Tim Gunn: Gunn's Golden Rules

“Drama,” she says.

Seriously, that is her response to this generous man.

The waiter takes the plate back and does something to it. When it comes back, she picks at it desultorily.

She had horrible table manners. Her hair was falling in her food. She loudly imitated a cough she heard across the dining room, causing everyone to stare at our table in horror.

Then I learned the purpose of the lunch: Julia wanted to be a judge on Project Runway. “Call them,” she instructed me. “Tell them I have to be a judge.”

“That’s going to be a tough sell,” I said. “Other than wearing clothes, I don’t see that you have much experience with fashion.”

“That’s why I’d make the perfect judge,” she insisted.

“Clearly, you are talented,” I said. “Which of your talents do you value most?”

“Meanness,” she said without hesitation. “I’m really good at it.”

“Our judges are not mean, ” I replied, trying to keep from losing my patience. “They are honest and fair. They care about good work and innovation.”

She didn’t seem to be processing what I said, but I tried once more to get through to her. As they left to go shopping at Saks, I made a suggestion.

“You have so much and are so lucky,” I said. “Maybe you should take some of the money you’re planning to spend today on shoes and give it to refugees?”

“I would never do that,” she said, laughing.

“Do you know about all the displaced people and the suffering?” I asked. (The news at the time was full of reports of displacement, death, and starvation.) “What’s your reaction to that suffering?”

She tilted her head back and said—I kid you not—“Let them eat cake.”

Young Julia was the most distressing example I’ve seen to date of an overblown sense of entitlement, but the phenomenon is pretty far-reaching, especially in the fashion world.

And it’s not just rich girls who are displaying such a detachment from reality.

In my later years of teaching, I started to see a disturbing trend: students who couldn’t function without their parents’ help. They were so overpraised and so overprotected that they were incapable of handling any problem, whether it was dealing with a teacher they didn’t like, sharing space with a roommate, or struggling with a class for which they didn’t have an affinity.

We would actually get calls at the school from parents who wanted to negotiate their grown children’s grades for them. Luckily, we had a system in place whereby the student would need to specifically grant his parents permission to speak to the administration. Many students denied their parents’ requests. But some of the students actually thought their parents getting involved was a good idea!

One of my most talented students had a certain arrogance about her that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. During her time at Parsons, we had a Designer of the Year competition, and this student assumed the winner would be she. I still remember her tearful fit in my office after the results were announced.

“It was supposed to be me,” she said, crying.

“By whose reckoning?” I asked.

“Mine, my family’s, and my teachers’!” she shouted.

“With all due respect to the faculty,” I said, “this is the decision that was made.”

“It should be reconsidered,” she said.

“No, it shouldn’t be, and it won’t be.”

Viewers got a glimpse of such a drive to win from Irina Shabayeva of Season 6. When I did the home visits, I learned a primary source of her ambition. Her mother scared me to death.

“My daughter will win this,” Irina’s mother told me, as if it were a statement of fact.

“Well …, ” I said, nervously. “There are three extremely talented people in this competition—”

“She. Will. Win,” she said, staring deep into my eyes.

Oh, to have that kind of confidence!

Maybe it’s because I became a public person late in life, but I have never lost the belief that all my success could vanish just like that. I count my blessings all the time, and I pick my battles. I’ve heard some people didn’t want to see Project Runway go back to Los Angeles for Season 8 and tried to get me to advocate for us to stay in New York, but these things are far bigger than I am. Heidi lives in L.A., so she loves the idea of staying close to her family. Where we film is totally not my call. I always say: “If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, believe me, the show is going to go on.”

This sense of humility does not appear to be universal. Whenever I’m out in public, there are certain people who make demands of me as if I owe them a huge debt—even though we’ve never met.

Not long ago while I was walking down Columbus Avenue a woman leaped out of a car.

“You have to meet my daughter!” she shrieked. “She’s thirteen! She has to be on Project Runway !”

I explained that the show has very strict rules and that the young lady couldn’t be considered until she was twenty-one. This made no impression on the girl’s mother.

“Rules are meant to be broken!” she insisted.

I’ve finally learned how to respond to these overeager parents. At an event for young fashion designers, a husband and wife accosted me. They appeared dragging a small float behind them. It held miniature dress forms with outfits on them, and at the back of the float their fifteen-year-old daughter sat in a chair. I was the honored guest, so I couldn’t flee, much as I wanted to. They gave me this entire sales spiel about the daughter. I listened politely and responded, “Clearly, she has talent and ambition, but she can’t be on Project Runway until she’s twenty-one.”

They weren’t buying it.

“You’re robbing her of her stardom!” they said. “She’s a prodigy!”

“Okay,” I finally said. “Let’s play this scenario out. Your daughter gets on Project Runway . She wins.”

They’re nodding excitedly.

“Then she returns to her junior year in high school. How do you think she’ll feel?”

That question stopped them dead in their tracks. They hadn’t thought that far ahead. I said, “If your daughter is this sensational now, think what a few more years will do for her. Think of how much stronger she will be. She’s only going to get one shot at it. Why not save it up?”

It’s like learning a musical instrument. If you’re thirteen and a classical pianist, think of how much better you will be at eighteen or twenty-one, providing you keep practicing.

The parents seemed disheartened, but those are words to propel you forward rather than to crush your dreams. Isn’t it nice to have things to work for and look forward to, especially if you’re so young?

Stage parents make me crazy. They’re dogged and determined, but it reaches a point where it’s cuckoo. I find it very unsettling.

IT’S EASY TO BLAME parents for bad behavior, but there’s plenty of culpability to go around. Teachers are not totally innocent, either, when it comes to encouraging talented students’ sense of entitlement. Too many of us so overprotect our students that they don’t develop a sense of the logical consequences for their behavior.

A faculty member at Parsons who taught there for many years was in a state of apoplexy because she believed that she had to give a B minus to a student in her Studio Methods (garment construction) class. She asked me to counsel her on how to stomach giving such a low grade to someone she thought had so much promise.

“What are the conditions?” I asked.

“The student hasn’t turned in most of her assignments,” she said. “She hasn’t been to class. But what she has turned in is excellent. She’s extremely talented.”