Tim Gunn famous quotes

You can be too rich and too thin, but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world.
-- Tim Gunn

#World #Rich #Curious

I learned from teaching. If you are perceived by the student to be belittling them or purely criticizing them without offering up words of encouragement and support, they shut down and discredit you.
-- Tim Gunn

#Encouragement #Teaching #Offering

I have heard women complain about men holding doors for them,, as if it is inherently offensive and implies that they are weak. ... I would hold a door for anyone. ... It has to do with noticing our fellow human beings and saying, "I recognize that you're on this planet, and I don't want a door hitting you in the face.
-- Tim Gunn

#Men #Doors #Hitting

From my own experience, there are so many people who believe that the individual can change. The individual doesn't have to be LGBT.
-- Tim Gunn

#Believe #People #Lgbt

If you have to ask if a clothing item is a dress or a top, it is always a top.
-- Tim Gunn

#Dresses #Clothings

If I think about most of America, and maybe I'm terribly wrong...but I think most of America would say that they're not in favor of gay marriage. But there is certainly a large cohort, not a majority but a large number of people, who are articulate and vocal and they'd rally behind this. They're making their opinion known.
-- Tim Gunn

#Gay #Thinking #Numbers

Life is not a solo act. It's a huge collaboration, and we all need to assemble around us the people who care about us and support us in times of strife.
-- Tim Gunn

#People #Support #Who Cares

I really cherish having my private time and being alone and being able to decompress. It's my own version of meditating.
-- Tim Gunn

#Able #Cherish

Go to Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue, I think it's the eighth floor, and it's just a department called 'Woman.' It's rather devastating. You've never seen such hideous clothes in your entire life. I mean, it's simply appalling. Thank God there are no windows on that floor, because if I were a size 18, I'd throw myself right out the window [after seeing those clothes]. It's insulting what these designers do to these women.
-- Tim Gunn

#Mean #Thinking #Clothes

Life is a collaboration, it's not a solo act.
-- Tim Gunn

#Collaboration #Life Is #Solo

Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you'll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you'll run into every ex you have.
-- Tim Gunn

#Running #Rain #People

I have a very Socratic approach - I pummel the designers with questions, so when I get them to step back from the work and look at it with me, they'll eventually see what I see, coming to it fresh and unencumbered. That's always very gratifying because they feel a responsibility and an ownership of a solution.
-- Tim Gunn

#Responsibility #Steps #Looks

I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.
-- Tim Gunn

#Art #Believe #People

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.
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Believe #Views

Everyone has a best feature, so find clothes and accessories to accentuate those, whether it’s your shoulders or your long legs!
-- Tim Gunn

#Clothes #Long #Accessories

The fit of jeans can be worlds apart from brand to brand. If you can find the right fit, skinny jeans can be very flattering.
-- Tim Gunn

#Jeans #World #Skinny

Few activities are as delightful as learning new vocabulary.
-- Tim Gunn

#Vocabulary

We can wear whatever we want and get away with it. Just be confident about being who you are and dressing for that person.
-- Tim Gunn

#Want #Be Confident #Get Away

As long as we have Netfix, Turner Classic Movies, Amazon, YouTube, and bookstores, there is no excuse ever to lack inspiration.
-- Tim Gunn

#Inspiration #Long #Amazon

I hate crocs. May they please go away.
-- Tim Gunn

#Hate #Going Away #May

There's nothing I like better than going to my apartment, closing the door, cooking my little dinner for one and just tuning out. My apartment really is my haven. It's a nest where I go to heal.
-- Tim Gunn

#Doors #Cooking #Tuning

Staples are only good if they truly suit our lifestyle.
-- Tim Gunn

#Suits #Lifestyle #Staples

If I had to choose a single destination where I'd be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I’d choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
-- Tim Gunn

#Art #New York #Museums

Leggings are everywhere, indeed. Personally, I'm not crazy about them, but they can look great with the right look, a tunic, for instance, or a long cardigan. Just don't try to dress them up!
-- Tim Gunn

#Crazy #Long #Trying

So perhaps the real secret to style is filling yourself to the absolute brim with engagement. Loving not wisely, but too well and all that.
-- Tim Gunn

#Real #Style #Secret

But if fashion were easy, wouldn't everybody look great ?
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Looks #Easy

Frankly, I think that fur on a man is difficult to pull off. If it's the warmth you're after, then I'd go with a fur-lined coat - it won't show.
-- Tim Gunn

#Men #Thinking #Fur

Take the high road. No matter how much strife, and consternation, frustration and anger you might be confronted with - don't go to that level.
-- Tim Gunn

#Frustration #Levels #Might

Being in the moment is everything. So being in the moment for me is just letting the narrative play out, listening to the designers and giving them helpful feedback about what they're doing.
-- Tim Gunn

#Play #Giving #Listening

Call me a schoolmarm, but few things make me angrier than people not taking good care of library materials.
-- Tim Gunn

#People #Library #Care

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.
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Gay #Men

I will always be there in the wings saying, 'You need to be good to people. You need to take your work seriously. You need to have integrity. You need to work with what you've got.
-- Tim Gunn

#Integrity #Wings #People

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.
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Discipline #People

People come up to me and share very personal and intimate things with me, and I am so touched by all the trust they have in me.
-- Tim Gunn

#People #Share #Intimate

I believe in letting karma do its thing. What comes around goes around.
-- Tim Gunn

#Karma #Believe #I Believe

If you are going to be catty, you have to be careful with whom you do it, and in what manner! It's the kind of behavior that is best kept behind closed doors.
-- Tim Gunn

#Doors #Kind #Behavior

What's interesting about textiles is that they are determined about three seasons in advance, that's why when you walk into a store you think "Gee, everything looks about the same."
-- Tim Gunn

#Thinking #Interesting #Three

I'm really not a trend promoter because I feel that people push trends on people they shouldn't.
-- Tim Gunn

#People #Trends #Feels

All the magazines contradict each other because it is so diverse. Know what you like, know what looks good on you and keep doing it, no reason to chase trends.
-- Tim Gunn

#Looks #Magazines #Trends

I don't believe in the scraping of stuff. Take the existing condition, offer up a diagnosis for what's wrong, and a prescription for making it work.
-- Tim Gunn

#Believe #Stuff #Diagnosis

The clothes we wear send a message about how the world perceives us.
-- Tim Gunn

#Clothes #Messages #World

Most people wear clothing that is too big or too small for them. And "oversized" is the downfall for most of us. We have to be careful that we don't look like we're slipcovered!
-- Tim Gunn

#People #Looks #Bigs

I always say I have a Socratic approach to most things that I do. I pummel people with questions, because I need to know what they're thinking, what they're trying to achieve, what they believe the final outcome is going to be.
-- Tim Gunn

#Believe #Thinking #People

Does a man need to know what a peplum is? Probably not.
-- Tim Gunn

#Men #Doe #Needs

I wouldn't know what to do on a date. I don't have the time. To make a relationship work, I'd have to give something up, and I'm not so sure I'm willing to do that.
-- Tim Gunn

#Giving #Willing

I found early on in teaching, if you're too blunt an instrument, the students discredit you and think you're just being mean. They're not interested in what you have to say.
-- Tim Gunn

#Teaching #Mean #Thinking

I had this wonderful career and thought I would retire as a teacher.
-- Tim Gunn

#Teacher #Careers #Wonderful

With fashion, you really need to understand the aspects of construction. Not just design on an iPad.
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Ipads #Design

I just don't like conspicuous consumption. I find it distasteful.
-- Tim Gunn

#Consumption #Conspicuous Consumption #Distasteful

In a manner of speaking. I certainly never want to lose my voice as an educator.
-- Tim Gunn

#Voice #Want #Educator

I don't know why I've always been so captivated by architecture.
-- Tim Gunn

#Architecture

I have to have my coffee. I probably have three cups a day, but only before noon.
-- Tim Gunn

#Coffee #Noon #Cups

I have my flaws and my issues, past and present and who knows what will happen in the future. I want people to know Im vulnerable too and each one of us is.
-- Tim Gunn

#Past #Issues #People

I do things like hem a pair of pants, I do my own tailoring but I wouldn't attempt a jacket.
-- Tim Gunn

#Pants #Pairs #Hem

And Brooke Elliott is a great actress.
-- Tim Gunn

#Actresses

On my first day teaching my own classroom, I threw up before I entered the building.
-- Tim Gunn

#Teaching #Firsts #Classroom

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.
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Teaching #Discipline

If you told me when I was a teen that I would end up being a teacher, I would have said you're out of your mind, because quite frankly I hated school.
-- Tim Gunn

#Teacher #School #Mind

I'm one of the biggest introverts you could ever meet.
-- Tim Gunn

#Introvert

Whoever's designing for plus-size doesn't get it. The entire garment needs to be reconceived. You can't just take a size 8 and make it larger.
-- Tim Gunn

#Design #Needs #Size

If you want to write an angry e-mail, write it but don't send it. It's based on my experience that whenever I have acted out in some manner, I have always regretted it.
-- Tim Gunn

#Writing #Want #Mail

I haven't had a date in 26 years.
-- Tim Gunn

#Years

People put on certain clothes for certain reasons, I assume, when their closet is filled with clothes.
-- Tim Gunn

#Clothes #People #Assuming

I learned early on in teaching how easy it is to hurt a young person and that's never my intention.
-- Tim Gunn

#Hurt #Teaching #Easy

Why must she dress that way? I think she's confused about her gender.
-- Tim Gunn

#Confused #Thinking #Lgbt

You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own.
-- Tim Gunn

#Confidence #People #Focus

I am a stickler for good manners, and I believe that treating other people well is a lost art. In the workplace, at the dinner table, and walking down the street--we are confronted with choices on how to treat people nearly every waking moment. Over time these choices define who we are and whether we have a lot of friends and allies or none.
-- Tim Gunn

#Art #Believe #People

I don't know if people have gotten ruder or if my tolerance level has declined.
-- Tim Gunn

#People #Tolerance #Levels

I'm not sure what the moral is here...I really just wanted to tell that story.
-- Tim Gunn

#Stories #Moral #Not Sure

I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that's what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn't be so tragic.
-- Tim Gunn

#Littles #Entitlement #Broke

Make it work
-- Tim Gunn

I'm honest about expressing my opinions. At the same time, I'm diplomatic in how I do critique things if I have a negative response.
-- Tim Gunn

#Negative #Honest #Opinion

Don't give up! You're too talented. You're too good!
-- Tim Gunn

#Giving Up #Giving

I learned quickly that if the student’s perception is that you’re not listening to them, and not understanding them, they discredit you.
-- Tim Gunn

#Understanding #Listening #Perception

The color, the shape, and the texture--none of it is accidental. Every item we wear has a glorious (or sometimes not so glorious) history, and that history extends back years--centuries, even--before Oscar de la Renta's 2002 collection.
-- Tim Gunn

#Color #Years #Texture

If you had pockets, you were associated with a labor force. It meant you had things to carry yourself. Otherwise, your lady's maid or your manservant would have done it for you.
-- Tim Gunn

#Maids #Pockets #Done

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?
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Real #Shopping

My manners also came from when I was in college and began participating in critiques. You have to speak with someone respectfully about their work and be honest and open, without hurting them.
-- Tim Gunn

#Hurt #College #Honest

Nothing makes me happier than working with real people in the real world.
-- Tim Gunn

#Real #People #World

There’s one thing I will not do, ever: I will never talk to you about things you cannot change. It plants a negativity in the head of a designer or the student, and it’s a distraction.
-- Tim Gunn

#Negativity #Students #Designer

Life is a big collaboration - and when you're tackling something that is painful and troubling and is causing you such desperate grief that you think life's not worth living - you need to reach out. To people who will reach back.
-- Tim Gunn

#Grief #Thinking #People

I've had my own moments in front of designers when I've actually said, 'You know, there's a market here for expanding your work, and here it is. And frankly, there are two markets: The women who are larger than the 12, and then there are women who are petite. And most designers that I talk to have absolutely no interest in addressing either of those populations, which I find repugnant.
-- Tim Gunn

#Two #Population #Moments

I'm conflicted. On one hand, I don't want to say that because you were a man and now you're a woman, you can't be in a women's fashion show. But I feel it's a dicey issue. The fact of the matter is, when you are transgender - if you go, say, male to female - you're not having your pelvis broken and having it expanded surgically. You still have the anatomical bone structure of a man.
-- Tim Gunn

#Fashion #Men #Hands

I have my mantra about silhouette, proportion, and fit. I believe that when they are in harmony and balance, you’ll look great in anything.
-- Tim Gunn

#Believe #Balance #Looks

I just think the Kardashians have an absence of taste and I don’t think that that should be perpetuated. I’m sorry I’m sounding like an old farty, snob, but it bothers me.
-- Tim Gunn

#Sorry #Thinking #Taste