Tim Gunn
Tim Gunn
Timothy MacKenzie "Tim" Gunnis an American fashion consultant, television personality, actor, and voice actor. He served on the faculty of Parsons The New School for Design from 1982 to 2007 and was chair of fashion design at the school from August 2000 to March 2007, after which he joined Liz Claiborne as its chief creative officer. He is well known as on-air mentor to designers on the reality television program Project Runway. Gunn's popularity on Project Runway led to 2...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth29 July 1953
CountryUnited States of America
I love shopping on a budget. I believe that more fashion mistakes are made by people with deep pockets than by those who shop on a budget.
My role as the chair of the fashion department at Parsons put me face to face with all the big designers, retailers, and editors. Since I was moving in these new circles regularly, I realized I needed to do something about my own personal style. It was really Diane von Furstenberg who gave me the nudge.
I'm constantly correcting young people and fashion students in this nation when they say "Well, I do couture." By definition, you don't. You have to be licensed by the government of France to do couture. So don't use that term. You can say that you do one-of-a-kind, you can say it's custom, but you can't say it's couture - because it's inaccurate.
I was a teacher and an administrator at Parson's School of Design, and as an administrator, I was associate dean. And in that role, I went around fixing things that were broken. And the Parson's fashion program was broken.So fashion chose me. It needed to be developed and evolve. I don't know if it comes naturally to anyone.
I believe that it's very important to get to know people with whom you can have a substantive dialogue about design and its development. In addition, read everything about fashion that you can get your hands on. A palpable point of view is what makes a designer, so you need to be confident about yours.
And I'm the first one to tell people to break the rules. But you can only break the rules once you know what the rules are. The other thing is, fashion is the last design discipline to actually have academic texts and historical analysis.
The pervasive idea is that if you're a man in the fashion industry, you're gay until proven otherwise. And of course there are lots of men who aren't. But people make certain assumptions.
The element of fashion I'd like to see more often? Clothes that fit people well. For me it's not so much about the clothes.
Fashion it's not just about learning how to draw pretty pictures, and how to sew, it's everything that makes up your life.
I've never mentioned this, but when I was at Parsons teaching, the other design disciplines, they don't like fashion design. They see it as very nineteenth-century.
With fashion, you really need to understand the aspects of construction. Not just design on an iPad.
When I'm working in the real world with real women and we're shopping, we find that fashion seems to end when you get any larger than a size 12. How ridiculous is that?
The fashion industry at large has been the worst public relations vehicle for larger women and petite women, they are both maligned and neglected. And I honestly do believe it's getting better.
What's important to a fashion designer? It's much more than learning how to make clothes. In fact, that merely makes you a dressmaker. It doesn't make you into a fashion designer.