Tan France and Gigi Hadid combine fashion forces to host the second season of Netflix’s Next In Fashion, which hits Netflix on March 3rd. When speaking to HollywoodLife in an EXCLUSIVE interview, the Queer Eye star couldn’t help but gush over his bestie-turned-colleague and how the model mom to Khai, 2, helped him navigate new parenthood. “I’ve always gone to Gigi for parenting tips,” Tan admitted. “She had her child I think seven months before mine, maybe eight. So, she has given me so much great knowledge that is invaluable and that I still use today.”
Tan welcomed his son Ismail on July 10, 2021, via surrogate with husband Rob France. “Becoming a dad has made me a lot more emotional,” he laughed, recalling the upcoming season of Queer Eye, during which he admits to “crying a lot.” “Anyone who watches Queer Eye will know, I’ve cried twice in six seasons. On this season, season seven, I cried a lot — the first season I shot after having my son.” The fashion guru also revealed that parenthood has made him “a lot more boundaried.” “I’m very precious about my time. My job is my job only, and when I’m done with my job, I want to be with my family. I want to be with my son. So, I’ve been really good at putting my foot down,” he said.
As for Next In Fashion, Tan didn’t say there were many tears, but he did gush over the many laughs he shared with his new co-host Gigi on set. “We’ve known each other for years. Gigi was actually possibly the first entertainer that reached out to me to be friends after Queer Eye came out, so we’ve known each other about five years now and we became really close. Then Next In Fashion came up and she wanted to do season two, thank gosh! It was just an incredible working environment,” the designer explained, alluding to Gigi replacing season 1 co-host Alexa Chung. “This is the first time where I’ve worked with somebody who I knew for a long time before working on a show, and it’s been a lovely experience.”
He continued, “Going into something, understanding someone, knowing their sense of humor, knowing when they need quiet time or fun time or they need to be energized, this was the first time I actually got to have that and it was so amazing.” Tan added that despite the “14 to 15 hours work days,” the co-hosts were just “jazzed to be there” and “would do a stupid little dance and get really excited, thinking, ‘I don’t care that we did 14 hours the last four or five days in a row — we’re here to have fun.”
Tan spoke to HL in partnership with Starbucks and their Coffee At Home campaign to help refresh your coffee breaks, especially now that so many people are working from home. “I’m always championing people to have a refresh and take a moment for themselves. We talk about self-care a lot at the projects that I work on and also the need for a refresh — We do something called a ‘Make Better’ on Queer Eye, not a Makeover, and it’s to make the best of the situation you are in,” the fashion guru explained. “So the refresh isn’t just to refresh your coffee, even though I would love for people to refresh that coffee, but it’s refreshing many areas of your life, whether it be your wardrobe, any points of decor you can add that make it feel a little more spring as we’re getting out of the depths of winter, maybe it’s just your routine in general that you’re refreshing.”
As part of the Spring Coffee Break campaign, Starbucks will be giving people across the country a chance to win a well-deserved, virtual coffee break with Tan himself! “I’ve been doing speaking engagements for the last few years where I go around the country and I may meet with students or businesses and then throughout the pandemic I was doing it a lot from home, and so this feels like an extension of that, which is so lovely,” Tan explained. “If anyone wants to enter, they can go to springcoffeebreak.com and enter to win it. It’s really easy. And we just have coffee together!”