Tim Gunn - Gunn's Golden Rules

I can’t believe we’re witnessing this, I thought.

Well, the best was yet to come.

André is cleaned up. The bib is folded. It’s time to go do the panel.

“The room has been cleared,” André says. It’s not a question; it’s a statement.

“Cleared of what?” Paul says.

André clarifies that he means of people. Apparently he doesn’t like to walk down the aisle of a full auditorium; he prefers it be empty.

Paul is in shock. He says, with a bit of a tone, “Empty? It’s standing room only. We have no place to move these people to .”

The room starts to get tense.

“It doesn’t matter,” I interject. “We don’t have to walk down an aisle. There is a stage door.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” André asks in annoyance.

“I’m telling you now,” I said, “and if you’d come to the sound check, you would have known that, too.”

At the panel, André made a lot of very bizarre pronouncements. Someone in the audience asked why larger-sized women weren’t represented on designers’ racks or in magazines. “Obviously, I’m a large woman,” she said, “and I feel like I’m not marginal, although I think that large women are marginalized.”

It’s a good question, and a common one, but André began praising Mo’nique. “I think there’s no woman more fashionable than Mo’nique,” he said. “I love Mo’nique. And I think that Mo’nique does for the full-figured woman what Rosalind Russell used to do in those wonderful 1950s Technicolor films, and I love Mo’nique, and I say that seriously. That show she had for the large woman, the contest, I thought that was really wonderful, and I always think she’s great on her own show. I think she’s wonderful.”

I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. I tried to tell the woman something useful about sizes in the industry and was glad when Martha Nelson agreed with me.

“Yeah,” she said, “let’s be real.”

At the end of the panel, I let André and his crew go first in the elevator so I wouldn’t have to ride up with them. I just couldn’t handle another moment with him.

Well, I thought I’d seen everything, but then walking through the freight exit on my way to the subway, I pass André’s Maybach parked in the freight room . Apparently, he couldn’t even walk from the sidewalk.

Don’t get me wrong: Vogue is an essential read for all fashion lovers. Anna and her team are very talented, and they are on the cutting edge of trends. But when I see what a bubble they’re all living in, how detached from reality they are, how much money and time is wasted in the course of their work, I worry about the example it sets for people coming up in the fashion world, a world that—let’s face it—is now a lot more crowded and a lot less moneyed than it has been in years past.

I hope that Project Runway, which encourages hard work, thrift, and skill, is part of the solution to that unsustainable excess and hauteur. I am heartened that, by and large, the thousands of young designers I come into contact with are simply trying to make beautiful things to the best of their ability, rather than attain a lifestyle that allows them to be bibbed and hand-fed grapes.

And yet, maybe not. I thought the recession would have more of an impact on the industry, but there’s still a fleet of limousines over there in front of 4 Times Square.

I look forward to seeing what the next generations of fashion designers and magazines look like. Between the demise of so many publications and the decline in fashion company fortunes, I wonder whether we’re heading for a new age of decency and diligence. I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that’s what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn’t be so tragic.

Take the High Road

I DON’T KNOW IF PEOPLE have gotten ruder or if my tolerance level has declined. I recently spoke to a group of high school juniors and seniors at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Teen Design Fair. Those young people are our future, and I believe in them. I love being part of the annual event.

We had a Q&A afterward, and one of the teens stood up and asked what advice I had for them.

“I’ll give you some life advice,” I said. “The first piece is: Listen and listen intently when you’re being spoken to about something. The second: Take the high road. When presented with frustration or anger or discontentment with a situation or a person, don’t reduce yourself to that level. Don’t get into a conflict in that moment. You’ll feel better about yourself for it.”

Well, to my surprise, this created a near frenzy in the room. The students were aghast. I was surprised by the reaction, so I said: “Tell me more about why that seems like bad advice to you.”

“I believe I should stand up for myself!” said one student.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t stand up for yourself,” I said. “I’m just saying, in the heat of the moment, walk away from it.”

One episode of Project Runway ’s Season 6 speaks to this. The challenge was for each designer to do a look that complemented his or her best look on the show to date.

Althea Harper thinks Logan Neitzel is copying her zipper-collar design and complains about it to her own model and to Irina, whom she mistakenly thinks is her friend. She starts to get worked up, but then she thinks: You know what? I need to concentrate on getting my own work done and let this go. She takes the high road and doesn’t say anything.

In the end, Logan gets voted off because his garment just wasn’t very good. On the runway, Irina borrows Althea’s words about Logan and turns them against Althea. Irina suggests that Althea has copied her by doing a sweater. Heidi disagrees, and Irina is embarrassed. In the end, Althea wins the challenge.

One moral might be not to trust Irina—and not because she’s a bad person at all, because she’s not. She’s just incredibly tenacious. But the true lesson, one that I hope I eventually convinced those design students of, is that taking the high road is always the best way to go. You feel better about yourself, and the world feels better about you.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. After a recent plane trip, I was standing at the baggage carousel. I’d been waiting a rather long time for my luggage. In fact, no one had gotten any suitcases at all. A rumor started that our bags were lost. This is, of course, very stressful, but I figured getting all worked up would make it only more stressful. But one of the women who’d been on my flight did not agree. She started pacing and trying to recruit an army to storm the airport administration: “Let’s all go together to the office and scream that we’re not going to take it anymore!”

I turned to a passenger standing next to me who seemed tempted to follow and told her, “Don’t even think about it. Take the high road.”

Sure enough, a short time later our bags showed up and no one had to handcuff herself to the ticket counter. There are times for protest, for civil disobedience, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s best to avoid bringing out the big guns.

And yet, I know for a fact how hard it can be to keep your frustration to yourself. Sometimes keeping in feelings can be painful. One time, for me, it proved almost fatal. I was in my twenties and was having an excruciatingly horrible lunch with my mother, during which I honestly saw my life pass before my eyes.