Also: If you’re going to yell demands for food into a room full of strangers, you’d better be as fabulous as Diane von Fürstenberg if you expect to get away with it.
I SEE DETACHMENT FROM reality all the time on Project Runway.It’s often about three weeks in that the designers become daffy with exhaustion. We shoot each season in thirty or thirty-one days, and something weird always happens on Day 24, every single season. It’s the point of the cycle at which everyone gets annoyed with one another: designers, judges, crew, and producers. Everyone starts complaining about how they need more sleep. Fights break out. Also, everyone gets into magical thinking.
On Day 24 of Season 3, for example, Angela Keslar very somberly approached to ask me a question that was plaguing her. There was a lot of buildup to that meeting. The producers told me that Angela had come to them with questions, to which they responded, “You have to hold your questions for Tim and ask him on camera.”
Well, we went to Mood, and I’m reminding the designers of how much time they have, and she says, “Tim, I have a question. We’re all really tired and really stressed out. And I’m sure you’ll say no, but can we have an extra fifteen minutes?”
“You just answered your own question,” I said. “What do you think?”
“No?”
“No,” I said.
OUT-OF-TOUCH BEHAVIOR IS certainly nothing new to the fashion world. I have an infinite number of less-than-endearing stories where it morphs into outrageous divadom. I’ll share a couple of my favorites with you. Both are about people who work at that bastion of the industry, Vogue.
In the summer of 2006, a writer named Robert Rorke called to interview me for a New York Poststory about Project Runway.He asked me, “Of all the things you’ve seen since you’ve been in the fashion industry, what’s the one thing you will never forget?”
And I said, without hesitation, “That’s easy. Anna Wintour being carried down five flights of stairs from a fashion show.” He said, not surprisingly, “Tell me more,” and I told him what happened. He ran only one line about it, but I’ll tell you the extended version, including the ridiculous epilogue.
I was at Peter Som’s show at the Metropolitan Pavilion on West Eighteenth Street. It was held on the fifth floor, and there was one large freight elevator. Knowing Anna was a Peter Som fan and knowing she famously dislikes riding in elevators with other people, I thought, How will she ever get down?I didn’t have a seat so I was standing, coincidentally, in a place where I could see Anna sitting in the front row with a bodyguard on either side of her.
An announcement is made—“Ladies and gentlemen, please uncross your legs”—which they do so the people in the front row won’t accidentally trip the models walking by them and so the photographers’ shots aren’t obscured. Anna is the only one who doesn’t uncross. Her foot’s sticking out there ready to put some unsuspecting model into the hospital. But anyway, the show ends. The models survive. And as the lights come up, bam,Anna’s gone!
I was there with a colleague from Parsons, and we had been discussing the will-she-or-won’t-she-take-the-elevator question, so we ran over to the elevator bay to see if Anna would deign to get on. She wasn’t there. Then we looked over the stairway railing. And what did we see but Anna being carried down the stairs. The bodyguards had made a fireman’s lock and were racing her from landing to landing. She was sitting on their crossed arms.
I ran to the window to see if they would put her down on the sidewalk or carry her to the car like that. They carried her to the car. And I thought: I will never forget this.
So the Postprinted the following version of that story on July 9, 2006, a day that will live in infamy: “After leaving a fashion show held in a loft building with only one freight elevator, Gunn wondered how the Vogueeditor, who doesn’t ride with mere mortals, would get downstairs. ‘Her two massive bodyguards picked her up and carried her down five flights of stairs and then—I looked out the window—they carried her into her car.’ ”
I didn’t think anything of it, but then the next day, Monday morning, Patrick O’Connell, Vogue’s director of communications, called and left a message that I was to call Anna Wintour right away. I was too scared to call her back that day, but on Tuesday I called Patrick and was told, “Hold for Ms. Wintour.”
Forgive my language, but I’m thinking I’m about to have diarrhea, I’m such a wreck.
He comes back on the phone and says, “I’m terribly sorry. She’s unavailable at the moment.”
“I can’t handle the suspense,” I said. “Can you please tell me what this is in regards to?”
“Yes,” he said. “She wants you to have the Postprint a retraction of your statement.”
“That would imply it’s not true,” I said.
“It’s not true,” he said.
“It’s very true,” I said, “and I can tell you exactly when it happened.” Thankfully, I keep a diary. I looked it up and told him the exact date, time, and location.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” he says. “I’ll get back to you.”
There are then many more phone calls, each one insisting upon a retraction or at least an apology. I refused.
“I didn’t malign her character!” I insisted, and still do. “My statement was a matter of fact.”
“Ms. Wintour knows how to work a Manolo,” Patrick finally said, angrily.
“Is that what this is all about?” I asked. “If you want an apology from me, here it is: ‘I apologize if I implied that Ms. Wintour doesn’t know how to work a Manolo.’ The goal for her departure from the fashion show was clearly speed, and that’s what she received from these bodyguards. Furthermore, I wasn’t alone in seeing this. Dozens of people saw it.”
In his next call to me, he said, “We’re going to have to get the lawyers involved.”
By this time I am not only a ball of anxiety, I’m also spitting mad. I said, “Well then, you’ll please permit me to get some corroborating witnesses.”
As luck would have it, that afternoon a fashion executive was in my office. He asked me why I looked so distraught, and I said, “I’ve been through hell. That personover there at Vogueis threatening me over a quote in the Post.”
I told him the story.
There was a pause, and then he burst out laughing. “I was at that show!” he said. “I saw exactly what you saw!”
He grabbed the office phone and called Patrick right then. Just like that, my nightmare was over. He told Patrick that he, among many others, could attest to the by-now-infamous stairs story. After days of torment, I was off the hook.
But I knew Anna still must have been seething, so I decided I was going to take the high road. I called Richard, the florist I use, told him the basic situation, and asked for a fabulous and tasteful arrangement of all-white flowers to be sent to her office. I got on the subway and delivered a card of my stationery, on which I said something like, “I apologize if my comments in the Postcaused you any unrest or unease. It was never my intention. With respect and regards, Tim Gunn.”