Tim Gunn reads Kierkegaard!

It's Thursday and that means Project Runway and the lovely Tim Gunn.

Some generous person gave me an Amazon gift certificate a while back, so I splurged and got Gunn's Golden Rules, and then (because if I got it, I could get SuperSaver Shipping) added his Guide to Quality, Taste and Style as well.

The latter is the book I want to rejoice in today. Who among us would not be delighted to read this paragraph:

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish philosopher, opera lover, and the man Ludwig Wittgenstein called "the most profound thinker of the nineteenth century," can actually be a huge help when it comes to curing one's closet. The author of Fear and Trembling will not tell you explicitly to toss out those clam diggers, but he will supply two enormously helpful ideas.

The rest of the chapter does indeed use Kierkegaard--specifically Either/Or--as a starting point for curing one's closet, as Gunn puts it. The two ideas?

1) Make choices "Choosing what stays and what goes can be intimidating, but we have nothing to fear if we listen to Soren. He counsels that the unmediated choice is the only choice one will never regret." And then there are parameters for choosing what stays and what goes.

2) Form and content in harmony "For Kierkegaard, a 'classic' results when form and content meet in perfect harmony. In our case, the content is the person inside the garment; the form is the garment itself. Some form and content marriages are quite obvious...What isn't successful is choosing a rigid form and trying to wedge one's unhappy content into it."

Tremendously practical but also very thoughtful stuff. For closets and for life.

Oh, Tim. What would we do without you?