Jezebel: uncle nag bag

Tim Gunn: Elected Officials Make Appalling Fashion Choices

Jennifer — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:30:00 EST

Tim Gunn never ceases to amaze. Project Runway's father hen showed up on last night's Daily Show, where he and Jon Stewart discussed the show, fashion, and fashion week, and Gunn totally won Stewart over; you could feel the love! Gunn also had winning views about the upcoming elections — specifically, how the candidates are dressing themselves. After the jump, read Tim's musings on the problems of politics and style in an interview he gave to Newsweek. We're anxiously awaiting primary results, but in the meantime: Tim Gunn for President, please!

I was on the Hill just this time last year, and I had all of these elected officials literally running from me saying, "I'm not a fashion person! Don't look at me!" In the beginning, I thought it was kind of sweet, but the more I thought about it, I began to find it appalling. You're an elected official. How many people see you and make judgments about you before they ever even know your point of view?... I mean, are we ready for a male cross dresser in the White House? No. But frankly speaking, there are times when I wonder about Hillary... I look at [the current candidates] and I feel like they've stepped out of the 1980s. And what really disturbs me, deep down in my very core, is whether these candidates really think that having people talk about your clothes in a positive way could be a bad thing. To think that they might answer "yes" horrifies me... I will summarize [Bush's] entire fashion presentation in one phrase: schlumped over and drooling. I hope I don't end up in some Iraqi prison for saying that.

Tim Gunn Reviews the Candidates [Newsweek]

Can't hardly wait until the November 14th...

Jennifer — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:45:00 EDT

Can't hardly wait until the November 14th premiere of Project Runway (omg less than a month until we are reunited with Uncle Nag Bag again!)? Well lucky for you, our friendly neighbors to the north have their very own PR — hosted by Iman, which you can watch it online! Oh Canada, we just knew you were good for something. [Splice via Blogging Project Runway]

'Project Runway''s Timmy Gunn Also Known As "Uncle Nag Bag"

Jennifer — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:30:00 EDT

We love Tim Gunn like sooooooooo much. Previously, our love for Time was based on, we'll admit it, superficial things, like the soothing cadence of his voice, the way he looks at designers so disapprovingly on Project Runway, his tendency towards phrases like "sturm und drang," and the way that Nina Garcia seems to scare the bejesus out of him. But now we have so many new things to admire: Tim loves literature. And art. And, uh, his mommy still calls him Timmy! Our top 5 latest favorite things about Tim Gunn, after the jump.

5) He loves to read and can't bring himself to name a favorite book:

Oh, this is so extremely difficult, because I have so many, many favorites. Let me share the books that I re-read and re-read: Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers, "You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee, "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot (a poem, I know, but an epic poem), "Running in the Family" by Michael Ondaatje, and Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." I love the written word.

4) He takes his vitamins! A typical breakfast for him is "a banana and a Centrum Silver vitamin pill."
3) He loves Gertrude Stein and has fantasies of robbing museums:

If I could remove a work of art from a museum and place it in my apartment, it would be Picasso's "Portrait of Gertrude Stein" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'm obsessed with it. I'm not a huge Picasso fan by any means, but his work from this period (1906) is my favorite. But it's my fascination with Gertrude Stein that's at the core of my lust for this work of art.

2) He's a good Samaritan! If he found $15k in a brown paper bag he would do the following:

First, I'd turn it in to the police department within the vicinity of where I found it. If I were later contacted and told that no one laid claim to the money and that the serial numbers were clean, so the money was mine, I'd give it to a charity. I didn't earn it and it wasn't given to me; I found it.

1) He has the best nickname we've ever, ever heard:

I was "Timmy" as a kid, and my mother and sister still call me that. But my niece and nephew dubbed me "Uncle Nag Bag" about 14 years ago (or "UNB" for short), but it has been abbreviated to "Uncle Nag." Yes, that's what they call me, as does my sister on occasion.

Random Questions For...Tim Gunn [The Fashion Informer]