Under the Gunn

"The same thing happened when I was on Capitol Hill a number of months ago, advocating for the Design Piracy Prohibition Act. I can't tell you how many women on the Hill saw me coming down the hallway and lunged, shrieking, 'No! I'm not a fashion person, don't look at me!' Some of these were elected women, congresswomen and senators, and I finally said to one of them, 'You know, you're an elected official, the clothes you wear send a message about how you want to be perceived--and you have constituents who are clearly sitting in judgment of you. Don't you think that what you wear is important?' One of the messages of my book and certainly of the show is that we need to take responsibility for our dressing. We at least need to be cognizant of it. That's all that I ask: that people accept responsibility for how they're presenting themselves."

In Salon, Sarah Karnasiewicz interviews Parsons School of Design professor and reality-TV star Tim Gunn.