Pretty Much EVERYTHING You Need to Know About Tim Gunn

Danielle Sacks of FastCompany. com (who told us she's a huge fan of the blog - Hi Danielle!) sent us a link to this profile of Tim she wrote and kittens, it's a must-read. We'll be completely honest. At first, we weren't sure we were going to post about this because let's face it, Tim is not exactly under the radar. But then we read the piece and it is by far the most exhaustive and informative profile of the man and his influence that we ever read. It's long, but worth it. A few tidbits:

"McComb knew that his $5 billion company had lost its creative juice. He wanted a chief creative officer, not to dictate product design but to put some meat on the bones of an atrophied design culture. The fact that Gunn ran Parsons's prestigious fashion program -- the source of a good 70% of the designers on Seventh Avenue, from Anna Sui to Tom Ford -- was key."

"Whether McComb's hiring of Gunn in March 2007 was an act of desperation or inspiration is still unclear. Liz Claiborne stock is down sharply since McComb -- one of the youngest CEOs in the industry -- took over, despite his whacking jobs, shuttering brands, and reorganizing what's left. This January, he succeeded in luring another high-profile recruit: Isaac Mizrahi, the designer who jump-started discount mass fashion for Target and boasts his own shows on the Style Network and Oxygen (and even starred in his own one-man off-Broadway show, Les Mizrahi). He will become the Liz Claiborne brand's creative director this summer. With Gunn's help, McComb has also added fashion stalwart John Bartlett to reboot the Claiborne menswear line and acquired the critically acclaimed Narciso Rodriguez."

"Surprisingly, Gunn, who received a degree from Yale in English lit, has never been a fashion designer. His organizational chops and passion for education landed him at Parsons the New School for Design in 1983. In 2000, the longtime chair of the fashion-design school -- an untouchable fiefdom due to its success -- resigned; Gunn, then an associate dean, was charged with finding a replacement. When he pulled back the curtain, he discovered that the program hadn't evolved during the last half of its 100-year history. "The feeling of the department was, 'It's such a success -- the graduates are so famous -- don't do anything to it,' " Gunn recalls. "This great department, in my view, was little more than a dressmaking school."

""Tim's influence at Parsons was a turning point," says designer Diane von Furstenberg, who became CFDA president in 2006. "It put the school on another level." Donna Karan credits Gunn with infusing the program with an intellectual rigor that blends artistry with commerce. "He brought the real world into the school," she says. Over the next two years, Henri Bendel and Saks Fifth Avenue picked up student lines. Since 1999, the school's enrollment has nearly doubled."

"Gunn received a call in January of 2004 from Jane Lipsitz, a producer working with Miramax and the Weinstein Co. Heidi Klum had pitched Harvey Weinstein an idea for a reality-TV show featuring aspiring fashion designers, and they had sold it to Bravo. Lipsitz was looking for an industry consultant to help them behind the scenes. Gunn was skeptical: "I said, 'Fashion reality?' I figured they'd be pulling twentysomethings off the street going, 'Hey, do you want to be a fashion designer?' " But when he found out the producers had done Project Greenlight, a canceled HBO show he admired about amateur filmmakers, he signed on."

"Gunn remembers the first time he saw himself on TV back in 2004. "It was horrifying," he says, sitting cross-legged in Claiborne pin-striped trousers and a matching vest. "It was the night of the Project Runway premier party, and I refused to go. I watched the show at home, alone, peeking out of the sheets of my bed the way I used to watch The Wizard of Oz as a kid."

"The first three episodes of Project Runway bombed. The show had debuted right before Christmas in 2004, but despite the poor response, Bravo believed there was an audience out there for it. As a last ditch effort, the network decided to broadcast a rerun marathon over the holidays. By the time episode four aired during the second week in January, viewership had skyrocketed. The first season got an Emmy nod, and its cast of dysfunctional designers and Klum's "auf Wiedersehen," became instant pop-culture fixtures. But it was Gunn -- with his schoolmarm critiques, tough love, and verbal agility ("It's looking very happy hands at home granny circle," he cautioned one designer. "Resolve it.") -- who became the breakout star. "You can tell he's a teacher," said a fortyish female fan from Queens, as she waited in line to see Gunn on The Daily Show. "He never talks down to people; he encourages them." Adds Runway's Klum: "Tim really cares about the designers. The audience loves him because they sense that.""

"Gunn's other critical role is talent acquisition. He recruited John Bartlett as creative director for the Claiborne menswear line, and when executive vice president Dave McTague suggested hiring Mizrahi, Gunn enthusiastically supported it. Drawing on a connection from his Parsons days, Gunn also gave McComb an assist during negotiations with Narciso Rodriguez. Rodriguez (maker of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's wedding dress) had been on the brink of bankruptcy, a common enough fate in the fashion world, and had called Vogue's Anna Wintour pleading for help. She suggested Liz Claiborne and its new CEO. Rodriguez, who had supported Gunn during the Parsons insurrection, had concerns about joining a flagging behemoth, but Gunn reassured him and helped clinch the deal. "Tim's an influence builder, and he's very successful in changing people's minds," says McComb, who now has another legitimate name in his stable (not to mention the goodwill of Wintour, the most powerful woman in fashion)."

[Photo: Kambouris/WireImage]