Gunn's Golden Rules by Tim Gunn

Author:Tim Gunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Gunn, Performing Arts, Conflict Resolution, Tim, Self-help & personal development, Clothing and dress - United States, Personal & Practical Guides, Popular Psychology, Television, Personal Growth - Success, United States, Family & Relationships, Life skills - United States, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Personal Growth - Happiness, Fashion, Reference, General, Personal Guidance, Project runway (Television program), Life skills, Clothing and dress, Happiness
ISBN: 9781439176566
Publisher: Gallery
Published: 2010-09-07T07:00:00+00:00

Talk to Me: There’s Always Another Side to the Story

WHEN I WAS BACKSTAGE waiting to present at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards, I encountered the stunning Kate Walsh from Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy. She was wearing an incredibly cute vintage Count Ferdinando Sarmi beaded dress, but the effect of the dress was compromised by her demeanor as she talked on the phone.

“That person is a seat filler!” she was yelling at the person on the other end.

Apparently, her boyfriend arrived at their seats and saw that there were people already sitting in them. Rather than identifying himself to an usher as having been assigned that seat, he got on the phone and yelled at Kate, who was waiting backstage until it was her turn to present.

“They’re not allowed to have an empty seat!” she was yelling at him. “Those are our seats!”

It seemed fairly simple, but she didn’t seem to be getting through to him. She got off the phone and said, “I have to leave and go talk to my boyfriend.”

“You can’t leave,” the backstage staff said. “You’re about to present.”

I turned to my agent, Jonathan Swaden, and said, “She’s too fabulous for this. She needs to start going out with some people who can take care of themselves.”

It was high drama.

But I really did think there was a lesson in there about taking care of yourself and making others take care of themselves. Suddenly, she was expected to help her boyfriend navigate the seating rules rather than do her job and introduce an award on national television.

The boyfriend needed to recognize that there was another side to the story he thought he had figured out. The old expression is totally true: “If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

That applies in a professional context as well.

We have an amazing library at Liz Claiborne Inc. called the Design and Merchandising Resource Center, which falls under my authority as chief creative officer. Well, sometimes designers borrow textiles and then never return them, or return them in terrible condition. Expensive books vanish. And then when I ban them from borrowing things, they plead persecution!

Call me a schoolmarm, but few things make me angrier than people not taking good care of library materials. This was edited out on Project Runway, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art challenge in Season 7, I lost my patience with the designers when they kept trying to put their paws all over some of the Costume Institute’s most delicate treasures.

Speaking of museums, there was one perfect moment in Project Runway’s Season 6: we went to the amazing J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but it almost didn’t happen. The Getty invited us, and I was just thrilled. I love that museum. But the powers that be were not as eager to go there. The Weinstein Company and Lifetime were saying, “But in Season Four you went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art!”

In a conference call with the producers, who supported

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.