Tim Gunn is hotter than a pistol.
The 53-year-old breakout star of Bravo’s hit reality series “Project Runway” has inked a deal for a spinoff called “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style.” And he’s added author to his resume.
“Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style” hit store shelves Tuesday. The how-to book was co-written with Kate Moloney, Gunn’s assistant chairwoman of fashion design at Parsons School for Design in Manhattan.
Oh, and about Parsons: Gunn is skipping school for a hugely influential job dusting off the Liz Claiborne label (where he will oversee 350 designers who work for the company’s 45 brands). Through Parsons, Gunn helped make Seventh Avenue stars out of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler (now in Target stores), as well as hot up-and-comers Ashleigh Verrier and Chris Benz.
Gunn took time out to chat during recent auditions for the fourth season of “Project Runway” at the Westin Colonnade hotel in Coral Gables, Fla.
You arrived on the fashion stage fully formed and matured. What was little Tim Gunn like?
Little Tim Gunn was the most pathetic, little, shy, nerdy introvert you’d ever want to meet. Ever. I was a very different person. It was teaching that was going to cure me or kill me. And I was always a bookworm as a kid, so academia is a place where I’m comfortable.
Where did your catchphrase “make it work” come from?
It came from teaching from one of my classes at Parsons. I’ve used it for years and years and years. Students, for the most part, when they are frustrated and feel defeated and are troubled by a project that they want to start all over again. And I say, “Don’t do that. We’re going to take what we have here and make it work. And by working through the issues at hand, you’ll learn infinitely more than to start from scratch.”
What’s it like going from academia to sudden pop culture fame?
Well, I’m not famous. I don’t think so. The wonderful thing about people just coming up to me is that people perceive me as being who I really am on the show, and that really is who I am, and I’m very accessible. What I wasn’t expecting … was to be branded as a flavor of spokesperson for fashion and for the industry. And I take that very seriously.
Has “Project Runway” democratized fashion?
It certainly has made the formerly mysteriously veiled fashion design industry accessible and demystified it. If anything, it’s removed that veneer of glamor that people associate with it. Though I think it’s still glamorous in its own way, but “Project Runway” portrays it the way it really is: It’s daunting, it’s gritty, it’s incredibly difficult, it’s challenging. At the end of the day you have blood all over your hands, and it’s probably your own.
How diplomatic do you have to be during “Project Runway” tryouts, which are called “cattle calls”?
Well, we’re straightforward without being unkind. We don’t say, “That’s the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen.” We may say that when the door is closed and they’ve left. What we say is, “We’re having difficulty understanding you conceptually.”
What’s up with your new series on Bravo? When does it start?
“Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style”? Y’know we haven’t even started taping it yet, so I have no idea.
You’re also leaving Parsons after 24 years for a new job at Liz Claiborne?
I’m chief creative officer. I’m thrilled, proud and honored. I take all that I had at Parsons with me — and my experience with fashion, and my knowledge of fashion, and my teaching of fashion. But I’m looking … at the whole industry through an enhanced lens. And it’s the real world. It’s really very thrilling and very invigorating and extremely challenging. It’s so easy to stay static, but in fashion — as a definitional matter — you can’t because [then] it’s no longer fashion.
What do you do in your downtime?
My therapy is to go home, close the door and turn on the TV … alone. I watch Bravo and the Food Network, my two addictions.
