Tim Gunn Quotes

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.

I love helping people.

I haven’t had a date in 26 years.

I just don’t like conspicuous consumption. I find it distasteful.

I love HGTV. I love the Food Network.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

But if fashion were easy, wouldn’t everybody look great?

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.

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

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.

But 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.

I don’t know why I’ve always been so captivated by architecture.

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

And Brooke Elliott is a great actress.

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.

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

But 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.

I do things like hem a pair of pants, I do my own tailoring but I wouldn’t attempt a jacket.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Part of what was in the ether all around me growing up, until I was between 19 and 20, was a terrible, debilitating stutter. It was part of what made me very reclusive as a kid.

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

I’m one of the biggest introverts you could ever meet.

Men’s wear is all about tailoring.

Fashion was in a crisis up until the mid-’90s and, when it came out of the crisis, it was a very different place. It was a place that nurtured and cultivated young entrepreneurial designers.

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.

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.

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