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 THE MENTOR
Whether He’s Guiding His Students At Parsons Or The Project Runway Designers, Tim Gunn Always Makes It Work.
In early September, Entertainment Weekly ran an iconic image of Tim Gunn decked out in Banana Republic on the cover, flanked by a glammed-up Heidi Klum. It seemed to herald the fact that Project Runway—Bravo’s reality show based on fashion design challenges presented to its contestants—had finally arrived. Suddenly, the dapper 53-year-old was television’s most unlikely breakout star. Just don’t expect to see him sitting across from James Lipton anytime soon.
“It’s the word star,” Gunn says early one Friday morning. “I’m starstruck by people. The day I met Sarah Jessica Parker I thought, You have to pick me up off the floor with a snow shovel!”
Since Runway’s debut two years ago, we’ve all either TiVoed it religiously, sat through the marathons or argued over—to quote host Klum—“Who do we love and who do we hate?” Laura Kluvo, who runs the show’s official fan site, Blogging Project Runway , has even rallied fans to sign an online petition aimed at getting Gunn on the cover of People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue. “When I learned about it, I actually thought it was a joke,” Tim says, a bit embarrassed. “Then Laura said, ‘We’re really serious.’” So, did he sign it? “Oh, of course not!”
Three seasons into this high-couture hit, there’s no doubt that he’s asserted himself as cable TV’s most handsome fashion counselor. But there’s just one question most of us are asking ourselves: Exactly who is Tim Gunn?
"I never dreamed about any of this,” admits Gunn, who has worked at Manhattan’s Greenwich Village-located Parsons the New School for Design for 23 years. “And as a matter of fact, just talking to you about it feels surreal. I can’t quite wrap my brain around it all.” Indeed being a part of one of the year’s most-watched cable shows was likely the furthest thing from his mind in 2000, back when he was the school’s associate dean. That year, Gunn had been conducting the search for the chair position of fashion design at Parsons. Although the department had produced talented alumni such as Anna Sui, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan and Isaac Mizrahi, Gunn made a shocking discovery.
“This famous department, with all of its great graduates, was really suffering from atrophy,” he remembers. “It was so caught up in its own success that it was afraid to change the formula. Basically the curriculum had remained unchanged for 48 years.” As a result, Gunn set out to push the students into the 21st century, even if they were kicking and screaming. He eventually assumed the Fashion Chair position himself. “The students were hand-sewing the inside seams of all the garments. The faculty would argue with me that it was good discipline. I would say, ‘The students are working hard, but they’re not working smart. You could use a machine to sew those inside seams. Think
of the time it relieves so they can expand on their studies.’”
A few years later, producers for a reality show focusing on fashion design and hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum came knocking. The concept was to have contestants compete each week to design the best outfit within a limited amount of time. Though now we all know Gunn as the strict but lovable mentor to the Project Runway designers, that’s not originally how it was supposed to go. “When I first got involved with the show,” Tim says, “it was as a consultant. This role wasn’t in anyone’s vocabulary. I worked with the producers for about six months before they even thought about it.”
It’s a job that’s cast him into unlikely directions. Not only has Gunn become a household name, he’s often touted by Runway’s contestants more as a father figure than a Mr. Nasty. “Really, it’s the most complimentary thing I could possibly hear,” he says. “It comes from years of teaching. I’ve learned how to read a room, and you can just tell when you’re going too far with something. Then, not only does it badly impact the person with whom you’re speaking, but it’s unnerving to the people around them. I don’t believe in telling people about things that they can’t fix, and that’s more applicable to Project Runway because we have a series budget. At Parsons, if a student buys the wrong fabric, I can say to them, ‘You’ve really made a big mistake here. Go out and change it.’”
As Tim describes it, in a way, he fell into education. Coming from a sculpture and literature background, he initially hesitated when he was invited to teach a three-dimensional design course at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, D.C., but he took up the offer anyway. Interacting with students was something he came to love, and the element of surprise when they set about doing their project assignments thrilled him even more.
While at Corcoran, Gunn had been offered a position at Parsons early in the 1980s, which he turned down. “I thanked them very much,” he says. “I was flattered to be asked, but I was in a relationship. I was in love. And I liked my work. But then my life changed considerably in that next year.”
Tim and his partner, Bill, had been together for six years. One morning it all ended. “I really have never talked to anyone about this,” Gunn says slowly. “There were two major things that happened. The job advancement that I thought I was going to get, I didn’t. But the biggest blow was the complete erosion of my relationship. It was abrupt. It was like a surgical strike. I still have a big raw spot on me from it, and that was 24 years ago. We were watching television in bed, and he just turned to me and said, ‘I don’t have the patience for you anymore.’ I said, ‘What do you mean? Do you mean you want me to leave?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ That night, I got all my stuff together and left.”
It’s here that Tim stops with the story, his voice wavering. “I’m about to break down,” he says before taking a long pause. “I’m not gonna go through it again. I’ve never been in a relationship since and I never will be. It was so devastating that I can’t possibly conceive of being more emotionally hurt and scarred than I was by that. I still love him, and I haven’t a clue where he is now.”
The next time Parsons reached out to him, he accepted. Tim left D.C. to begin a new life in New York City. “It just felt like it was the right thing,” he says. “I didn’t feel like I was running away. I have this axiom that I invoke with too much frequency, which is, Things happen for a reason. It led to a whole new path for me. And I have to say, I would not have grown and developed the way in which I have had I still been with Bill.
“It’s funny,” he continues. “I had a colleague in those days, and I was describing to her how sort of angst-ridden I was at that very moment. She said to me, ‘You know, every emotion that anyone can feel is heightened and exaggerated here in the city. Add to that a sexual frenzy to beat the band, and you have the most combustive environment in the world.’ I thought, Gee, thanks for helping! You’ve corroborated everything I was worried about!”
The demarcation line between Gunn’s academic life at Parsons and his newfound showbiz career on Project Runway is often blurred. As far as he’s concerned, however, the show couldn’t be a better public relations vehicle for the school. “Between last year and this year, I would say the applications
went up about 20 percent,” he points out. “But you know what’s wonderful? Applications and enrollments are up in design schools all across the nation.” Plus, since Runway is taped at Parsons, the two fashion forces sometimes coincide in ways viewers wouldn’t expect. “When I’m not in the workroom with the [show’s] designers, I’m in my office. The Project Runway-related calls come through on the same phone that the dean calls on. And Heidi Klum’s dressing room is my office!”
While it’s still up in the air at this time whether the Blogging Project Runway petition will successfully land him on the cover of People, Tim did manage to grace the front of this magazine’s latest issue. “I’m grateful and flattered by the honor of being your Leading Man,” he exclaims. “I can’t believe I can say those words! You just caused me to flush in hot perspiration! Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so graphic.”
When asked about whom he would choose as a Leading Man, Gunn responds with another of the small screen’s most debonair personalities in recent years. “Anderson Cooper,” he says. “But I don’t make assumptions about people’s sexuality. I will say that working, living and breathing in the fashion industry, men are gay until proven otherwise. It’s usually a good mode of operation. There are exceptions. There’s the classic garmento, with the cigar and the pinkie ring, and that’s when you hope they’re straight.”
Eventually, Tim has a myriad of obligations to get to, and our conversation ends. The latest season of Project Runway is winding down, and he’s got a book on fashion tips for women he’s busy writing. “What I love about being here at Parsons,” Gunn says before parting, “and it’s what I love about the Project Runway designers—you give them a challenge, and you never know what the outcomes are going to be. When people ask, ‘Where is this going? What’s going to happen with X, Y or Z?’ I say with glee in my eyes, ‘I don’t know! I just don’t know.’"
Robbie Daw dishes out pop music news and sass daily on his site Chart Rigger .
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