Chip Gaines is Feeling Himself! Fixer Upper Star Jokes He's 'Gotten a Little Pompous' as He Reveals New Book Cover
Chip and Joanna Gaines‘ life has surely changed in the four years since their hit HGTV show Fixer Upper premiered. And it appears the fame has gone to Gaines’ head — literally!
The 42-year-old house-flipper has been rocking some new longer hair in recent months. (Fans couldn’t get enough of his man bun in a recent Instagram post.) And during an appearance on Today Tuesday, he couldn’t help but check himself out in the camera and fuss with his locks — despite being in the middle of an interview!
“He’s trying to get used to his long hair,” wife Joanna, 39, teased.
But Chip had another explanation. “I’ve gotten a little bit pompous,” he joked about his new Hollywood style. “When I get out in public, I really notice myself looking at my reflections as a I walk though. New York is not a great place for me.”
He may be trying out a new look, but Chip still remains as down-to-earth as ever. It’s that “real” quality that made him so relatable in the first place — something Chip plugged into when picking the cover for his new book, Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff.
Though his fans were given the choice between three different cover options, Chip ended up going with the least popular one of the bunch — one that showed him in a backwards baseball cap, caught during a candid moment with a more natural expression on his face.
“This photo lost by a huge margin, but it’s one of those times where I said, ‘I’m writing a book’ and I really wanted it to be about me and the expression I wanted to capture,” the Waco, Texas resident said. “That was one of these sort of ad-lib moments that happened at the farm. Of all the photos — of all the staged photos and the big set photos — that one kept jumping off the page.”
The memoir, out in October, has the serial entrepreneur recounting some of his past ventures — from equipment for a lawn-mowing service he bought after taking out a bank loan, to a neighborhood laundromat he purchased. Along the way, he relives some of his craziest antics and the lessons he learned.
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“When we were first dating, Chip and his buddies would sit around and tell ‘Chip stories’: all the crazy stuff he did,” Joanna explained. “And I thought, ‘These guys are lying. This guy didn’t do this stuff.’ Then I got married to him and I’m like, ‘He is crazy.’ ”
“They were actually toning those stories down a bit,” Chip admitted.
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The book will also give insights into what Chip’s learned from fame and how it’s affected he and Joanna — with whom he shares children Drake, 12, Ella, 10, Duke, 9, and Emmie Kay, 7.
“I really wonder how other people feel about this experience [of being plucked out of complete obscurity]. But for us, it’s just been an unbelievable wild ride,” Chip said. “Those experiences – unit after unit, miracle after miracle — sort of popped out on the pages. [It] is really just indescribable. I think we’re still surprised.”
Coincidentally, Chip said it’s that unscripted quality embodied by his book’s cover that’s also the key to he and wife Joanna’s success.
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“There was nothing staged about it,” he said, looking back on the shot. “We’ve had some comments on Instagram about it that it looked like maybe I was constipated. It looked like maybe I was having a severe mid-life crisis of sorts. But the reality was, it was just in the moment. It was just unscripted — un-staged. No makeup, no hair. Something about that real element…is really the secret ingredient.”
