousand and four, right
in the golden era of reality TV, and it quickly
(00:25):
became a hit. The show followed aspiring designers competing in
high pressure challenges to create innovative fashion pieces, all under
extreme time constraints, and Tim he was the heart of
the show and the mentor guiding them through it all.
But Tim's story goes way beyond TV, and in this episode,
we go all the way back to his childhood, growing
up with a father in the FBI, his struggles finding
(00:47):
his path, and how he ended up in the fashion
world despite never planning on it. We dive into his
years as a teacher, how he shaped his approach to mentorship,
and what really happened behind the scenes of Project Runway.
There were serious doubts in the beginning of the show
and people did not think it would work, and Tim
never even imagined being on camera, which was so hard
(01:08):
to imagine because he was the heart of the show.
This conversation is packed with lessons on trusting the process,
finding your voice, and taking risks. And guys, if you're
enjoying Post Run High, please make sure you subscribe to
my YouTube channel at Kate max to watch our full
video episodes and also follow me across socials because I'll
be keeping you guys up to date on what's to
(01:29):
come on all of the shows we've got going on.
All right, let's get into our episode. It's Tim, What
is up? Guys, Welcome back to Post Run High. I'm
sitting here today with the iconic and legendary Tim Gun.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
You flatter me, good Evans. What an introduction. Thank you, Tim.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm seriously so excited to have you on the show today.
I feel like I grew up knowing who you are
and watching you. And I alluded to this earlier when
we were doing our walk, but I actually was considering
Parsons for a school, like very closely. Oh so, it's
so cool to be able to sit down with you
and just know how much of an impact you had
(02:14):
on Parsons as a university.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, thank you very much. I'm thrilled to be here
and honored to be here, and I look forward to
a wonderful conversation here.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
The premise of post ran Hig is we always do
some sort of activity before the sit down interview. You
and I started out by doing a walk in Brooklyn.
So first I just want to ask, is fitness a
big part of your life? Has it been for years?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Well? I have to say I do feel grounded through
a movement, but for me it's something fairly recent. Nine
years ago, I met this dynamic individual named Tim Morehouse.
He's a three time Olympian and a silver medalist in
fencing saber fencing, and he said he had just opened
a fencing club. And I asked, what's a fencing club?
(02:59):
I had no idea place ship fence and have a drink.
He said, it's on ninety first Street. I said, ninety
first Street. I live on ninetieth. It's directly behind my
apartment building. So I went over to Sam and I
was really enraptured with the activity. So at age six
sixty two, I took up fencing.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I find that so interesting because I was saying I
just did an interview with Chris Cuomo last week and
we're in the edit right now, editing our conversation, and
he talked a lot about getting into self defense and
sparring at a later age in life, and I find
it fascinating. And I have brothers that love jiu jitsu,
the kind of combat type of workouts like the fighting
people love. But fencing is an interesting one. I haven't
(03:42):
heard that one before.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, it's a fascinating sport with a long, long history.
It originated in France, and of course it came out
of dueling. But with fencing, you're dad's supposed to harm
the other person. You'll get penalized.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Although sometimes it hurts.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Oh well sometimes yes, but then you've done something wrong.
And I didn't know I would fall in love with it,
and I did. And Tim Morehouse said to me, you know,
we really need to work on making you stronger. So
he introduced me to a trainer, Jason, and I've been
working with him for eight years now and we work
(04:22):
out twice a week. So I've become a bit of
a fitness nut. But I will say this, I'm going
to contradict you about the post workout high. I need
a post workout nap, Okay, not a high.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
No, And I do have to say, like it depends
on what the workout is. If I'm doing some sort
of like a lifting workout or a hit workout, I'm
the same way. I'm napping afterwards because I rarely move
my body like that. But after run or a walk,
I feel like it's just something I've been doing for
so many years, and I feel like a walk is
probably the most common thing, Like you do feel that
rush of endorphins and you feel kind of this sense
(04:59):
of accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Well, in fact, after my fitness training, I walked for
about an hour because it cools me down and reinvigorates me.
And I agree, yeah, great, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
All right, well let's get into it. Because I as
I was doing my research on you and learning all
about you, I really found like the trajector of your
life to be so interesting. And what I love to
do in my interviews is just get to know somebody
from the ground up. You grew up in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I did. My father was an FBI agent, and he
was a very talented writer, and I should say he
spent his first was it one year or two years
in the field office in Newark, New Jersey, and then
he was transferred to headquarters, and somehow Jaeggar Hoover, who
(05:47):
was the director then and he was the director through
five presidents, learned of Dad's talented writing and he ended
up being Hoover's ghost writer. He wrote all of his book,
his correspondence, his speeches, and he traveled with him.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
You know what, it actually makes a lot of sense.
And I think that's a really interesting point because it's
like when you think about somebody that's in the FBI
or working a job in politics or in the government,
or even like in the military, which I kind of
associate like the FBI to be like a little of
a simpler mentality. It's like you don't necessarily think of, oh,
this person might actually be very creative and a good writer.
(06:27):
But it makes sense that you had those kind of
traits in your family, right, because you're a very creative person.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Well, and I'm very very lucky that my parents nurtured
that cultivated it. And my mother, until I was born,
was a librarian. In fact, she started the CIA's library.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Growing up in a family where you know, it's very
government oriented, was creativity something that was like fostered in
your household? Or was that something that you kind of
carved out for yourself at a young age.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I think it was largely my doing. I was a
very reclusive, nerdy kid. I had only a select number
of friends. I didn't participate in team sports. I didn't
like them. I was a competitive swimmer. I liked loved swimming,
(07:17):
but I loved reading. I loved Lego. I still remember
when it came out in the nineteen fifties, and when
it first came out, these were just anonymous bricks. You
could do whatever you wanted with them, and I used
to spend most of my allowance money buying Lego. And
I still remember when doors and windows came out and
(07:39):
roof tiles. I was ecstatic because I was just leaving
holes in buildings, pretending it was a door or a window,
and suddenly there's the real thing. It was thrilling. I
was a creative kid, and I was teased and abused
about that with some frequency. But everything makes us who
(08:02):
we are.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And then you went on in college post high school,
you went to an art school. I did, and you
were studying sculpture art.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Initially I wanted to be a painter, and having grown
up in Washington, a city where there are lots and
lots of museums and entry is free. I mean, you
have this immediate access to all of this work. I
thought that means museums all over the world are free.
No they're not. My point is just that I really
(08:34):
revered painting, and when I was in school, I had
to take a three dimensional design class and I resisted
and I had a big debate with my advisor about
why am I doing this? I have absolutely no interest
in it. Well, you're doing it because I'm telling you
you have to do it. And it was a kind
(08:55):
of epiphany for me because I was really good at
three dimensional thinking, and I put painting on the shelf.
I mean I still painted, but I really dove into sculpture,
and when I graduated and was a starving artist, I
ended up making a living by building architectural models for
three firms in Washington.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It makes sense that you then went on and like
still liked doing something that was maybe a little different
than painting, but similar in a lot of ways, and
still using your hands, yes, very technical.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
My grandmother used to say, why are you doing this?
You do such good things with your hands. Become a doctor,
it's so different.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And I actually grew up oil painting as well, so
I can completely relate to like being like, oh, I
might want to pursue this. But you know, it's really
interesting to me about what you just said was you
loved museums growing up. And it makes a lot of
sense because didn't you go on also post college and
you were working at a museum in the education department.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well, I was teaching at a museum school and also
working in the museum in the installation area. But do
you know, I know the earliest stage of my career
as an educator. Tell me a dear mentor who became
(10:11):
an incredibly close friend, woman by the name of Rona Slade.
She contacted reached out to me to say, I'm teaching
a high school summer class six weeks, five days a week,
and I need an assistant. Would you like to do it?
And I thought, oh, good happens. Of course I'd love
to it, and I would have done anything for Rona.
(10:32):
So we did the class. I loved every second of
it on my first experience in a classroom in that capacity.
And Rona called me about a month later and she said,
I just had someone drop out who was teaching three
dimensional design, and I want you to do it, and
I said, oh, thank you, I'd love to do it.
I'll come right over. So the first day and then
(10:58):
it ended up being the first week of classes, I
would throw up in the school's parking lot. Every single morning,
I would set a wreck and I would have to
brace myself up against the wall of the classroom because
my knees would be shaking so badly. I would fear
that I would tumble over.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
And why just.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Unconditional, abridged panic. So I spent that week rehearsing how
to quit. And I took the speech that I had
rehearsed to Rona was in her office. Were sitting like
this and she's listening to me, nodding, and she said, well,
(11:41):
I trust that this will either kill you or cure you.
And I'm counting on the ladder good day. I thought,
oh no, I've got to come back and do this again.
That part of my nervousness was feeling that I needed
to be the answer person, that whatever the students asked
or whatever they wanted to explore, I had to be
the expert. And this is a slow evolution. It wasn't
(12:04):
until about the third or maybe even the fourth year
of teaching that I came to terms with this, and
I just said to myself, this is ridiculous. You can't
possibly know everything. And this is before Google existed, or
I could have gone into a back room and said, well,
let's go google this and I'll go and pretend that
I knew the answer. So I made the decision to
turn it back on the students and to say, great question.
(12:27):
I want each of you to research this and come
back to the next class with an answer that you
think no one else will will have found, so that
we don't get all this boilerplate stuff. Well it's the
same old answer every time, and it really worked. And
I then began each semester by declaring to the students,
(12:48):
you are doing the heavy lifting in this class, not me.
I'm putting seventy percent of the work here on your heads,
and you need to get used to that. And the
other thing. This is also a non set twitter that
I would say to them. I want you to know
that in my world, the squeaky wheel does not get greased,
so don't even think about squeaking.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Oh my gosh, And what do you think it was
about that style of teaching that was so effective that
you were like, this is working well.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The students felt invested in their own education and then
the outcome of what we were doing in that class,
and they didn't feel as though they were just a
sponge soaking all the stuff up. They were responsible for
a lot of the stuff. I also really believed in
then and believe in even stronger now that dialogue is
(13:38):
critically important in a classroom. If you have some pedantic
teacher who just talks at you all the time, I
think it's numbing. It's not even remotely engaging.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
It's like active learning. Yay, right, because yeah, participating in
the conversation. But I can imagine, based on classes that
I've been in college, that the hardest job for a
teacher is figuring out how to create an environment that
facilitates conversations amongst students. It's true, you know, going in
as a teacher, Okay, here are the confidence students that
are going to raise their hands all the time. They
(14:06):
love to talk. But then there's the students like I
was definitely one of these students that was like afraid
to raise my hand down.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I was true, I was the same right, So like,
what did.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
You do in those situations as a teacher to kind
of get those people to maybe break out of their shell.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
In the studio situation, it's very different from a desk situation.
In a studio of situation, physically, you don't feel that
there's this hierarchy of who's closest to the teacher in
a way or to the podium because as an instructor,
I'm always walking around, walking, walking, walking and giving everybody
(14:41):
equal time. And also in that kind of capacity, you
can have a one on one it's so easy. I mean,
it's like what you see on Project Runway. But when
it's a different kind of class, it's it's not a
studio class, it's I won't call it a lecture because
I don't do that, but but a lecture style. I
(15:02):
would have the students arrange their desks in a circle.
I would sit at one of those desks in the
circle too, and we'd conduct the class so everybody has
the same line of vision in a manner speaking, there's
no one who's at the front of the class versus
being at the back of the class. And it really
(15:23):
it worked, But it has to do with the physical
environment with what do you do with chairs or tables
or deaths that creates a kind of democracy.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Of short Really I love that idea. Though the circle
table for a left year, I think that's so smart.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I will also share with you, though Ky, this was
true teaching. This was true in Project Runway. I am
the worst person when it comes to first impressions. Why
that person you think, oh, they're never going to mount anything,
They're never going to do anything. They end up rising
and being the cream and the person you think, oh,
this person's going to run away with it, then they
(16:05):
end up disappointing you.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I want to talk about that as well in the
context of fashion, because I feel like that's probably a
common theme in those kind of classrooms. There are some
people that I think don't have the same level of
raw talent. Absolutely, you are harder workers.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Exactly, And in fact, I will use my niece as
as an example of that. My niece and my nephew
couldn't be more different, completely and totally different. My niece
is a workaholic. She did well in school because she
really worked hard. My nephew tested off the charts and
(16:42):
was a lazy, good for nothing bum and did really badly.
And I sat on the admissions committee at Parsons for
a number of years, and I was the champion of
the underdog, because most faculty on an emissions committee only
want the stars. Well, yeah, because then you don't have
to work very hard. They're self starters. They'll do all
(17:03):
this on their own and you can just sit in
the back of the studio and smoke a cigarette or whatever.
So when we would have someone whose portfolio was raw,
but you look at where they're from. They're from some
place in Alaska with sixty people. Look what they're doing
with this. They've ever been to a museum. And I
was proud that I was the champion of those individuals.
(17:24):
And if they in fact came to Parsons, generally speaking,
they did really, really well because they were so thrilled
to be in this environment that nurtured them and that
exposed them to things that they hadn't been exposed to before.
And as a teacher, that's the most exciting thing in
the world. When you see someone have an epiphany about
who they can be and what they can become and
(17:46):
they take charge of that. It's thrilling.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I think being a teacher and you can attest for.
It's like one of the most rewarding careers is because
over those four years and then beyond, you really see
somebody grow so much to themselves. Let's talk about this,
because you went from studying sculpture in college to then
getting to be who you are, that one of the
most influential people in the fashion industry and somebody that
(18:13):
so many call a mentor. It's incredible. So like, let's
talk about how did that happen? Like how did you
first like walk me through, like when did you get
the call? Did you interview for Parsons? Like how did
you first get the admissions role?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
The Parsons people knew me from conferences and we would
probably see each other be in the same room together
maybe two to three times a year. And I had
been been teaching at the Cork Run for five years,
so that was a lot of exposure. And they liked me,
(18:50):
I'm happy to say, and I was in awe of them.
I mean there were Parsons there were in New York.
So they called in the summer of nineteen two to
offer me a teaching position in three D design, and
I said, very flattered, thank you very much. No thank you.
(19:10):
I'm very happy here. Well, in the next year, my
life changed and I didn't know they were to call again,
but they did, and two weeks later I was living
in New York. It was very abrupt, and it was
very intimidating and very difficult. I moved here in August
(19:32):
of nineteen eighty three, the end of August, right before
classes began, and I have to tell you by Thanksgiving.
I thought, I don't think I can do this. I
think I need to go back to Washington. This is
just not working for me. And I had a fellow
teacher who I got to know pretty well, Ellen, who
(19:54):
said to me, I've lived here my whole life, and
she said, you have to know something. She said, every
emotion that anyone can experience, they experience here to the
nth degree. It's on steroids, whatever it is. If it's sadness,
it's the saddest anyone's ever been. If they're high, it's
(20:16):
the highest anyone's ever been. So she said, you take
all this, you put in a bowlet, and you mix
it in with a huge amount of sexual libido. And
that's New York. And it was a relief. I thought, Okay,
I get it, and it was like a long distance
runner hitting the wall.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Suddenly everything was okay, and now you've grown to love
New York City years later. It's incredible, and I am
so impressed by the people that come from different cities,
different states and make it in New York City because
it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's not easy, and a lot of people don't make it.
They make the decision to leave it. It's a tough place,
it really is. But once you do hit the wall,
it spoils you. There's no other place like it, and
it's really wonderful. So let me tell you the fashion
story I met Parsons. I'm teaching three dimensional design to
(21:13):
freshman Foundation year students, so they haven't chosen a major,
so it's I'm teaching across disciplines and I love that.
I mean, I love the fact that the students they
probably knew what they wanted to major in, but they
had not declared a major yet, so it was a
cross disciplinary course. And I was serving on the admissions committee.
There was must have been something about me that the
(21:36):
dean of the school at that time saw, but a
decision was made to make me associate Jane of the school.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
How old were you at this time? I feel like this.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I moved here when I was thirty. Wow, so I
was probably forty so young. I didn't know exactly what
the responsibilies went entail, because there was I have to say,
there was another associate, Jane Leslie Kadman. She was really
the academic dean. And my role, I'll tell you how
I described it. I was the pooper scooper. I was
(22:09):
the person who went into academic departments that were floundering
or having a moment of crisis, and I had to
fix it. We were looking for a new chair of
the fashion department and the department had a crisis of
leadership of sorts. There had been a chair for twenty
five years when he left, he was replaced by someone
(22:29):
who only lasted three months. It's a big job and
at the time arguably the most important department of parsons.
So we hired someone that no one was very keen about,
but he had a high profile, and when the senior administration,
(22:56):
the three of us came to terms with the fact
that he really couldn't do the job, the ridiculous decision
was made that I would be his shadow, that I
would go to the department with him and I would
actually do the work. So that was August of two
thousand and I'd been there for maybe three months, three
(23:19):
months as a common denominator in many of these things,
and I wrote a State of the Union to the
dean saying, this place is hemorrhaging. This place is the
biggest mess I could ever imagine. And I'll summarize it
for you. It was a culture of infantilization. The faculty
(23:41):
were infantilized by the administration and by this program called
the Designer Critic program, which is a whole other story.
The students were infantilized by the faculty. Other than the faculty,
no one had a voice. You go in into a critique,
the students aren't participating. They're ciphers. They're just sitting there
while the teacher carries on and on and on. But
(24:02):
not about the clothes, not about the design things like
you know, if you put a little more shadow under
this eye, it's going to make the face pop. I'm thinking,
who gives the damn about the face? Yeah? I care
about the clothes. What's happening here? Yeah, So, in addition
to the place hemorrhaging, I said this is not a
design school. I said, this place is a dressmaking school.
(24:27):
And I was intent upon making change. And I said
to the dean, we can't bring someone in from the outside.
It will take them God only knows how much time
to understand how wrong this is. Because the school had
such a great reputation the department did and and more
than seventy percent of the design of the designers on
Seventh Avenue where persons educated. But I also said, this
(24:50):
is like the monkeys and the typewriters. You give a
thousand monkeys, a thousand typewriters for a thousand years, and
someone's going to write the next great novel. And also
that first there wasn't much that I could do. The
budget set, the faculty contracts are out, the curriculum set.
I mean, you really can't do anything except observe and
ask a ton of questions. And most of the questions
(25:13):
I would ask the faculty have the following answer, Well,
that's the way we've always done it. Oh that's the
other thing. I was the only person who wasn't Parsons educated,
so they all were regurgitating what they'd experienced. Oh, also,
it's two thousand, there's not a computer in the department. No, no,
we don't believe in that that newfangled stuff. There wasn't
(25:34):
a fashion history class. Oh, we don't want the students
to be influenced. What we have a responsibility to give
them a history of their discipline. What are you talking about?
So for the students coming, the new students coming in
the following year two thousand, two thousand and one, Sorry,
I spent the summer with a group of faculty rewriting
(25:58):
the entire program. And before doing that, we'll go back
to the two thousand and two thousand and one academic year.
I met with the rising seniors, the students who were
then juniors, and there was this very well known program
called the Designer Critic program that would pair, well not
(26:19):
really pair. Six to eight students would work with Donna
Karen Mark Jacobs time forward, and that Designer Critic would
oversee the development of a collection. I said, you've all
come here, I'm certain revering the Designer Critic program and
eager to participate in it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
(26:40):
So how would you respond if I were to tell
you that I wanted to go away? There was dead silence. Well,
don't you want to know what you'd be doing. Yeah,
what would we be doing? And at this point there's
seventy students who are seniors. You will design and execute
a collection of ten to twelve looks over the course
(27:01):
of these two semesters, and that will be your senior
year experience. Well, they were ecstatic, they were cheering, they
were applauding, they were on their feet. I said, wait
a minute, who's terrified. No hands went them. I said,
you should all be terrified because in fact, what I'm
tossing at you or throwing at you is something that
(27:22):
you're really underprepared for. And I said, but I believe
in you, and I believe in your aptitude and your capabilities,
but you have been under challenged. Everyone's been working hard,
but no one's been working smart.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
You really had to get into the weeds and say
this is what's not working, this is what is working,
and be able to implement that when you're dealing with
teachers that have been there for so many time, I know,
it's very hard to Well, it's change.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's changing a culture, which is really I mean, it's
easy in a way to change course content, but changing
a culture, especially a culture that is all about in vantilization,
where the faculty void is the only voice that the
students ever hear, and they never hear their own. So
I have to say part of what propelled me for
(28:08):
was an anger about how how could this have happened
and why is it being perpetuated? And we have and
also my huge respect for the students. We have a
responsibility to these young people and we need to do
what's best for them. And I think the fact that
I'm not a fashion designer and didn't have a fashion
(28:29):
education was a huge asset because I didn't have an
extra grind. I didn't have a particular point of view
other than quality. I didn't have a taste other than quality,
as opposed to will I'm going to make you into
a mini me. In some ways it corresponded with Project Runway.
Project Runway was born in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Four years after becoming the chairman of the fashion department WOW.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So Project Runway couldn't have happened in the nineties. And
when we think about American fashion up until nineteen ninety ish,
it was a very narrowly defined esthetic swath and by
the time we reach the late eighties, it's Donna Karen,
(29:16):
It's Calvin Klein, It's Ralph Lauren, and that's about it,
at least in America. Then American fashion goes into a
period of crisis, a crisis of identity. It doesn't know
who it is or what it is. And when it
comes out of it and the second half of the nineties,
it suddenly is a completely different place. It's a place
(29:38):
that once to culture or once to cultivate and nurture
young entrepreneurial designers. That allowed me to say, well, this
is what we have to do with this department. We
need to be educating students who can lead this department
as designers, not as assistant designers. This was such a
(30:00):
new approach for the department that a lot of students
were very frozen. They just didn't know what to do.
And for me, unsticking them getting them out of that
frozen state was relatively easy. Ask them, who's the customer
who's going to wear these designs? And that really helped enormously.
(30:25):
Who are you putting them on? If this is at
Sacksmith Avenue, who's hanging next to it? So what department
are you in? But for the most part, those students
were few and far between. Most of the of the
students knew what they wanted to do and who they
wanted to be. I have to tell you one other
(30:52):
thing about my evolution with fashion.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, I need to know because in two thousand, like
what was your relationship with fashion?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I was wearing baggy Brooks Brothers suits.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Okay, and now you're so known for your.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That's a whole other story though, so I will say proudly.
Diane von Furstenberg has been a dear friend for a
long time before fashion because she was a board member.
She was a board member of Parsons and I was
managing the board. So I got to know her well
and we liked each other and we would got together
for launch and she's just a great person. So the
(31:28):
first time she came to see me in the fashion department,
we're sitting in my office. I'm borrowing a phrase from
I Love Lucy. She looked like she just walked into
the Grand ballroom and smelled raw cauliflower cooking. I looked
at her and I said, what's the matter. She gestured,
she said this, She said, this isn't working.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
That's me right now, Like he mis setting guys, everybody
looking that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Is me right now. No, it's not. You look stunning
and adorable. She said, you need to be more mom.
She said, you need to be more modern for the students,
for the industry, and for yourself. So I had a
major transformation. I started wearing all black and I got
a black turtleneck sweater, a black leather blazer, black pants,
(32:21):
and that was my uniform and I wore it all
the time and she approved. But my real fashion epiphany
was completely unrelated in a way. I had a minor
role in the two thousand and nine or was it eleven,
I think two thousand and nine movie The Smurfs. Rita
(32:42):
Ryak was the costumer for the show. So we had
a conversation before we started filming and she said, oh,
you're tim gun. I wouldn't dream of telling you how
to dress. So I brought my own wardrobe, of course,
which I always do, and we taped that day and
she called me that night and she said I just
(33:04):
looked at the rushes. She said, your wardrobe isn't good enough.
I was mortified. I was mortified.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
She said she so excited that I'd be like transform
it for me.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
No. No, so she said tomorrow. We weren't taping the
next day. She said, meet me at this tailor at
such and such a time. So I did, and I'm
in the dressing room and I'm looking at the labels.
Sure it was four hundred and fifty dollars, the tie
was one hundred and fifty. This is two thousand and
(33:34):
nine suits, three thousand dollars. I said, I'm not wearing this.
I'm not putting these things on. Put them on. You
put them on. She's screaming at me. And everything had
to do with pattern mixing, and I said, I look
like a circus clown. This is ridiculous. I'm not going
to go on camera dress like this. You are, You're
(33:54):
going to do it. So it's a bit like hitting
the wall is a long distance runner. Yeah, I hit
the wall and I thought, I really like this. This,
this is good. The trouble is, once the show was over,
how do I sustain this? I'm that wardrobe I loved.
Now I have to shop for it. So I would
(34:15):
go to Barney's and Burgdorf's and Sex and I would
feel physically ill when I left, having spent so much money.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, you grew up with a humble backgrounds and the
FBI parents are in the government. And then it's like,
all of a sudden, fashion is expensive, right trus Like
what is netaporte? What is forward?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Well at this time, Eric Wilson, who was then fashion
critic for The Times, wrote an article about this new store.
No one pays me to say any of this. They
don't give me free stuff. A story called suit Supply
originated in the Netherlands that had been in Europe for
thirty years. They just opened a store in New York.
(34:58):
He said, if you're that guy going to Burgdorf some
barneys and sacks, you need to check this out. I thought, oh,
come on, this is too good to be true. So
I went to suit Supply. I was in awe and
totally enraptured by the place and by the prices. I mean,
it was really affordable.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
They are they still are. They're great prices for men.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, and every single salesperson is an expert in fit.
They have to spend a month or more in the
Netherlands with the tailors, so they won't let you leave
something off the rack. You've got to put it on.
They have to see how you look at it. And
my whole wardrobe. Now, practically the only thing I'm wearing
that suit supply are the pants and the shoes.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I love these pants. They're so cool because when you
look closely at them, they have like little specks.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Of color orange and green.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
And when you were doing Project Runway, you didn't feel
like you were as fashionable? Then, oh well really, well.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I was wearing what I would wear to a design class.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Okay, so you had your uniform.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah. And also I was never intended to be on camera.
I was the consultant to the show.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Let's talk about that, Like, how do you go from
dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons to then
being so involved in pop culture with Project Runway and
you know the Smurfs? Well, you designed enough of for Barbie.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I don't know if anyone thought that Project Runway would
end up being a hit show. I certainly didn't.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
What did it originate from? Like, was it the Parsons students?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
No? No, no, no, not okay. The producers of the show,
Jane Lipsits and Dan cut Forth, called me in January
of two thousand and four and they introduced themselves and
they said they were doing this new show about fashion
and that people in the industry said that they should
talk to me, so I asked them for more details,
(36:52):
and when I heard fashion reality, I said, you know,
this industry has enough trouble without that, I'm really not interested.
They said, we'll give us ten minutes. So I googled
them and found out that they were the Project green
Light producers, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck about making movies.
Thought well, that's a show that has a seriousness of
purpose and integrity, and let's see what the conversation is like.
(37:18):
So I really liked them and what they had to say,
and they wanted to use real fashion designers, not pick
people around them off the street, saying well, we'll make
you into a fashion designer, and I got excited about
the whole idea. Three to four months went by, I
didn't hear a thing from them, and I thought, okay, whatever.
Then I heard from them they said, we really want
you to be our consultant, and I should add unpaid,
(37:40):
as was my role for the first two years. I
didn't think anyone got paid for reality television. So I
signed on to this project, which was much bigger than
I had actually been able to wrap my brain around.
But that's understandable.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I mean talk about a role that is like the
perfect fit for you, down to like your ethos and
what you're all about. Right.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Well, I should add though, during all this consulting and planning,
but my role in the show didn't exist. There was
no role.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
You ended up almost being like the host of the show,
right or you were the guy that was always there,
like commenting on the designs and being like make it work,
and like here's the amount of time you have left.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Well, it happened this way. It's today. The designers are
arriving tomorrow. So the producers came to me and I
could tell they were uneasy. They asked me, how would
you feel about going into the workroom and asking the
designers what they're doing? And I said, That's how I've
(38:45):
spent most of my life. Easy. And I was very
aware of the camera placement. There was a camera on me,
there was a camera on the designer, and I thought,
all right, I got it. As long as I have
the designer responding to me, no one needs to see me,
no one needs to hear my voice. And I, honest
to god, never dreamed i'd be in the cut of
(39:05):
the show.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You have such a natural charisma. You were funny. They
probably thought we got to keep them in well.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And I have to say I didn't know what the
show would actually look like. I mean, I knew my
role in it, and I knew what happened on the
runway with the judging. I didn't know what was going
on at the Atlas apartments. I thought, maybe this is
all about sexual escapades. Who knows. And there was one taping.
I was always in the Parsons auditorium during the judging,
(39:35):
and I would say, in the literal and metaphorical dark,
and there's a woman standing next to me in the
literal and metaphorical dark, and I didn't know who she was.
And it was early in the season, so this person
certainly didn't know who I was. And we're watching the
judging and she turns to me and she whispers, who's
(39:55):
going to want to watch this? I said, oh god,
I said, you were roborating my worst fears that this
is just going to be so boring and it'll be
like watching paint dry.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Not what anybody wants to hear when they's just starting out.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
So after the taping that day, I asked someone, who
is that crumpy woman the President Bravo, great Lawrence alasnak Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Oh gosh, Well, I feel like there's a lot of
nerves that go into like a new show, right, So
I giving her some credit there.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, So I never dreamed there'd be a season two,
let alone the last season Heidi and I did together
was season sixteen.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
How quickly though into this season and into maybe watching
back the episodes as they were rolling out, where you like, oh,
this is going to be.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
A hit again in all sincerity, and never dreamed there
be a season two. And we weren't picked up right
away either, And then there was all this anxiety about
season two, and I'll tell you why, and I would
never have occurred to me. The anxiety was all from
the producers and the network because with season one, when
(41:06):
we're casting the show, when we're looking for designers, nobody
knew what it was, so they came unencumbered with what
the show is actually about. For season two, we've shown
our hand, the cards are all out on the table,
so they did know what the show was about, and
there was just tremendous concern that this meant that there
(41:28):
would be contrivances and expectations that we would have to
meet in a certain way. But then by season three
and then four and five, all that dissipated.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
I'm curious because you were very known, as I kind
of said before, for your make it work catchphrase? How
did that come to be? Is that just something you
said and all of a sudden people were like, Oh,
I like that. He says this all the time.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
I can tell you when I first said it. I
first said it in a fashion class. To the year
was it's two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
I was working with seniors. It was a six hour
a week class in concept development for thirty weeks. It
(42:16):
was full in spring semester. I had a student who
had been working on this since September. It's now April,
so we have a month and a half to go.
And she said to me, I'm changing everything. What are
you talking about? You're changing everything. I don't like it anymore.
I said, you're working on this in September. You've been
working on this for months. What's the problem. She said,
(42:39):
I don't know, and she's shrugging. I just don't like it.
I said, well, you know what you're gonna do. You're
gonna sit here you're going to offer a diagnosis of
what it is that's wrong and what it is you
want to fix, and then you're going to offer up
a prescription for how to make it work. I said,
you're not a band, and I said, also, this is
(43:01):
for your sake. If I let you just drop this
and start all over again, what will you really know
about what went wrong? But if you have to offer
up a diagnosis and a prescription for making it work,
think of what you now have in your own physical
and mental toolbox problem solving skills that you wouldn't have
(43:22):
had otherwise.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
You are the perfect example for what a teacher should be,
because not only are you a visionary for how a
school and department should operate in the most effective way,
but you also are the type of person that takes
such an individual interest in someone.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Well, thank you, it's what I mean, that's what I
would do. I would really channel them. And I'm not
an enabler. I mean, I'm someone who wants to. I mean,
I don't like throwing up roadblocks, but at the same time,
I know it's best. I mean I think I know
it's best.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Not always You're doing whatever it takes to help them.
Kind of push through they're going through, and there's different
kind of tactics on doing that. You know what I
think you always got a lot of credit for on
the show as well, was you were always so good
at delivering certain news in a positive way. And I
feel like that is what makes a really good leader,
and that's what makes a good mentor So I'm curious,
(44:16):
like even for me, like as somebody that manages a team, like,
what is your advice to us for how to properly manage.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
With bad news? I rehearse it in my head and
I think, how would I react to this message if
it were delivered in this way? And if it's very negative,
then I rethink. But it's about thinking about how's that
person going to react to this? And I have to
say my critiques on Project Runway evolved in the following way.
(44:49):
I went from telling the designers things to pummeling them
with enough questions that they they would see what I'm seeing.
I would take the designer away from that camera and
bring them around to where I'm standing and say, I
(45:11):
want you to see it from my point of view.
Look at this garment and tell me what you see. Oh,
I see what you're talking about or what you mean. Yeah,
the PAM is really janky. So if they see it
and I don't have to say it, it's music to
my ears. I couldn't be happier. And people have asked me, two,
(45:33):
do I feel guilty when a designer goes home? Why? Well,
is there something you should or shouldn't have said to them?
I said, you know, I don't think about it that way,
just as I would never consider taking credit if they win.
You know, No, we're gonna have to just associate yourself.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I love how you said. And I was reading about
this and I noted it down because I was like,
that's so interesting. One of your ethos that you've talked
about fashion wise is that fashion should be expressive but
also functional.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah. I had a dear friend, now departed. She was
at Vogue for thirty seven years, the last seventeen of
which she was editor in chief. Before Anna Winter Grace
Marabella that I brought her in every September to meet
with the new fashion students, and she knew why. I said,
I want you to do your grace thing. And people
(46:34):
would look at her and think, who's this old lady?
And she was an old lady, but a very chic one.
She would tell them enthusiastically that they're the future and
fashion needs them. And she would add, I have two
pieces of advice. Don't make dumb clothes and don't make jokes.
(46:56):
So they'd be looking at each other, Grace, tell them
what you mean, dumb clothes. No one needs you to
design a T shirt. There are plenty of them out there.
Don't go there. Now, this is Grace's particular point of view,
not necessarily mine. Jokes, she said, the things that walk
the runways during Paris Couture Week. She said, think about
what is between dumb clothes and jokes. There's a huge
(47:20):
playing field and there are not many people who design
well for it. It's usually dumb or a joke. And
I took that to hard in my own way as
a teacher in the fashion department, and I would say
to my students, I don't care what you design, and
I really didn't. As long as your model can get
into a taxi, it.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, And I feel like
there's oftentimes, yeah, you see a lot of outfits on
the runway where I'm like, well, it doesn't but I
guess runway fashion is very different because they're throwing a
ton of layers on them often.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Is At the same time, I have respect for the
cture collections, but I think fashion should be accessible.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
What do you think is the secret to looking effortlessly
chic walking around New York City?
Speaker 2 (48:05):
I have a mantra about this has nothing to do
with individual items of apparel. It's about the following silhouette
proportion and fit. Silouet proportion. Fit pertains to anything an
evening gown, a tuxedo, workout clothes. You want clothes that
(48:26):
follow your natural silhouette, that don't cascade away from you
or squeeze you like a wetsuit. Proportion. I'm always talking
about thirds, and you epitomize this too. You're one third
on top, two thirds on the bottom. We don't want
to cut ourselves in half, which is why I object
so vehemently to men and the untucked shirt, as they're
(48:49):
cutting themselves in half and it's not a pleasing proportion,
and you just look broader, wider, you look dumpier, and
that pertains to fit. It's the same thing clothes that
I actually fit us. I'm not a fan of the
baggy jans or baggy clothes in general. I just think
we look like an un made bed. It's not a
flattering look.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
I do really like that the more tailored look is
having a resurgence too, because I agree. Like I even
remember when I was at FIT and I was not
at FAT when I was taking classes there. As a
high schooler, I took a lot of fashion design classes
and my favorite eras to draw inspiration from. We're always
the fifties and the sixties. I am so obsessed with
(49:30):
that style of clothes and I always have been that.
It's so fun now seeing that maker resurgence and even
like the little Bob tair and you know, the capri
pants for women and loafers, Like it's amazing because it's
so classic and it's so like Americana.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
No, it's you're absolutely right, But it's fashion's pendulum. The
bagginess is going to come back.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
It's going to come back. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Like
fashion really has a way of just recoming back.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Well, it's the culture of retail too. They want us
to buy new things, and they want us to believe
that we're out of style if we don't have these
new things. And I really believe in finding a uniform
and just sticking with it.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I love that. I think also like as I've gotten older,
it's like when you're younger and you want to be trendy,
you want the fashion, the cute going out of it.
And now I feel like as soon as you get
to like a certain like year later twenties, it's like
you're an adult and it's time to like, no more
crop tops, you know, no more rip jeans, Like let's
you know, really tailor it. And it's been fun because
then you start buying pieces that you'll have forever.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
And also you have this you'll have this confidence because
you know you look your best.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
I know you've talked before about things that have changed
within the world of fashion, so I'm curious, like, what
do you think has changed for the better in the
world of fashion, and what do you think still needs work.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
While I like the notion that fashion can be affordable
and accessible, and I think it should be, there's too
much of it. There's just too much stuff out there,
and it's so wasteful and it's so bad for for
the environment. And the last class that I told it
Emerson was a of course in fashion and sustainability and
(51:08):
the premise was to help solve this dilemma. How do
we get people to stop buying so much stuff? I
think people probably know what I have the most disdained for,
but now it's ubiquitous. So what do I know? How
did the legging become a pant?
Speaker 1 (51:24):
I know, look at me right now, You're in workout
when this is completely workoutwear right right for me? Yes,
you're not going to the opera, no very much. So
not wait, I just have to call it really quickly
for our listeners. Okay, Tim and I are sitting across
from each other, and I wish I came dressed up.
This is like so embarrassing for me because but I
running interview show. I'm always in workout wear. But you
(51:44):
guys that know me see me on Instagram, you see
my posts. I love dressing cute when I can. But yeah,
like my uniform because of the running Interview show has
become like workoutwear. And I'm the brand that I wear
all the time as Adidas, because that's our partner. But
we are sitting across from each other and Tim is
in the most person you know, you guys know how
brown is the color?
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Right now?
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Everybody's obsessed with chocolate brown, just all shades of brown,
and you are wearing the most perfect outfit.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Oh, you're too kind.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Got a perfect light brown turtleneck sweater on pants that
are what material is it like? Yeah, tweed tweed pants
that have like little specks of color but they're brown.
And then bite the perfect loafers, so do your outfit is.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
I'm not crazy about my socks. They're way too dark,
but that's the only socks I could find. On the
topic of what I have the most disdain for, it
goes back to my theory about the not my theory,
my adage about the monkey House at the Zoo. When
you first entered the monkey House at the Zoo, you shriek,
this place stinks, And after about twenty minutes you think
(52:48):
it's not so bad. And after another ten minutes you think,
what smell that anyone new walking into the monkey house
shrieks this place stinks. You know, this was the case
with leggings. Someone put on a pair of leggings, walked
by the mirror and said, I can't go out dress
like this. Twenty minutes later they walk by and they
(53:09):
think it's not so bad, and ten minutes later they
walk by the mirror and they say, I look hot. No.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Leggings really are a phenomenon. And I was asking one
of my friends who's a stylist in the city, and
I said to her, what do you think is the
style of our generation?
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Because you can look back to the eighties and it's
the big hairs and the big slaves.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Oh, the eighties were the worst, right.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
The nineties were so chic with like the you know,
the Emperor cut dresses and just so many different styles.
And then I said the sixties and seventies I loved.
It's like the tailored outfits, the pencil skirts. And I
was like, what do you think it is for us?
And she goes, it's at leisure, yeah, and I'm like,
that is such a bummer. That is ath leisure. But
it is like for our generation, it really was ath leisure.
And I do think like gen Z and Jen Alf
(53:51):
are bringing back different styles right now, and you don't
see them ass frequently in ath leisure. But yeah, it
is interesting. It's very street style.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
And I'll add this about what's good. I'm speaking from
a viewpoint of a New Yorker. You can wear anything here,
absolutely anything. And no one looks as scance and I
think that's a very positive thing as opposed to what
I said earlier about the narrow, very narrowly defined esthetic
(54:22):
swath that America used to be. If you didn't fit
into this mold, you just didn't fit in. And here,
at least I don't know what it's like in Kansas City,
but here you can wear anything and the world accepts you.
And that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
It is just a place where everything is acceptable and
nothing is looked down upon.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
And I'll add this about the responsibility that each of
us has for how we present ourselves to the world.
It's the semiotics of clothes and grooming. How we present
ourselves to the world is how the world judges us.
And when people say to me with frequency, oh that's
so shallow, that's so judgmental, but it's true. You know,
(55:03):
when you walk into a restaurant, how do you know
who works there versus who a patron is. It's by
how they're dressed.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Going off of that, I just want to do a
couple like life reflections, because you have lived an incredible life,
like it is just so amazing for me to be
sitting here in front of you, somebody that's accomplished so much,
and like, I can only like dream of accomplishing as
much as you have, and I hope that I will.
But seriously, it is so you.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Will vastly surpass me.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
It is so inspirational.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Seriously, the most important thing is, Kate, just to just
to do whatever you're doing at one hundred and fifty
percent and just to move forward and then see what happens.
Young people ask me this all the time, how do
I get to be famous? Well? What do you want
to be famous for? Oh? I don't care. You don't, well,
you should care. If you're chasing it, it eludes you.
(55:53):
You never get it. You just have to do a
really good Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
My dad used to say it to me. With sports,
it's like you're not chasing an accolade. You're chasing being
the best you can possibly be at your sport, and
then the accolades come.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Dad is completely one thousand percent correct.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
And it applies to everything.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
And also as an athlete, and I'm reflecting upon my
childhood years as a competitive swimmer, someone's going to come
in first, second, and third, and I was always fourth, fifth, sixth.
It didn't get me down. It made me train harder,
work harder. And the day first time that I came
in third I remember that day and that yellow ribbon.
(56:33):
It was so thrilling and I'm ecstatic, and it said
to me, if you really work at this, it can happen,
as opposed to, oh, don't cry, sweetie, here's a ribbon. No,
work hard and then be proud of what you've achieved.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
Absolutely and looking back on your life, like, did you
ever imagine you'd become this pop culture icon in the
world of fashion?
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Never in this zillion years. Never. And I still don't
acknowledge anything even close to that. Right the for me,
the the humbling, maybe it's not humbling. I don't know that.
The whiff of fresh air that I get is every
(57:22):
time I'm in my kitchen because I'm in it a
lot and it's open, so I see it is seeing
Miami Award. I mean, I think, oh my god, I
have an Emmy Award. This is unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
It's such a testament to hard work and just being yourself,
just being yourself, really being yourself. Yeah. So many of
our listeners are creatives, entrepreneurs, people in the city just
trying to make it happen. I'm curious. Can you leave
us with one final piece of advice?
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Make it work.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
Let's go make it work.
Speaker 2 (57:57):
Make it work all right?
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Well, Tim, thank you, thank you so much for coming
on post friend high with me today.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Kate, thank you. And you're a fantastic therapist.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Really did you feel like you were in a therapy session? Yes,
talking about yourself is therapeutic.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
Yeah, And like going back to the early years.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
You took me on a journey I haven't been on
for decades.
Speaker 1 (58:16):
Oh my gosh. Well I'm so happy I got to
go on that journey with you. Seriously, like I just
want to like, you're amazing.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Thank you.
What is up, Runner Gang, Welcome back to Post run
High Today, I'm sitting down with Tim Gunn. You may
know him as the impeccably dressed mentor from Project Runway.
He was always in a suit, always giving the most
thoughtful critiques and if you're not familiar with Project Runway,
the show first aired in two thousand and four, right
in the golden era of reality TV, and it quickly
(00:25):
became a hit. The show followed aspiring designers competing in
high pressure challenges to create innovative fashion pieces, all under
extreme time constraints, and Tim he was the heart of
the show and the mentor guiding them through it all.
But Tim's story goes way beyond TV, and in this episode,
we go all the way back to his childhood, growing
up with a father in the FBI, his struggles finding
(00:47):
his path, and how he ended up in the fashion
world despite never planning on it. We dive into his
years as a teacher, how he shaped his approach to mentorship,
and what really happened behind the scenes of Project Runway.
There were serious doubts in the beginning of the show
and people did not think it would work, and Tim
never even imagined being on camera, which was so hard
(01:08):
to imagine because he was the heart of the show.
This conversation is packed with lessons on trusting the process,
finding your voice, and taking risks. And guys, if you're
enjoying Post Run High, please make sure you subscribe to
my YouTube channel at Kate max to watch our full
video episodes and also follow me across socials because I'll
be keeping you guys up to date on what's to
(01:29):
come on all of the shows we've got going on.
All right, let's get into our episode. It's Tim, What
is up? Guys, Welcome back to Post Run High. I'm
sitting here today with the iconic and legendary Tim Gun.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
You flatter me, good Evans. What an introduction. Thank you, Tim.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm seriously so excited to have you on the show today.
I feel like I grew up knowing who you are
and watching you. And I alluded to this earlier when
we were doing our walk, but I actually was considering
Parsons for a school, like very closely. Oh so, it's
so cool to be able to sit down with you
and just know how much of an impact you had
(02:14):
on Parsons as a university.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, thank you very much. I'm thrilled to be here
and honored to be here, and I look forward to
a wonderful conversation here.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
The premise of post ran Hig is we always do
some sort of activity before the sit down interview. You
and I started out by doing a walk in Brooklyn.
So first I just want to ask, is fitness a
big part of your life? Has it been for years?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Well? I have to say I do feel grounded through
a movement, but for me it's something fairly recent. Nine
years ago, I met this dynamic individual named Tim Morehouse.
He's a three time Olympian and a silver medalist in
fencing saber fencing, and he said he had just opened
a fencing club. And I asked, what's a fencing club?
(02:59):
I had no idea place ship fence and have a drink.
He said, it's on ninety first Street. I said, ninety
first Street. I live on ninetieth. It's directly behind my
apartment building. So I went over to Sam and I
was really enraptured with the activity. So at age six
sixty two, I took up fencing.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I find that so interesting because I was saying I
just did an interview with Chris Cuomo last week and
we're in the edit right now, editing our conversation, and
he talked a lot about getting into self defense and
sparring at a later age in life, and I find
it fascinating. And I have brothers that love jiu jitsu,
the kind of combat type of workouts like the fighting
people love. But fencing is an interesting one. I haven't
(03:42):
heard that one before.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, it's a fascinating sport with a long, long history.
It originated in France, and of course it came out
of dueling. But with fencing, you're dad's supposed to harm
the other person. You'll get penalized.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Although sometimes it hurts.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Oh well sometimes yes, but then you've done something wrong.
And I didn't know I would fall in love with it,
and I did. And Tim Morehouse said to me, you know,
we really need to work on making you stronger. So
he introduced me to a trainer, Jason, and I've been
working with him for eight years now and we work
(04:22):
out twice a week. So I've become a bit of
a fitness nut. But I will say this, I'm going
to contradict you about the post workout high. I need
a post workout nap, Okay, not a high.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
No, And I do have to say, like it depends
on what the workout is. If I'm doing some sort
of like a lifting workout or a hit workout, I'm
the same way. I'm napping afterwards because I rarely move
my body like that. But after run or a walk,
I feel like it's just something I've been doing for
so many years, and I feel like a walk is
probably the most common thing, Like you do feel that
rush of endorphins and you feel kind of this sense
(04:59):
of accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Well, in fact, after my fitness training, I walked for
about an hour because it cools me down and reinvigorates me.
And I agree, yeah, great, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
All right, well let's get into it. Because I as
I was doing my research on you and learning all
about you, I really found like the trajector of your
life to be so interesting. And what I love to
do in my interviews is just get to know somebody
from the ground up. You grew up in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I did. My father was an FBI agent, and he
was a very talented writer, and I should say he
spent his first was it one year or two years
in the field office in Newark, New Jersey, and then
he was transferred to headquarters, and somehow Jaeggar Hoover, who
(05:47):
was the director then and he was the director through
five presidents, learned of Dad's talented writing and he ended
up being Hoover's ghost writer. He wrote all of his book,
his correspondence, his speeches, and he traveled with him.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
You know what, it actually makes a lot of sense.
And I think that's a really interesting point because it's
like when you think about somebody that's in the FBI
or working a job in politics or in the government,
or even like in the military, which I kind of
associate like the FBI to be like a little of
a simpler mentality. It's like you don't necessarily think of, oh,
this person might actually be very creative and a good writer.
(06:27):
But it makes sense that you had those kind of
traits in your family, right, because you're a very creative person.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Well, and I'm very very lucky that my parents nurtured
that cultivated it. And my mother, until I was born,
was a librarian. In fact, she started the CIA's library.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Growing up in a family where you know, it's very
government oriented, was creativity something that was like fostered in
your household? Or was that something that you kind of
carved out for yourself at a young age.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I think it was largely my doing. I was a
very reclusive, nerdy kid. I had only a select number
of friends. I didn't participate in team sports. I didn't
like them. I was a competitive swimmer. I liked loved swimming,
(07:17):
but I loved reading. I loved Lego. I still remember
when it came out in the nineteen fifties, and when
it first came out, these were just anonymous bricks. You
could do whatever you wanted with them, and I used
to spend most of my allowance money buying Lego. And
I still remember when doors and windows came out and
(07:39):
roof tiles. I was ecstatic because I was just leaving
holes in buildings, pretending it was a door or a window,
and suddenly there's the real thing. It was thrilling. I
was a creative kid, and I was teased and abused
about that with some frequency. But everything makes us who
(08:02):
we are.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And then you went on in college post high school,
you went to an art school. I did, and you
were studying sculpture art.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Initially I wanted to be a painter, and having grown
up in Washington, a city where there are lots and
lots of museums and entry is free. I mean, you
have this immediate access to all of this work. I
thought that means museums all over the world are free.
No they're not. My point is just that I really
(08:34):
revered painting, and when I was in school, I had
to take a three dimensional design class and I resisted
and I had a big debate with my advisor about
why am I doing this? I have absolutely no interest
in it. Well, you're doing it because I'm telling you
you have to do it. And it was a kind
(08:55):
of epiphany for me because I was really good at
three dimensional thinking, and I put painting on the shelf.
I mean I still painted, but I really dove into sculpture,
and when I graduated and was a starving artist, I
ended up making a living by building architectural models for
three firms in Washington.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It makes sense that you then went on and like
still liked doing something that was maybe a little different
than painting, but similar in a lot of ways, and
still using your hands, yes, very technical.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
My grandmother used to say, why are you doing this?
You do such good things with your hands. Become a doctor,
it's so different.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And I actually grew up oil painting as well, so
I can completely relate to like being like, oh, I
might want to pursue this. But you know, it's really
interesting to me about what you just said was you
loved museums growing up. And it makes a lot of
sense because didn't you go on also post college and
you were working at a museum in the education department.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well, I was teaching at a museum school and also
working in the museum in the installation area. But do
you know, I know the earliest stage of my career
as an educator. Tell me a dear mentor who became
(10:11):
an incredibly close friend, woman by the name of Rona Slade.
She contacted reached out to me to say, I'm teaching
a high school summer class six weeks, five days a week,
and I need an assistant. Would you like to do it?
And I thought, oh, good happens. Of course I'd love
to it, and I would have done anything for Rona.
(10:32):
So we did the class. I loved every second of
it on my first experience in a classroom in that capacity.
And Rona called me about a month later and she said,
I just had someone drop out who was teaching three
dimensional design, and I want you to do it, and
I said, oh, thank you, I'd love to do it.
I'll come right over. So the first day and then
(10:58):
it ended up being the first week of classes, I
would throw up in the school's parking lot. Every single morning,
I would set a wreck and I would have to
brace myself up against the wall of the classroom because
my knees would be shaking so badly. I would fear
that I would tumble over.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
And why just.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Unconditional, abridged panic. So I spent that week rehearsing how
to quit. And I took the speech that I had
rehearsed to Rona was in her office. Were sitting like
this and she's listening to me, nodding, and she said, well,
(11:41):
I trust that this will either kill you or cure you.
And I'm counting on the ladder good day. I thought,
oh no, I've got to come back and do this again.
That part of my nervousness was feeling that I needed
to be the answer person, that whatever the students asked
or whatever they wanted to explore, I had to be
the expert. And this is a slow evolution. It wasn't
(12:04):
until about the third or maybe even the fourth year
of teaching that I came to terms with this, and
I just said to myself, this is ridiculous. You can't
possibly know everything. And this is before Google existed, or
I could have gone into a back room and said, well,
let's go google this and I'll go and pretend that
I knew the answer. So I made the decision to
turn it back on the students and to say, great question.
(12:27):
I want each of you to research this and come
back to the next class with an answer that you
think no one else will will have found, so that
we don't get all this boilerplate stuff. Well it's the
same old answer every time, and it really worked. And
I then began each semester by declaring to the students,
(12:48):
you are doing the heavy lifting in this class, not me.
I'm putting seventy percent of the work here on your heads,
and you need to get used to that. And the
other thing. This is also a non set twitter that
I would say to them. I want you to know
that in my world, the squeaky wheel does not get greased,
so don't even think about squeaking.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Oh my gosh, And what do you think it was
about that style of teaching that was so effective that
you were like, this is working well.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The students felt invested in their own education and then
the outcome of what we were doing in that class,
and they didn't feel as though they were just a
sponge soaking all the stuff up. They were responsible for
a lot of the stuff. I also really believed in
then and believe in even stronger now that dialogue is
(13:38):
critically important in a classroom. If you have some pedantic
teacher who just talks at you all the time, I
think it's numbing. It's not even remotely engaging.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
It's like active learning. Yay, right, because yeah, participating in
the conversation. But I can imagine, based on classes that
I've been in college, that the hardest job for a
teacher is figuring out how to create an environment that
facilitates conversations amongst students. It's true, you know, going in
as a teacher, Okay, here are the confidence students that
are going to raise their hands all the time. They
(14:06):
love to talk. But then there's the students like I
was definitely one of these students that was like afraid
to raise my hand down.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I was true, I was the same right, So like,
what did.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
You do in those situations as a teacher to kind
of get those people to maybe break out of their shell.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
In the studio situation, it's very different from a desk situation.
In a studio of situation, physically, you don't feel that
there's this hierarchy of who's closest to the teacher in
a way or to the podium because as an instructor,
I'm always walking around, walking, walking, walking and giving everybody
(14:41):
equal time. And also in that kind of capacity, you
can have a one on one it's so easy. I mean,
it's like what you see on Project Runway. But when
it's a different kind of class, it's it's not a
studio class, it's I won't call it a lecture because
I don't do that, but but a lecture style. I
(15:02):
would have the students arrange their desks in a circle.
I would sit at one of those desks in the
circle too, and we'd conduct the class so everybody has
the same line of vision in a manner speaking, there's
no one who's at the front of the class versus
being at the back of the class. And it really
(15:23):
it worked, But it has to do with the physical
environment with what do you do with chairs or tables
or deaths that creates a kind of democracy.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Of short Really I love that idea. Though the circle
table for a left year, I think that's so smart.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I will also share with you, though Ky, this was
true teaching. This was true in Project Runway. I am
the worst person when it comes to first impressions. Why
that person you think, oh, they're never going to mount anything,
They're never going to do anything. They end up rising
and being the cream and the person you think, oh,
this person's going to run away with it, then they
(16:05):
end up disappointing you.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I want to talk about that as well in the
context of fashion, because I feel like that's probably a
common theme in those kind of classrooms. There are some
people that I think don't have the same level of
raw talent. Absolutely, you are harder workers.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Exactly, And in fact, I will use my niece as
as an example of that. My niece and my nephew
couldn't be more different, completely and totally different. My niece
is a workaholic. She did well in school because she
really worked hard. My nephew tested off the charts and
(16:42):
was a lazy, good for nothing bum and did really badly.
And I sat on the admissions committee at Parsons for
a number of years, and I was the champion of
the underdog, because most faculty on an emissions committee only
want the stars. Well, yeah, because then you don't have
to work very hard. They're self starters. They'll do all
(17:03):
this on their own and you can just sit in
the back of the studio and smoke a cigarette or whatever.
So when we would have someone whose portfolio was raw,
but you look at where they're from. They're from some
place in Alaska with sixty people. Look what they're doing
with this. They've ever been to a museum. And I
was proud that I was the champion of those individuals.
(17:24):
And if they in fact came to Parsons, generally speaking,
they did really, really well because they were so thrilled
to be in this environment that nurtured them and that
exposed them to things that they hadn't been exposed to before.
And as a teacher, that's the most exciting thing in
the world. When you see someone have an epiphany about
who they can be and what they can become and
(17:46):
they take charge of that. It's thrilling.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I think being a teacher and you can attest for.
It's like one of the most rewarding careers is because
over those four years and then beyond, you really see
somebody grow so much to themselves. Let's talk about this,
because you went from studying sculpture in college to then
getting to be who you are, that one of the
most influential people in the fashion industry and somebody that
(18:13):
so many call a mentor. It's incredible. So like, let's
talk about how did that happen? Like how did you
first like walk me through, like when did you get
the call? Did you interview for Parsons? Like how did
you first get the admissions role?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
The Parsons people knew me from conferences and we would
probably see each other be in the same room together
maybe two to three times a year. And I had
been been teaching at the Cork Run for five years,
so that was a lot of exposure. And they liked me,
(18:50):
I'm happy to say, and I was in awe of them.
I mean there were Parsons there were in New York.
So they called in the summer of nineteen two to
offer me a teaching position in three D design, and
I said, very flattered, thank you very much. No thank you.
(19:10):
I'm very happy here. Well, in the next year, my
life changed and I didn't know they were to call again,
but they did, and two weeks later I was living
in New York. It was very abrupt, and it was
very intimidating and very difficult. I moved here in August
(19:32):
of nineteen eighty three, the end of August, right before
classes began, and I have to tell you by Thanksgiving.
I thought, I don't think I can do this. I
think I need to go back to Washington. This is
just not working for me. And I had a fellow
teacher who I got to know pretty well, Ellen, who
(19:54):
said to me, I've lived here my whole life, and
she said, you have to know something. She said, every
emotion that anyone can experience, they experience here to the
nth degree. It's on steroids, whatever it is. If it's sadness,
it's the saddest anyone's ever been. If they're high, it's
(20:16):
the highest anyone's ever been. So she said, you take
all this, you put in a bowlet, and you mix
it in with a huge amount of sexual libido. And
that's New York. And it was a relief. I thought, Okay,
I get it, and it was like a long distance
runner hitting the wall.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Suddenly everything was okay, and now you've grown to love
New York City years later. It's incredible, and I am
so impressed by the people that come from different cities,
different states and make it in New York City because
it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's not easy, and a lot of people don't make it.
They make the decision to leave it. It's a tough place,
it really is. But once you do hit the wall,
it spoils you. There's no other place like it, and
it's really wonderful. So let me tell you the fashion
story I met Parsons. I'm teaching three dimensional design to
(21:13):
freshman Foundation year students, so they haven't chosen a major,
so it's I'm teaching across disciplines and I love that.
I mean, I love the fact that the students they
probably knew what they wanted to major in, but they
had not declared a major yet, so it was a
cross disciplinary course. And I was serving on the admissions committee.
There was must have been something about me that the
(21:36):
dean of the school at that time saw, but a
decision was made to make me associate Jane of the school.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
How old were you at this time? I feel like this.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I moved here when I was thirty. Wow, so I
was probably forty so young. I didn't know exactly what
the responsibilies went entail, because there was I have to say,
there was another associate, Jane Leslie Kadman. She was really
the academic dean. And my role, I'll tell you how
I described it. I was the pooper scooper. I was
(22:09):
the person who went into academic departments that were floundering
or having a moment of crisis, and I had to
fix it. We were looking for a new chair of
the fashion department and the department had a crisis of
leadership of sorts. There had been a chair for twenty
five years when he left, he was replaced by someone
(22:29):
who only lasted three months. It's a big job and
at the time arguably the most important department of parsons.
So we hired someone that no one was very keen about,
but he had a high profile, and when the senior administration,
(22:56):
the three of us came to terms with the fact
that he really couldn't do the job, the ridiculous decision
was made that I would be his shadow, that I
would go to the department with him and I would
actually do the work. So that was August of two
thousand and I'd been there for maybe three months, three
(23:19):
months as a common denominator in many of these things,
and I wrote a State of the Union to the
dean saying, this place is hemorrhaging. This place is the
biggest mess I could ever imagine. And I'll summarize it
for you. It was a culture of infantilization. The faculty
(23:41):
were infantilized by the administration and by this program called
the Designer Critic program, which is a whole other story.
The students were infantilized by the faculty. Other than the faculty,
no one had a voice. You go in into a critique,
the students aren't participating. They're ciphers. They're just sitting there
while the teacher carries on and on and on. But
(24:02):
not about the clothes, not about the design things like
you know, if you put a little more shadow under
this eye, it's going to make the face pop. I'm thinking,
who gives the damn about the face? Yeah? I care
about the clothes. What's happening here? Yeah, So, in addition
to the place hemorrhaging, I said this is not a
design school. I said, this place is a dressmaking school.
(24:27):
And I was intent upon making change. And I said
to the dean, we can't bring someone in from the outside.
It will take them God only knows how much time
to understand how wrong this is. Because the school had
such a great reputation the department did and and more
than seventy percent of the design of the designers on
Seventh Avenue where persons educated. But I also said, this
(24:50):
is like the monkeys and the typewriters. You give a
thousand monkeys, a thousand typewriters for a thousand years, and
someone's going to write the next great novel. And also
that first there wasn't much that I could do. The
budget set, the faculty contracts are out, the curriculum set.
I mean, you really can't do anything except observe and
ask a ton of questions. And most of the questions
(25:13):
I would ask the faculty have the following answer, Well,
that's the way we've always done it. Oh that's the
other thing. I was the only person who wasn't Parsons educated,
so they all were regurgitating what they'd experienced. Oh, also,
it's two thousand, there's not a computer in the department. No, no,
we don't believe in that that newfangled stuff. There wasn't
(25:34):
a fashion history class. Oh, we don't want the students
to be influenced. What we have a responsibility to give
them a history of their discipline. What are you talking about?
So for the students coming, the new students coming in
the following year two thousand, two thousand and one, Sorry,
I spent the summer with a group of faculty rewriting
(25:58):
the entire program. And before doing that, we'll go back
to the two thousand and two thousand and one academic year.
I met with the rising seniors, the students who were
then juniors, and there was this very well known program
called the Designer Critic program that would pair, well not
(26:19):
really pair. Six to eight students would work with Donna
Karen Mark Jacobs time forward, and that Designer Critic would
oversee the development of a collection. I said, you've all
come here, I'm certain revering the Designer Critic program and
eager to participate in it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
(26:40):
So how would you respond if I were to tell
you that I wanted to go away? There was dead silence. Well,
don't you want to know what you'd be doing. Yeah,
what would we be doing? And at this point there's
seventy students who are seniors. You will design and execute
a collection of ten to twelve looks over the course
(27:01):
of these two semesters, and that will be your senior
year experience. Well, they were ecstatic, they were cheering, they
were applauding, they were on their feet. I said, wait
a minute, who's terrified. No hands went them. I said,
you should all be terrified because in fact, what I'm
tossing at you or throwing at you is something that
(27:22):
you're really underprepared for. And I said, but I believe
in you, and I believe in your aptitude and your capabilities,
but you have been under challenged. Everyone's been working hard,
but no one's been working smart.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
You really had to get into the weeds and say
this is what's not working, this is what is working,
and be able to implement that when you're dealing with
teachers that have been there for so many time, I know,
it's very hard to Well, it's change.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's changing a culture, which is really I mean, it's
easy in a way to change course content, but changing
a culture, especially a culture that is all about in vantilization,
where the faculty void is the only voice that the
students ever hear, and they never hear their own. So
I have to say part of what propelled me for
(28:08):
was an anger about how how could this have happened
and why is it being perpetuated? And we have and
also my huge respect for the students. We have a
responsibility to these young people and we need to do
what's best for them. And I think the fact that
I'm not a fashion designer and didn't have a fashion
(28:29):
education was a huge asset because I didn't have an
extra grind. I didn't have a particular point of view
other than quality. I didn't have a taste other than quality,
as opposed to will I'm going to make you into
a mini me. In some ways it corresponded with Project Runway.
Project Runway was born in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Four years after becoming the chairman of the fashion department WOW.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So Project Runway couldn't have happened in the nineties. And
when we think about American fashion up until nineteen ninety ish,
it was a very narrowly defined esthetic swath and by
the time we reach the late eighties, it's Donna Karen,
(29:16):
It's Calvin Klein, It's Ralph Lauren, and that's about it,
at least in America. Then American fashion goes into a
period of crisis, a crisis of identity. It doesn't know
who it is or what it is. And when it
comes out of it and the second half of the nineties,
it suddenly is a completely different place. It's a place
(29:38):
that once to culture or once to cultivate and nurture
young entrepreneurial designers. That allowed me to say, well, this
is what we have to do with this department. We
need to be educating students who can lead this department
as designers, not as assistant designers. This was such a
(30:00):
new approach for the department that a lot of students
were very frozen. They just didn't know what to do.
And for me, unsticking them getting them out of that
frozen state was relatively easy. Ask them, who's the customer
who's going to wear these designs? And that really helped enormously.
(30:25):
Who are you putting them on? If this is at
Sacksmith Avenue, who's hanging next to it? So what department
are you in? But for the most part, those students
were few and far between. Most of the of the
students knew what they wanted to do and who they
wanted to be. I have to tell you one other
(30:52):
thing about my evolution with fashion.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, I need to know because in two thousand, like
what was your relationship with fashion?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I was wearing baggy Brooks Brothers suits.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Okay, and now you're so known for your.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
That's a whole other story though, so I will say proudly.
Diane von Furstenberg has been a dear friend for a
long time before fashion because she was a board member.
She was a board member of Parsons and I was
managing the board. So I got to know her well
and we liked each other and we would got together
for launch and she's just a great person. So the
(31:28):
first time she came to see me in the fashion department,
we're sitting in my office. I'm borrowing a phrase from
I Love Lucy. She looked like she just walked into
the Grand ballroom and smelled raw cauliflower cooking. I looked
at her and I said, what's the matter. She gestured,
she said this, She said, this isn't working.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
That's me right now, Like he mis setting guys, everybody
looking that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Is me right now. No, it's not. You look stunning
and adorable. She said, you need to be more mom.
She said, you need to be more modern for the students,
for the industry, and for yourself. So I had a
major transformation. I started wearing all black and I got
a black turtleneck sweater, a black leather blazer, black pants,
(32:21):
and that was my uniform and I wore it all
the time and she approved. But my real fashion epiphany
was completely unrelated in a way. I had a minor
role in the two thousand and nine or was it eleven,
I think two thousand and nine movie The Smurfs. Rita
(32:42):
Ryak was the costumer for the show. So we had
a conversation before we started filming and she said, oh,
you're tim gun. I wouldn't dream of telling you how
to dress. So I brought my own wardrobe, of course,
which I always do, and we taped that day and
she called me that night and she said I just
(33:04):
looked at the rushes. She said, your wardrobe isn't good enough.
I was mortified. I was mortified.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
She said she so excited that I'd be like transform
it for me.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
No. No, so she said tomorrow. We weren't taping the
next day. She said, meet me at this tailor at
such and such a time. So I did, and I'm
in the dressing room and I'm looking at the labels.
Sure it was four hundred and fifty dollars, the tie
was one hundred and fifty. This is two thousand and
(33:34):
nine suits, three thousand dollars. I said, I'm not wearing this.
I'm not putting these things on. Put them on. You
put them on. She's screaming at me. And everything had
to do with pattern mixing, and I said, I look
like a circus clown. This is ridiculous. I'm not going
to go on camera dress like this. You are, You're
(33:54):
going to do it. So it's a bit like hitting
the wall is a long distance runner. Yeah, I hit
the wall and I thought, I really like this. This,
this is good. The trouble is, once the show was over,
how do I sustain this? I'm that wardrobe I loved.
Now I have to shop for it. So I would
(34:15):
go to Barney's and Burgdorf's and Sex and I would
feel physically ill when I left, having spent so much money.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, you grew up with a humble backgrounds and the
FBI parents are in the government. And then it's like,
all of a sudden, fashion is expensive, right trus Like
what is netaporte? What is forward?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Well at this time, Eric Wilson, who was then fashion
critic for The Times, wrote an article about this new store.
No one pays me to say any of this. They
don't give me free stuff. A story called suit Supply
originated in the Netherlands that had been in Europe for
thirty years. They just opened a store in New York.
(34:58):
He said, if you're that guy going to Burgdorf some
barneys and sacks, you need to check this out. I thought, oh,
come on, this is too good to be true. So
I went to suit Supply. I was in awe and
totally enraptured by the place and by the prices. I mean,
it was really affordable.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
They are they still are. They're great prices for men.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, and every single salesperson is an expert in fit.
They have to spend a month or more in the
Netherlands with the tailors, so they won't let you leave
something off the rack. You've got to put it on.
They have to see how you look at it. And
my whole wardrobe. Now, practically the only thing I'm wearing
that suit supply are the pants and the shoes.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I love these pants. They're so cool because when you
look closely at them, they have like little specks.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Of color orange and green.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
And when you were doing Project Runway, you didn't feel
like you were as fashionable? Then, oh well really, well.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I was wearing what I would wear to a design class.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Okay, so you had your uniform.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah. And also I was never intended to be on camera.
I was the consultant to the show.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Let's talk about that, Like, how do you go from
dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons to then
being so involved in pop culture with Project Runway and
you know the Smurfs? Well, you designed enough of for Barbie.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I don't know if anyone thought that Project Runway would
end up being a hit show. I certainly didn't.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
What did it originate from? Like, was it the Parsons students?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
No? No, no, no, not okay. The producers of the show,
Jane Lipsits and Dan cut Forth, called me in January
of two thousand and four and they introduced themselves and
they said they were doing this new show about fashion
and that people in the industry said that they should
talk to me, so I asked them for more details,
(36:52):
and when I heard fashion reality, I said, you know,
this industry has enough trouble without that, I'm really not interested.
They said, we'll give us ten minutes. So I googled
them and found out that they were the Project green
Light producers, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck about making movies.
Thought well, that's a show that has a seriousness of
purpose and integrity, and let's see what the conversation is like.
(37:18):
So I really liked them and what they had to say,
and they wanted to use real fashion designers, not pick
people around them off the street, saying well, we'll make
you into a fashion designer, and I got excited about
the whole idea. Three to four months went by, I
didn't hear a thing from them, and I thought, okay, whatever.
Then I heard from them they said, we really want
you to be our consultant, and I should add unpaid,
(37:40):
as was my role for the first two years. I
didn't think anyone got paid for reality television. So I
signed on to this project, which was much bigger than
I had actually been able to wrap my brain around.
But that's understandable.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I mean talk about a role that is like the
perfect fit for you, down to like your ethos and
what you're all about. Right.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Well, I should add though, during all this consulting and planning,
but my role in the show didn't exist. There was
no role.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
You ended up almost being like the host of the show,
right or you were the guy that was always there,
like commenting on the designs and being like make it work,
and like here's the amount of time you have left.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Well, it happened this way. It's today. The designers are
arriving tomorrow. So the producers came to me and I
could tell they were uneasy. They asked me, how would
you feel about going into the workroom and asking the
designers what they're doing? And I said, That's how I've
(38:45):
spent most of my life. Easy. And I was very
aware of the camera placement. There was a camera on me,
there was a camera on the designer, and I thought,
all right, I got it. As long as I have
the designer responding to me, no one needs to see me,
no one needs to hear my voice. And I, honest
to god, never dreamed i'd be in the cut of
(39:05):
the show.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
You have such a natural charisma. You were funny. They
probably thought we got to keep them in well.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And I have to say I didn't know what the
show would actually look like. I mean, I knew my
role in it, and I knew what happened on the
runway with the judging. I didn't know what was going
on at the Atlas apartments. I thought, maybe this is
all about sexual escapades. Who knows. And there was one taping.
I was always in the Parsons auditorium during the judging,
(39:35):
and I would say, in the literal and metaphorical dark,
and there's a woman standing next to me in the
literal and metaphorical dark, and I didn't know who she was.
And it was early in the season, so this person
certainly didn't know who I was. And we're watching the
judging and she turns to me and she whispers, who's
(39:55):
going to want to watch this? I said, oh god,
I said, you were roborating my worst fears that this
is just going to be so boring and it'll be
like watching paint dry.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Not what anybody wants to hear when they's just starting out.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
So after the taping that day, I asked someone, who
is that crumpy woman the President Bravo, great Lawrence alasnak Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Oh gosh, Well, I feel like there's a lot of
nerves that go into like a new show, right, So
I giving her some credit there.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, So I never dreamed there'd be a season two,
let alone the last season Heidi and I did together
was season sixteen.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
How quickly though into this season and into maybe watching
back the episodes as they were rolling out, where you like, oh,
this is going to be.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
A hit again in all sincerity, and never dreamed there
be a season two. And we weren't picked up right
away either, And then there was all this anxiety about
season two, and I'll tell you why, and I would
never have occurred to me. The anxiety was all from
the producers and the network because with season one, when
(41:06):
we're casting the show, when we're looking for designers, nobody
knew what it was, so they came unencumbered with what
the show is actually about. For season two, we've shown
our hand, the cards are all out on the table,
so they did know what the show was about, and
there was just tremendous concern that this meant that there
(41:28):
would be contrivances and expectations that we would have to
meet in a certain way. But then by season three
and then four and five, all that dissipated.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
I'm curious because you were very known, as I kind
of said before, for your make it work catchphrase? How
did that come to be? Is that just something you
said and all of a sudden people were like, Oh,
I like that. He says this all the time.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
I can tell you when I first said it. I
first said it in a fashion class. To the year
was it's two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
I was working with seniors. It was a six hour
a week class in concept development for thirty weeks. It
(42:16):
was full in spring semester. I had a student who
had been working on this since September. It's now April,
so we have a month and a half to go.
And she said to me, I'm changing everything. What are
you talking about? You're changing everything. I don't like it anymore.
I said, you're working on this in September. You've been
working on this for months. What's the problem. She said,
(42:39):
I don't know, and she's shrugging. I just don't like it.
I said, well, you know what you're gonna do. You're
gonna sit here you're going to offer a diagnosis of
what it is that's wrong and what it is you
want to fix, and then you're going to offer up
a prescription for how to make it work. I said,
you're not a band, and I said, also, this is
(43:01):
for your sake. If I let you just drop this
and start all over again, what will you really know
about what went wrong? But if you have to offer
up a diagnosis and a prescription for making it work,
think of what you now have in your own physical
and mental toolbox problem solving skills that you wouldn't have
(43:22):
had otherwise.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
You are the perfect example for what a teacher should be,
because not only are you a visionary for how a
school and department should operate in the most effective way,
but you also are the type of person that takes
such an individual interest in someone.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Well, thank you, it's what I mean, that's what I
would do. I would really channel them. And I'm not
an enabler. I mean, I'm someone who wants to. I mean,
I don't like throwing up roadblocks, but at the same time,
I know it's best. I mean I think I know
it's best.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Not always You're doing whatever it takes to help them.
Kind of push through they're going through, and there's different
kind of tactics on doing that. You know what I
think you always got a lot of credit for on
the show as well, was you were always so good
at delivering certain news in a positive way. And I
feel like that is what makes a really good leader,
and that's what makes a good mentor So I'm curious,
(44:16):
like even for me, like as somebody that manages a team, like,
what is your advice to us for how to properly manage.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
With bad news? I rehearse it in my head and
I think, how would I react to this message if
it were delivered in this way? And if it's very negative,
then I rethink. But it's about thinking about how's that
person going to react to this? And I have to
say my critiques on Project Runway evolved in the following way.
(44:49):
I went from telling the designers things to pummeling them
with enough questions that they they would see what I'm seeing.
I would take the designer away from that camera and
bring them around to where I'm standing and say, I
(45:11):
want you to see it from my point of view.
Look at this garment and tell me what you see. Oh,
I see what you're talking about or what you mean. Yeah,
the PAM is really janky. So if they see it
and I don't have to say it, it's music to
my ears. I couldn't be happier. And people have asked me, two,
(45:33):
do I feel guilty when a designer goes home? Why? Well,
is there something you should or shouldn't have said to them?
I said, you know, I don't think about it that way,
just as I would never consider taking credit if they win.
You know, No, we're gonna have to just associate yourself.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I love how you said. And I was reading about
this and I noted it down because I was like,
that's so interesting. One of your ethos that you've talked
about fashion wise is that fashion should be expressive but
also functional.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah. I had a dear friend, now departed. She was
at Vogue for thirty seven years, the last seventeen of
which she was editor in chief. Before Anna Winter Grace
Marabella that I brought her in every September to meet
with the new fashion students, and she knew why. I said,
I want you to do your grace thing. And people
(46:34):
would look at her and think, who's this old lady?
And she was an old lady, but a very chic one.
She would tell them enthusiastically that they're the future and
fashion needs them. And she would add, I have two
pieces of advice. Don't make dumb clothes and don't make jokes.
(46:56):
So they'd be looking at each other, Grace, tell them
what you mean, dumb clothes. No one needs you to
design a T shirt. There are plenty of them out there.
Don't go there. Now, this is Grace's particular point of view,
not necessarily mine. Jokes, she said, the things that walk
the runways during Paris Couture Week. She said, think about
what is between dumb clothes and jokes. There's a huge
(47:20):
playing field and there are not many people who design
well for it. It's usually dumb or a joke. And
I took that to hard in my own way as
a teacher in the fashion department, and I would say
to my students, I don't care what you design, and
I really didn't. As long as your model can get
into a taxi, it.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, And I feel like
there's oftentimes, yeah, you see a lot of outfits on
the runway where I'm like, well, it doesn't but I
guess runway fashion is very different because they're throwing a
ton of layers on them often.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Is At the same time, I have respect for the
cture collections, but I think fashion should be accessible.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
What do you think is the secret to looking effortlessly
chic walking around New York City?
Speaker 2 (48:05):
I have a mantra about this has nothing to do
with individual items of apparel. It's about the following silhouette
proportion and fit. Silouet proportion. Fit pertains to anything an
evening gown, a tuxedo, workout clothes. You want clothes that
(48:26):
follow your natural silhouette, that don't cascade away from you
or squeeze you like a wetsuit. Proportion. I'm always talking
about thirds, and you epitomize this too. You're one third
on top, two thirds on the bottom. We don't want
to cut ourselves in half, which is why I object
so vehemently to men and the untucked shirt, as they're
(48:49):
cutting themselves in half and it's not a pleasing proportion,
and you just look broader, wider, you look dumpier, and
that pertains to fit. It's the same thing clothes that
I actually fit us. I'm not a fan of the
baggy jans or baggy clothes in general. I just think
we look like an un made bed. It's not a
flattering look.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
I do really like that the more tailored look is
having a resurgence too, because I agree. Like I even
remember when I was at FIT and I was not
at FAT when I was taking classes there. As a
high schooler, I took a lot of fashion design classes
and my favorite eras to draw inspiration from. We're always
the fifties and the sixties. I am so obsessed with
(49:30):
that style of clothes and I always have been that.
It's so fun now seeing that maker resurgence and even
like the little Bob tair and you know, the capri
pants for women and loafers, Like it's amazing because it's
so classic and it's so like Americana.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
No, it's you're absolutely right, But it's fashion's pendulum. The
bagginess is going to come back.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
It's going to come back. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Like
fashion really has a way of just recoming back.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Well, it's the culture of retail too. They want us
to buy new things, and they want us to believe
that we're out of style if we don't have these
new things. And I really believe in finding a uniform
and just sticking with it.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I love that. I think also like as I've gotten older,
it's like when you're younger and you want to be trendy,
you want the fashion, the cute going out of it.
And now I feel like as soon as you get
to like a certain like year later twenties, it's like
you're an adult and it's time to like, no more
crop tops, you know, no more rip jeans, Like let's
you know, really tailor it. And it's been fun because
then you start buying pieces that you'll have forever.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
And also you have this you'll have this confidence because
you know you look your best.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
I know you've talked before about things that have changed
within the world of fashion, so I'm curious, like, what
do you think has changed for the better in the
world of fashion, and what do you think still needs work.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
While I like the notion that fashion can be affordable
and accessible, and I think it should be, there's too
much of it. There's just too much stuff out there,
and it's so wasteful and it's so bad for for
the environment. And the last class that I told it
Emerson was a of course in fashion and sustainability and
(51:08):
the premise was to help solve this dilemma. How do
we get people to stop buying so much stuff? I
think people probably know what I have the most disdained for,
but now it's ubiquitous. So what do I know? How
did the legging become a pant?
Speaker 1 (51:24):
I know, look at me right now, You're in workout
when this is completely workoutwear right right for me? Yes,
you're not going to the opera, no very much. So
not wait, I just have to call it really quickly
for our listeners. Okay, Tim and I are sitting across
from each other, and I wish I came dressed up.
This is like so embarrassing for me because but I
running interview show. I'm always in workout wear. But you
(51:44):
guys that know me see me on Instagram, you see
my posts. I love dressing cute when I can. But yeah,
like my uniform because of the running Interview show has
become like workoutwear. And I'm the brand that I wear
all the time as Adidas, because that's our partner. But
we are sitting across from each other and Tim is
in the most person you know, you guys know how
brown is the color?
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Right now?
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Everybody's obsessed with chocolate brown, just all shades of brown,
and you are wearing the most perfect outfit.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Oh, you're too kind.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Got a perfect light brown turtleneck sweater on pants that
are what material is it like? Yeah, tweed tweed pants
that have like little specks of color but they're brown.
And then bite the perfect loafers, so do your outfit is.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
I'm not crazy about my socks. They're way too dark,
but that's the only socks I could find. On the
topic of what I have the most disdain for, it
goes back to my theory about the not my theory,
my adage about the monkey House at the Zoo. When
you first entered the monkey House at the Zoo, you shriek,
this place stinks, And after about twenty minutes you think
(52:48):
it's not so bad. And after another ten minutes you think,
what smell that anyone new walking into the monkey house
shrieks this place stinks. You know, this was the case
with leggings. Someone put on a pair of leggings, walked
by the mirror and said, I can't go out dress
like this. Twenty minutes later they walk by and they
(53:09):
think it's not so bad, and ten minutes later they
walk by the mirror and they say, I look hot. No.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Leggings really are a phenomenon. And I was asking one
of my friends who's a stylist in the city, and
I said to her, what do you think is the
style of our generation?
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Because you can look back to the eighties and it's
the big hairs and the big slaves.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Oh, the eighties were the worst, right.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
The nineties were so chic with like the you know,
the Emperor cut dresses and just so many different styles.
And then I said the sixties and seventies I loved.
It's like the tailored outfits, the pencil skirts. And I
was like, what do you think it is for us?
And she goes, it's at leisure, yeah, and I'm like,
that is such a bummer. That is ath leisure. But
it is like for our generation, it really was ath leisure.
And I do think like gen Z and Jen Alf
(53:51):
are bringing back different styles right now, and you don't
see them ass frequently in ath leisure. But yeah, it
is interesting. It's very street style.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
And I'll add this about what's good. I'm speaking from
a viewpoint of a New Yorker. You can wear anything here,
absolutely anything. And no one looks as scance and I
think that's a very positive thing as opposed to what
I said earlier about the narrow, very narrowly defined esthetic
(54:22):
swath that America used to be. If you didn't fit
into this mold, you just didn't fit in. And here,
at least I don't know what it's like in Kansas City,
but here you can wear anything and the world accepts you.
And that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
It is just a place where everything is acceptable and
nothing is looked down upon.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
And I'll add this about the responsibility that each of
us has for how we present ourselves to the world.
It's the semiotics of clothes and grooming. How we present
ourselves to the world is how the world judges us.
And when people say to me with frequency, oh that's
so shallow, that's so judgmental, but it's true. You know,
(55:03):
when you walk into a restaurant, how do you know
who works there versus who a patron is. It's by
how they're dressed.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
Going off of that, I just want to do a
couple like life reflections, because you have lived an incredible life,
like it is just so amazing for me to be
sitting here in front of you, somebody that's accomplished so much,
and like, I can only like dream of accomplishing as
much as you have, and I hope that I will.
But seriously, it is so you.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Will vastly surpass me.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
It is so inspirational.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Seriously, the most important thing is, Kate, just to just
to do whatever you're doing at one hundred and fifty
percent and just to move forward and then see what happens.
Young people ask me this all the time, how do
I get to be famous? Well? What do you want
to be famous for? Oh? I don't care. You don't, well,
you should care. If you're chasing it, it eludes you.
(55:53):
You never get it. You just have to do a
really good Yeah.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
My dad used to say it to me. With sports,
it's like you're not chasing an accolade. You're chasing being
the best you can possibly be at your sport, and
then the accolades come.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Dad is completely one thousand percent correct.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
And it applies to everything.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
And also as an athlete, and I'm reflecting upon my
childhood years as a competitive swimmer, someone's going to come
in first, second, and third, and I was always fourth, fifth, sixth.
It didn't get me down. It made me train harder,
work harder. And the day first time that I came
in third I remember that day and that yellow ribbon.
(56:33):
It was so thrilling and I'm ecstatic, and it said
to me, if you really work at this, it can happen,
as opposed to, oh, don't cry, sweetie, here's a ribbon. No,
work hard and then be proud of what you've achieved.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
Absolutely and looking back on your life, like, did you
ever imagine you'd become this pop culture icon in the
world of fashion?
Speaker 2 (56:59):
Never in this zillion years. Never. And I still don't
acknowledge anything even close to that. Right the for me,
the the humbling, maybe it's not humbling. I don't know that.
The whiff of fresh air that I get is every
(57:22):
time I'm in my kitchen because I'm in it a
lot and it's open, so I see it is seeing
Miami Award. I mean, I think, oh my god, I
have an Emmy Award. This is unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
It's such a testament to hard work and just being yourself,
just being yourself, really being yourself. Yeah. So many of
our listeners are creatives, entrepreneurs, people in the city just
trying to make it happen. I'm curious. Can you leave
us with one final piece of advice?
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Make it work.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
Let's go make it work.
Speaker 2 (57:57):
Make it work all right?
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Well, Tim, thank you, thank you so much for coming
on post friend high with me today.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Kate, thank you. And you're a fantastic therapist.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Really did you feel like you were in a therapy session? Yes,
talking about yourself is therapeutic.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
Yeah, And like going back to the early years.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
You took me on a journey I haven't been on
for decades.
Speaker 1 (58:16):
Oh my gosh. Well I'm so happy I got to
go on that journey with you. Seriously, like I just
want to like, you're amazing.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Thank you.
Host
Kate Mackz
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