“Make it work!”: not just a catchphrase. It’s a philosophy.

Tim Gunn reveals his philosophy behind “Make it work!” in this Time Out interview:

Q: Do people make you say “Make it work” all the time?
Tim Gunn: More frequently they’ll ask me to say, “Where’s Andre?” or “What happened to Andre?” But people tend to shout at me, “Make it work!” It happened coming into this building.

Q: Do you sometimes wish that maybe you had a different phrase?
Tim Gunn: No! I love “make it work.” It’s so good in the classroom for my students. If something isn’t going well, students are always inclined to put it aside and start over again. And I maintain that you don’t really learn anything that way. If you can take something that isn’t working well, and you can wrestle with it, move it to a new level and have it succeed, you learn so much from that. My students can run back to the store and buy a different fabric or a different color, but the Project Runway designers are stuck. They really have to make it work, and I don’t believe in talking to them about things they can’t change. So you don’t hear me saying things like, “You can’t use this red fabric.” It’s more about, “How are you going to make this red fabric work?”

I like that philosophy.