Gunn's Golden Rules

clothes from the mall’s own stores so the customers can actually buy what they see. It’s fun and it’s also intended to be educational. We show people how they can mix and match, how they can take a dress from day to night, and how an item of apparel can be made ever more versatile.

We work with five to seven of our brands, which include Lucky Brand Jeans, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, and DKNY Jeans. I always mix them up as much as possible. The business-side people always complain about mixing and matching on the runway. For them, taking a Kate Spade dress and putting a Juicy Couture coat over it is some kind of sacrilege. But I’m very blunt: People don’t wear one designer head to toe. So we show people how they actually will wear things, and ultimately, I think it benefits all the brands, because you see how versatile each item is.

Then we have a Q&A session after, and I always find it so touching how women will stand up in front of eight hundred to a thousand people, open up their jackets, and say, “Tim, look how thick I am through here. How can my clothing help me with this?”

It’s so wonderful how comfortable they are talking to me about these things. I love hearing about real people with real issues. We live in a bubble here in New York. Of course, I mostly like the bubble! But I also like to get out of it for a reality check, and the reality is that a lot of people are not comfortable with their bodies and need a little help making what they have work for them.

Maybe it will be helpful to hear that even in New York, the women who are supposed to be fashion idols aren’t happy with their bodies. When I’ve gone to the Vogueoffices I’m always struck by how insanely thin everyone is, even the editorial assistants, who aren’t in front of a camera. I think: How many eating disorders are there on this floor?

One former editorial assistant I know says that even though she’s a healthy weight and height and usually wears a size 8 or 10, she felt morbidly obese while she was working there.

Isn’t that a sick statement on the industry?

There is a famous cafeteria in the Conde Nast Building, which houses Vogue, The New Yorker, Glamour,and a ton of other magazines. It’s a feat of architecture, and yet everything about it horrifies me. Everyone there is so thin, and no one is eating the gourmet food on her plate. There are skinny mirrors on your way out. You know, throwing up your food is not healthy, just as obesity isn’t healthy.

I’m always saying I have the greatest respect for whatever size a woman is. We can work with whatever we have. To larger women who want to feel good about their bodies, I’m always talking about the opera divas— those big, beautiful, proud women who are so sexy and powerful. It’s ridiculous that a woman with that kind of build wouldn’t celebrate it. I know I find curves attractive on women, and most of the men I know do, too.

Of course, I also want people to be healthy. The girth issue in America is not about the clothes. You can dress the opera divas, and they can look great. It’s about health. I know how hard it is to lose weight when you drive everywhere and fast food is so cheap. For what I pay for a deli wrap sandwich across the street, I could go to McDonald’s twice, and that makes a big difference if you don’t have a huge food budget. But you have to find a way to stay healthy no matter what your budget is, whether that means exercise or cooking fresh food.

If a very overweight woman asks me to dress her body, I will say, “You can’t remain 450 pounds. Forget about picking the best clothes for your size; we can always help you look your prettiest, but it’s just not healthy to weigh that much.”

For the last three seasons, I’ve worked with finalists of The Biggest Loser,helping the contestants to dress their new bodies. They’re still not small, but they’re certainly half the size they were. And they are so much healthier. But they are faced with a fashion conundrum, because most of them haven’t even been in a department store in years. They’ve just been home in their sweatpants. Now that they have so many decisions to make, they find the amount of choice almost debilitating.

These inspiring individuals are wonderful to work with, but I will say the men are often very difficult. They don’t want to try anything new. They don’t know what looks good on them, and they get into ruts. They don’t want anything that remotely fits. “It’s too confining!” they cry. “It’s too constraining!”

I have to say to them, “Listen, sister. Get over it. That’s what it feels like when a pair of pants fit.”

I’m always shocked by how conservative people can be when it comes to their looks. The worst hairdo ever was the eighties puffy bangs. It wasn’t good then, but everyone had it, so you could kind of forgive it. Now there are no excuses.

When I did The Oprah Showrecently, I helped do makeovers on seven men. They were great with the clothes, totally game. But oh my, when the grooming people came in, it was another story. “You’re not touching a hair on my head!” they yelled. “You’re not touching a hair on my face!” As if they looked so incredibly fantastic being hairy like that.

I am always shocked by that kind of attitude. We’re talking about hair,folks. It grows back! If you want to be Grizzly Adams again, you can. But I’ve noticed that when people take the risk, they often like what they find. In the case of one man on Oprah,there was a whole new person under all that hair, and he was actually pretty hot!

I said this on Oprah:If Mother Nature had her way, men and women would both turn into a giant bush. You have to pay attention to the messages you’re sending out. I think unruly facial hair shows insecurity, or a real disregard for one’s image.

Nose hair is a plague on our culture. Men need to keep in mind that there’s hair growing from everywhere. Tweezing, waxing … there are tools—little electric things can be put into ears and noses. It’s not painful. Everyone needs an additional mirror to help see these things. In our city, we spend a lot of time standing cheek by jowl with others, and it’s hard not to notice when a bush is growing out of someone’s ear.

These guys I met on Oprahwere in their late thirties, early forties, and still wearing clothes from college. It was a Peter Pan complex, basically. They didn’t want to grow up.

I see parents dressing like their children sometimes, and it disturbs me. When we do fashion shows at malls and the juniors’ items come out, I deliver the opposite of a parental advisory warning. I say, “If you are over the age of sixteen, look away! These clothes are not for you.”

From a fashion perspective, I find men are often averse to grooming because it puts their masculinity in jeopardy.

Men in Europe are more comfortable in their skin—or maybe it’s just that they’re more secure in their manhood. Men flirt with one another in France. They don’t want to go to bed together, but they don’t feel like their identity is threatened by finding another man attractive.

A strong division of gender roles is so pervasive in America, and I think it’s dangerous. Liz Claiborne Inc. does a lot of consciousness-raising around domestic violence causes, and one day I contributed to the cause by doing a series of interviews on the topic with bloggers.

One of my questioners told me that she draws a line in the sand regarding gender. She said only men could be abusers. She said we have to take the boys aside and tell them how not to do it and the girls aside and say how not to let it happen to them.

“Everyone needs to know how to recognize whether they’ve become a victim or a perpetrator,” I said. “ Everyone,regardless of gender, needs to know both sides of this.”

“I would never talk to a girl about how to avoid being an abuser,” she said.

Well, I call that sheer ignorance. She’s not looking at the bigger issues. I’m very pro co-ed everything. Everyone needs the same messages. Each gender’s interested in what the other’s doing. We need to tell everyone everything. What they choose to pay attention to is their issue, not ours.

In America, there’s so much pressure to be straight that if men even have warm feelings for someone of the same sex, they suddenly feel they must watch Girls Gone Wildon repeat until they’ve proven they’re not gay. I feel sorry for them,