Make It Work!

Tim Gunn has one thing to say to all of you fashion whores: purge that closet. Divide your clothes into four piles—throw out, giveaway, repair and soul-stirring. Take some time to get over your personal attachments. And get determined to make that closet a better place. "The goal is to maximize the correspondence between what you feel conveys the proper image and the items you actually own," Gunn writes in his new book, "A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style" (Abrams). "This task can only be accomplished when your closet is rid of those items that do not truly make you feel happy."

Feeling truly happy in a pair of skin-tight jeans and stilettos is easier said than done, but style guru Gunn, best known for his role on Bravo's reality hit "Project Runway," is hoping to make a lot of people feel better about themselves. His new book is a how-to in wardrobe and apparel, a self-help guide for creating an individual style, and how exactly to make that style work. He's got a new television show out ("Tim Gunn's Guide to Style," also on Bravo) based on that premise—a makeover series that will school the clueless on the art of dress, groom and poise. Not to mention the self-proclaimed fashion therapist recently took a job at Liz Claiborne and has just begun filming the fourth season of "Project Runway." In spite of all that, Gunn found time to chat with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett about his hopes for the designers on this season's "Runway," his take on celebrity style, and why he thinks "fit" is America's biggest fashion fiasco. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: I hear your publishers had to actually lock you in their offices to finish this book.
Tim Gunn: I have to tell you, I love writing. But I have never, ever, ever been faced with such a formidable task that was so disabling—ever. I foolishly thought that I could work out of my office at Parsons [School of Design], but that was crazy because there were too many interruptions. Then I thought I could sequester myself at home, but at home, everything's a distraction. So then I went off to the New York Public Library with my laptop, but that was distracting, too. So by Thanksgiving—they'd wanted the manuscript by Labor Day—when I'd stopped returning [my publisher's] calls and e-mails, they actually came to my office and said, "This is it, we're taking you away, we're locking you up." And they did—for a week!

But you pumped it out.
I did—and it was a huge relief.

What do you hope people will get out of it?
The notion that we're all different, and that there isn't a prescription for how to dress. All things are not for all people, and one size does not fit all.

Explain the rationale behind your trademark phrase from "Project Runway": "Make it work!"
In teaching, I've found that students are often more inclined to start over when they encounter a problem than to work through the problem, to diagnose it, and offer up a prescription for how to fix it. And I find that that's a very bad learning strategy. So to take something that has a problem and to work through the problem and have the project succeed, that's what's behind "make it work."