Gunn's Golden Rules

Talk to Me: There’s Always Another Side to the Story

WHEN I WAS BACKSTAGE waiting to present at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards, I encountered the stunning Kate Walsh from Private Practiceand Grey’s Anatomy.She was wearing an incredibly cute vintage Count Ferdinando Sarmi beaded dress, but the effect of the dress was compromised by her demeanor as she talked on the phone.

“That person is a seat filler!” she was yelling at the person on the other end.

Apparently, her boyfriend arrived at their seats and saw that there were people already sitting in them. Rather than identifying himself to an usher as having been assigned that seat, he got on the phone and yelled at Kate, who was waiting backstage until it was her turn to present.

“They’re not allowed to have an empty seat!” she was yelling at him. “Those are our seats!”

It seemed fairly simple, but she didn’t seem to be getting through to him. She got off the phone and said, “I have to leave and go talk to my boyfriend.”

“You can’t leave,” the backstage staff said. “You’re about to present.”

I turned to my agent, Jonathan Swaden, and said, “She’s too fabulous for this. She needs to start going out with some people who can take care of themselves.”

It was high drama.

But I really did think there was a lesson in there about taking care of yourself and making others take care of themselves. Suddenly, she was expected to help her boyfriend navigate the seating rules rather than do her job and introduce an award on national television.

The boyfriend needed to recognize that there was another side to the story he thought he had figured out. The old expression is totally true: “If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

That applies in a professional context as well.

We have an amazing library at Liz Claiborne Inc. called the Design and Merchandising Resource Center, which falls under my authority as chief creative officer. Well, sometimes designers borrow textiles and then never return them, or return them in terrible condition. Expensive books vanish. And then when I ban them from borrowing things, they plead persecution!

Call me a schoolmarm, but few things make me angrier than people not taking good care of library materials. This was edited out on Project Runway,but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art challenge in Season 7, I lost my patience with the designers when they kept trying to put their paws all over some of the Costume Institute’s most delicate treasures.

Speaking of museums, there was one perfect moment in Project Runway’s Season 6: we went to the amazing J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but it almost didn’t happen. The Getty invited us, and I was just thrilled. I love that museum. But the powers that be were not as eager to go there. The Weinstein Company and Lifetime were saying, “But in Season Four you went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art!”

In a conference call with the producers, who supported going to the Getty, and with TWC and Lifetime, who did not, I said I couldn’t believe they were going to keep us from going to a museum just because we’d been to one before. “Are you telling me if we were in Paris we couldn’t go to the Louvre?” I said.

Luckily, the producers and I won, and we went. It was amazing. The mayor of Los Angeles greeted us. We saw the sun rise there. The designers had the run of the whole place. It was phenomenal. And I seriously doubt that while we were navigating the glorious galleries and outdoor spaces of the Getty, anyone at home complained about our having been to a museum in the past.

I find with complaints in general, you need to know the whole context, including what the expectation was. So frequently, I’ve found that the expectation has been totally false, a creation of the person’s own imagination. They’re disappointed not to get something they were never promised.

I had this happen with my students. They would call their parents to complain about school, and then I would hear about it from the angry parents. But the parents didn’t know the administration’s side. They would be furious that we weren’t accepting their child’s project, but they did not know that the child had missed multiple deadlines. Why don’t parents do their own probing? “Tell me more,” they should say to Junior. “Why wouldn’t they accept it? Do you really not know why?”

I always wondered at the students who allowed their parents to get so involved. When I was in my twenties, I did as much as I could on my own. My parents were generous when they felt they needed to be, but I had enough of an ego that I would turn down their help whenever possible.

The key is admitting that in every situation there’s a lot you don’t know. That’s hard for me sometimes, because I like being an authority. But realizing I can see only a tiny piece of the puzzle is surprisingly liberating.

My father helped me stay humble on this front by being very mysterious my whole life. He was almost never around. He worked constantly. My mother and grandmother were there day in and day out. So when I got into trouble, I always expected my mother would be there and my father would be absent, as usual. But the opposite was true. My father was always great in a crisis.

And I sure did provide my family with plenty of crises. I constantly had issues. He was always there. He was there as a support, not to slap me around and ask me what the matter with me was. He just showed up and took care of business and did whatever he could to help. When I really needed a father, he was there. People who are by your side all the time, like my mother and grandmother—you’d think they’d rally, but they sometimes fall apart. My father could be hundreds of miles away on business, but then suddenly he was there. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And I’ll always think of him as an example of how people can surprise you for the better.

Of course, they can also surprise you for the worse.

I’m reminded of a celebrated young designer. People think he’s a tremendous talent, and he is, but there’s another side to the story.

Few people know this, but this designer was dismissed for academic dishonesty. The trouble started when some of his classmates told me he wasn’t turning in his own work. Again, there are two sides to every story, so I went to talk to his teachers.

“I understand there’s a problem,” I said.

“That’s news to me,” the teachers responded.

I almost let it drop there, but owing to this uprising from the students, I thought, I at least have to have a discussion with the student.

I had my associate Marsha join me, and we sat down with him in my office.

“I’ve heard accusations against you from your peers,” I began. “How do you respond to the claim that you’ve copied work?”

He was staring off into space and looking around.

“It’s either true or it’s not true, or it’s true with mitigating circumstances,” I said. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s true,” he admitted. “It’s not my work.”

He went on to tell me that he hadn’t turned in any of his own work since the beginning of his junior year. He was collecting projects from wherever he could find them—including those from former students, or muslins left lying on tables. He explained that he didn’t have time to do school projects because he was so eager to get out into the real world.

“Well, I’m going to give you plenty of time,” I told him. “Effective immediately, you are dismissed from this school for academic dishonesty.”

This fellow has since had great success, and I’m happy for him. He is incredibly talented. And yet, I’ve always felt a twinge of annoyance when I encounter his work.

One celebrity dress of his attracted an especially great deal of attention. The day after photos of the dress appeared in the papers, a colleague of mine called me to say she wished the celebrity had worn a dress by a different designer.

Recalling the copycat history, I lowered my voice and replied, “How do you know she didn’t?”