As host of “Project Runway,” TV personality and style icon Tim Gunn inspires even the most creatively challenged contestants to “make it work.”
It’s a philosophy he’s followed his whole life. “It’s always possible to use whatever tools you have to create something you are proud of and to get the job done.”
After living in a host of Gotham rentals — including one in the West Village where Sarah Jessica Parker was a neighbor — Gunn realized his wildest dreams of owning his very own apartment: an Upper West Side penthouse close to Central Park. Fully settled in after a brief period of renovations, Gunn — for the first time ever — opens up his home to share with New York Post readers.
A self-described “poverty stricken academic,” Gunn had always lived in tiny and not especially glamorous homes — including a space in Greenwich Village for more than a decade. “I loved that Village apartment for the first 13 of the 16 [years that I lived there], until the disrepair spread to the point that it seemed dangerous. I thought the windows were going to fall out!”
Gunn’s phenomenal success with “Project Runway,” for which he and Heidi Klum just scooped up Emmys for best hosts, was a game changer. The highly rated show’s fame — and increased income — allowed him to buy a penthouse apartment just off Columbus Avenue.
His broker, Caroline Bass of Citi Habitats, sent him the listing when the price was cut for the third time, and it was suddenly in his bracket. The owners had paid $1.8 million in 2000, and later listed it for $2.8 million in a bad housing market. Gunn ended up buying the 1,765 square-foot place for $1.5 million in 2009.
To spend time in Gunn’s apartment feels like you are really in an elegant, spacious townhouse. Gunn, 60, is by his own admission “an interiors nut — if I wasn’t in fashion, I’d be in interiors!”
His goal was to create a sanctuary where he could recharge in a truly homey setting. It’s the first time, for instance, that he’s had a proper dining room table. Gunn has also graduated from single-bed status to a double bed — plus guest room. “Before, I was in an apartment where I could stretch out my arms and touch the walls.”
The apartment did not need much work, other than minor tweaks. He closed on the home but did not move in for four weeks while upgrades were being done. The aubergine walls, which “looked like you were walking into a bruise,” were replaced with beige throughout; the heavy drapes removed and the blond parquetry floors darkened. He relied on contractor Gilberto Grisales and his right-hand, Paola Pérez, for both the apartment’s initial renovations and more recent upgrades, including fresh painting — along with post-Hurricane Irene bathroom and flooring touch-ups.
Gunn enjoys nothing more than to fill his home with treasures — including a recently acquired faux tortoiseshell box from One Kings Lane. “I’m a collector, my greatest fear one day is I’ll be a hoarder,” he jokes.
He describes his style as “eclectic. I’m a classicist but I don’t subscribe to any particular classicism.”
At the apartment’s entrance, there’s a Whistler lithograph of the grand gallery at the Louvre, watercolors of palace interiors in St. Petersburg, sculptures including a Han Dynasty dog and a framed map of London from Restoration Hardware. “I’m a complete Anglophile!”
The formal dining area has a table with a spectacular architectural model by Timothy Richards, an architectural historian and artist who replicates real buildings in England and the US. “I have at least a dozen (of his pieces), and I’m crazy about them. I can’t get enough.” Ming Dynasty sculptures he bought in Hong Kong surround his bar, where he enjoys a cocktail or a glass of wine at night.
His kitchen, with a faux leopard skin rug, has his newest obsession: his Emmy, a weighty gold statue next to his Nespresso machine. He has the tiny model — “I don’t like cluttering up my kitchen surfaces” — and makes espresso when he wakes at 5:30 a.m. and reads the newspaper. Later, he likes to have a second espresso, standing at the breakfast bar. He loves to cook, mostly every day, preparing pasta and meatloaf.
Gunn’s living room, with a fireplace and nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, offer distant views of St. John the Divine’s tower. “As the light changes through the day and clouds move in and out and seasons change,” he enthuses, “it is like a Monet, how that limestone tower changes all the time.”
The room has several sofas and is cozy with zebra striped cushions, antique rugs and books that span fashion, travel and history. A resin pug sculpture peeks out under a glass-topped side table that holds a collection of spectacles.
The second level has a sprawling terrace and Gunn’s bedroom that is lined with books, a bed with a leopard skin throw, a walk-in closet and bathroom. There’s no television. He admits he falls asleep if he watches TV on the sofas downstairs, and keeps a folding chair to sit on to stay awake.
Gunn jokes that the downstairs powder room — which has dress sketches and framed magazine covers of him and Klum — is his shrine to “Project Runway.” Sadly, the show which has shot him to fame also takes Gunn — who is gearing up for another six-week shoot in LA — away from his beloved home. But as he already ponders a return for the holidays, Gunn is a man who clearly knows how to make his life work.
New York-based Julie Earle-Levine contributes to the Financial Times, Departures and British Vogue
