Gunn's Golden Rules (10 page)

Meanwhile, Alexis seems to be tensing up. I’ve always thought that having famous parents must be hard on a person, but there are ways around it: go into a completely different field, make your own way, change your name … anything to
carve out a little space for yourself. But Alexis’s world seems to revolve around Martha. And yet she has appeared genuinely furious at her mother every time I’ve seen her. There’s something
Grey Gardens
–y about the two of them.

During one of our little breaks on the Macy’s commercial set, Martha gestured to the piles of linens and towels from her new collection and said, “Alexis, any of this you want for your apartment, please take it. I want to give you a housewarming present.” It seemed like a touching and generous gesture.

“I wouldn’t touch a single solitary item of this crap!” Alexis said, glowering.

Well, it rolled right off Martha. I thought,
Yikes! She must get this all the time.

Abuse of power really can go both ways. If you’re a boss, a parent, or a child, it’s best to wield whatever power you have over your employees, children, or parents wisely. If you can’t be gracious, don’t spend time together. There’s no gun being held to your head that says you have to associate with people who make you crazy. My family may be a little eccentric, but I would never talk cruelly to them—and certainly not in front of other people.

W
HEN
I
WAS TEACHING
at Parsons, I went to visit our New York exchange students who were studying in Paris, France. With an expectant smile on my face, I asked them how things were going. I was so happy for them.
How lucky they are,
I thought,
to have this glorious academic and cultural experience.
I expected to hear stories about their walking through the city at night, strolling through the Louvre and the Picasso Museum with a notebook, eating baguettes beneath the Eiffel Tower …

“Oh, it’s so boring here,” they complained.

It was a good thing I wasn’t eating a baguette, because I can guarantee you I would have choked on it.

“Boring?”
I spluttered. “You’re in the middle of Paris! Dullness is of your own making. You are in one of the most spectacular cities on this planet. You should be ashamed of yourselves for even using that word.
Ashamed!
”

The last
Project Runway
home visit of Season 7, I had a similar, horrible encounter with the designer Emilio Sosa.

He lived in upper Manhattan, and so I said, “What’s it like
having the Cloisters in your own backyard?”

If you don’t know, the Cloisters is the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to medieval art and architecture. It contains thousands of works of art, including some of our most incredible ancient textiles, such as the Unicorn Tapestries from the fifteenth century.

“I’ve never been,” Emilio asserted, with what I perceived to be pride. “I don’t believe in anything that has to do with religion.”

I confess, I am not at all religious myself, but I had to grasp onto a support to keep from toppling over with incredulity.

“Every corpuscle of every society in the history of this globe has religion at its core!” I brayed at him. “We’re not talking about converting. We’re talking about walking a few blocks to look at some of the greatest art of all time. Why would you shut yourself off like that?”

I love New York City and am so inspired by it. It’s a magical place to me. Even when it’s muggy and gross and the subway stinks, I am completely captivated by the city and find new things to love every day.

Walking to the subway one day on my usual route, I saw an antique store I’d never noticed before. It had clearly been there for ages and I’d walked by it a million times, but I’d never noticed it. It was like it appeared magically. Then when I walked into my neighborhood Dunkin’ Donuts for my morning coffee, the woman behind the counter smiled and asked, “Where have you been?”

I’d been out of town for
Project Runway
home visits for a few days, and this quasi-stranger had noticed and missed me. I’d missed her, too, as well as everything about this city. It reveals
just enough of itself every day that I’m never bored and never overwhelmed.

The other designer who I thought didn’t like me, Jay Nicolas Sario, really stepped it up with his collection, and he and I healed and repaired during the home visit. But things got worse with Emilio.

I did not like the collection. He just looked at me and said that I frequently told him things, and the judges told him the opposite.

“I have no expectation that you will do anything I suggest,” I said, “but I’m only trying to help you. I see a matronly collection with problematic colors. If the judges don’t see that, too, I’m going to wonder what’s wrong with them.”

Regarding the judges’ and their critical opinions, my mantra is:
Chacun à son gôut;
that is, it’s a matter of taste.

Emilio is a very talented designer, but to me he seemed to lack inspiration, and in my book that is a cardinal sin.

O
CCASIONALLY, WHEN
I was teaching, I would have a student who would ask me, “How do I get inspiration?”

I wanted to respond: “Drugs? I don’t know! Whatever it takes.”

“I’m just not inspired,” these
art students
would say to me.

I found it so shocking. What were they doing in art school if they didn’t feel the call to create? It’s a hard life, and there’s very little money in it. They should have gone into another line of work if they didn’t feel inspired.

“Well, how can I
find
inspiration?” they would ask.

“Look around you!” I would say. “Look out the window.
Go for a walk. Go to a movie. Go to a museum. Go see a show. Read a book. Go to the library. Take the Circle Line. Have a conversation.”

That’s one of the main things I look at when I interview designers being considered for
Project Runway:
their inspirations.

With each year of the show, I’ve learned more about what would work. Season 3 was a threshold where we no longer had clothes that weren’t well made. Since then, it’s all about the relevance of the designers’ points of view. A lot of time people who are outstanding seamstresses will say, “How can you turn me down? Look at this craftsmanship.” But that’s not what we’re looking for. We want people with real ideas.

In the auditions we see a lot of gimmicky clothes, with too many bells and whistles and zippers everywhere—things that turn inside out and become a tent.

“You can’t do this on the show,” I tell these designers. “You can’t make a prom dress that doubles as a jet pack in the course of a one-day challenge.” It’s like someone who brings in intricate hand-knitted sweaters. You can’t do that on the show. There just isn’t time.

Coming out of Season 5, I became suspicious of people who didn’t come out of a conservatory-type academic environment. They haven’t been through a critique. They don’t know that it’s about the clothes, not about them. Kenley’s a good example. She took everything so personally and wore her defensiveness on her sleeve.

Designers need to know what’s going on in the fashion world. I’m always so shocked when a major name comes up and the designers don’t know it.

We have a huge questionnaire that we have applicants fill out, and there are three sections that I flip to: Education, Job
Experience, and Favorite and Least Favorite Designers. Favorite designers usually include Chanel (often misspelled Channel), Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and Karl Lagerfeld. (Is the distinction made between Lagerfeld’s own collection and his work for Chanel? Rarely.) There are rarely any American designers on the list. I’m over being surprised because I’m so used to it. But I still ask them about it.

“Why are there no American designers in either best or worst?”

“They’re dull,” the contestants often say.

That’s like saying all American food is bland. That can’t be true, because there are so many different kinds, from hot wings to chicken-fried steak to New York bagels. The American design world has figures as different as Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Oscar de la Renta, Anna Sui, and Ralph Lauren.

“We’re looking for the next great
American
fashion designer,” I respond to the anti-American applicants. “How do you feel about that?”

It’s amazing to me. When you probe and ask what they like about Christian Lacroix they say, “I love couture.”

Well, how many jobs are there out there for couturiers? Almost none. So maybe you should have a backup plan? And as long as you live in this country, maybe you should be able to at least talk seriously about what’s been done here in this world you’re likely to enter.

Similarly, if the auditioning designer’s work is executed brilliantly but there’s nothing new or innovative, who cares? That’s what I would say of portfolios that were full of copies of clothing that already exists.

I would say, “Who wants to see nothing but perfect technical prowess? You need to use that to say something that’s
unique to you. Look around you! You see … a pile of books, a cloud in the sky, a fireplace. How do you interpret any of that?”

Some students tell me, “I need a photograph as a point of reference.”

You
think
you need a photograph! You just need to push yourself. Similarly, if you have great ideas, you have a responsibility to the ideas to present the work well.

The greatest compliment the show receives is that most of the people who try to get on
Project Runway
aren’t in it for fame. They want their fashion brand to flourish. With the exception of Santino Rice, who is now a judge on
RuPaul’s Drag Race,
the drag talent competition on Logo, no one’s gone on to be a TV personality.

Speaking of Santino, when he was asked to do the
Project Runway: All-Star Challenge
special, I told the producers it was a huge mistake. “It’s going to be
The Santino Show,
” I said. And it was. I love Santino, I really do, but I’ve never met anyone else who so completely sucks the air out of a room.

I don’t enjoy people who think they have it all figured out, because
I
certainly don’t. I like the idea of always learning. Always. If you’re not learning, what makes you want to get up in the morning? Why wake up if you have it all figured out? People who coast are not having any fun. It’s also dangerous. People around you are still working and pushing themselves. If you don’t keep up, it doesn’t matter how advanced you were when the race started—you’re not going to win it.

W
HILE TEACHING
, I
FREQUENTLY
brought movies to my classes to share with my students, because they were important to me. They always inspire me, and maybe you’ll enjoy them, too!

T
HE
F
IVE
B
EST
M
OVI
ES A
BOU
T F
ASH
ION

1.
Blow-up
(1966)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 murder mystery is a spellbinding masterpiece set in London in the 1960s, which I consider probably the most innovative and provocative fashion era of all time. David Hemmings plays a photographer whose career is loosely based on that of David Bailey (an early leader in the field of fashion photography), and the stunning Vanessa Redgrave plays his muse.