Tom Ford : Life after Gucci #2

[Chanelcouture09]

Ansel Elgort attends the "China: Through The Looking Glass" Costume Institute Benefit Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 4, 2015 in New York City. (May 3, 2015 - Source: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images North America)

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Singer Mariah Carey attends the 2015 Billboard Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 17, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (May 16, 2015 - Source: Jason Merritt/Getty Images North America)

 

[Lola701]

February 18, 2015
Catching Up With Tom Ford
By Bridget Foley

Tom Ford holds your gaze. While in conversation, and definitely while offering “cheers” in a restaurant. He stares into the eyes of first one dinner partner, then another, each time moving his glass toward the merry clink. The power stare might be unsettling, but for the twinge of humor, self-mockery, even, in its intensity.

These days, Ford toasts with water only; he stopped drinking a while back. More recently, he ditched Diet Coke as well. Whether or not rejecting even the occasional alcoholic or faux-sugared, carbonated indulgence makes Ford physically healthier, it fuels his psychological mettle. Discipline and control are Ford-ian obsessions. They’ve propelled him through an audacious career path: the legendary ascent from SA nobody to international fashion superstar. The ugly dissolution to his Gucci Group tenure. The celebrated, told-you-so directorial film debut. The return to fashion with men’s wear, an unusual beauty concept, his own stores and, lastly, women’s.

Now Ford is officially doing double duty, simultaneously in the early stages of casting his second film, a thriller adapted from a novel he refuses to name, while planning his fall fashion show, which he’ll show in Los Angeles on Feb. 20.

When we think of the fashion-Hollywood fusion, we think first of the front-of-camera types who have crossed over to fashion rather than those who’ve gone the other way. Yet more than anyone else, more than very committed and talented Olsens and Victoria Beckham, certainly more than the myriad celebrities who put their names on projects with varying degrees of involvement, Ford embodies that fusion; he could be its poster demigod.

He thrives on syncing two careers, each distinct, yet one sometimes informing the other. (Was there a review of A Single Man that didn’t list visual splendor among its strengths?) The movies allow the complete creative control that’s in his nature to crave, but that fashion ceded to the battery of phone-wielding guests who have themselves become part of the show; fashion provides the speed and immediacy he didn’t know he’d miss until it was gone.

“I would go crazy sitting around waiting for this movie to be made if it was the only thing I had going on,” he says. “I guess if I were in Hollywood making movies, I might be making more of them.”

That crossover will be apparent at Ford’s show at Milk Studios.

After his spring 2011 return to the runway with a genuinely intimate (the word is often misappropriate in fashion) show in New York for the then-nascent Tom Ford brand, Ford has shown his collection in London where he, husband Richard Buckley and son Jack live, and where he maintains his design studio. The decision to show now in L.A., where he and Buckley have a home, a beyond chic Neutra gem, was made for a simple reason. His name is Oscar.

From New York, the first stop of the primary fashion show circuit, through Paris, the last, the schedule is more or less fixed, save for the small/new/quirky people who meander in and out, particularly in New York. For brands with any degree of profile, your slot is your slot. If last season you showed on Monday at seven, that’s when you’re slotted in this season. A move by a major (see: Marc Jacobs, from Monday night to Thursday, fall 2013) generates news, gossip and twisted knickers. But this season, Monday at seven wouldn’t work for Ford.

To be successful in fashion, confidence is a must, as well as some degree of ego. For sophisticated fashion customers to buy into a designer’s sartorial prescriptives, that designer must himself believe in the veracity of those prescriptives. This, dear client, is what you should wear. Ford’s sense of self takes root in surety and a core lack of delusion. In a face-off with Oscar for international attention, he knew who would win.

“My show was going to be the morning after the Oscars and how much global press am I going to get?” he posed. “Because for two or three days in every newspaper all over the world, there are [Oscar] pictures.”

We’re talking in his square, grandly proportioned London studio, a few hours before meeting again for dinner, with Buckley. The space marries chic and function; neither the artwork, including a large framed campaign photo and a larger Anselm Reyle work in Mylar, nor the impressive furniture (he loves a Lalanne alligator table) trumping the sense that work happens here.

Given that Ford has a Los Angeles home and office, that he often dresses people for the Oscars and typically spends two weeks in L.A. immediately following his fashion show, this one-time switch seemed a no-brainer. Exactly how it will play out is more open to question.

The pragmatic showman in him plays to his audience with clarity of message. Yet with three weeks to go, he’s grappling with exactly what he wants to say. At this point in any season, with the clothes designed and in production, Ford typically takes mental notes of his decisions, examining and questioning the choices he’s made. This time, he will present to a very different audience than that of a typical show—fashion press outnumbered greatly by entertainment press and social, celebrity and other industry guests—onto which he projects very different expectations.

“This one in particular is haunting me,” Ford says. “I’m trying to decide, how does [the audience] affect the show? Do I let it affect the show?”
He wonders if the Hollywood set will expect a casting of conventional beauties as opposed to some of the quirkier types to whom he’s drawn. Then there’s the time factor. To the fashion crowd, a good show is invariably a short show. Very short, these days, sometimes single-digit short. “Is that enough when people have come for cocktails and gotten all dressed up and been standing around for half an hour? They get led to their seat by someone handsome, and everything is nice and beautiful. But is it enough? It will be nine, 10, 12 minutes.

“I think you decide what you want the outcome to be,” he continues. “What is my goal? Is my goal to worry about the fashion journalists and create something that, in their world, is of maximum relevance? Or is my goal to create something relevant yet also successful in the room? I won’t do something that’s only successful in the room and isn’t relevant. I don’t actually know [yet] what the answer is. I’ve already done preliminary casting and I’ve started to think about the hair and makeup. As it all starts to come together, I will find my answer.”

One of his considerations is crossover impact, specifically, the impression on actresses in the room whom he may want to cast in his film. “It’s impossible not to think, ‘are they going to be bored?’” he says. “What are they thinking? Are they going to think, ‘oh my God, [he has] no taste?’”

wwd.com

 

[Lola701]

...

Though Ford won’t discuss title or plot lest he divulge secrets too early and bore himself along the way, he provides snippets of insight. He wrote the screenplay himself, finishing it in September. It’s an adaptation of a novel for which he bought the rights, not a well-known book and all the better for that. At this point at least, he has little interest in taking on material pre-loaded with audience expectations. He has changed the title and made considerable revisions to the story. As planned, the film is in two parts, the first faithful to the original material, and the second, completely new.

“A book is a book; a film is a film,” Ford says. “They are totally different things. Sometimes things are subtle in a book because there’s an inner monologue with the character, and turning it into a film, you don’t have that inner monologue—unless you do, which I don’t love.…You have to have something personal; you have to take what speaks to you about a book and amplify that. It’s impressionism, in a way.”

Unlike most directors, whose schedules and deadlines are project-based, Ford must work around an intractable fashion calendar. His narrow shooting window runs from Sept. 15 through December. If for some reason the film doesn’t come together in time, his next opportunity is the same time, next year. “I only need six weeks,” he says, noting that editing will be more flexible; he can set up a room in London. He shot A Single Man in 21 days: “I paid for it myself.”
What he will never pay for: the celebrity red-carpet get. “No, I have never paid anyone and no, I wouldn’t,” he insists, while acknowledging that, “Yes, generally they get it for free if it’s an amazing celebrity.”

He typically dresses several men and one woman for the Oscars, though given all of the paid brand ambassadorships out there, the good ladies are increasingly difficult to secure. Whether or not he scores a nominee or top presenter (he’s got something in the works, but in the spirit of you-don’t-know-until-her-car-door-opens), he accepts the ongoing importance of this ultimate in product placement.

Still, he doesn’t love that the red carpet has become a feeding frenzy of mermaids, crystal-encrusted nude mesh and Charles James homage. Thus, he’s become a little more willing to compromise than back in his Gucci Group days, when he rose to fame on a sartorial platform of slick, brash sensuality. Shortly after he left the group, we had a conversation in which he told me he’d never do an Oscar gown he didn’t feel was appropriately on-brand. Now, though still on that page philosophically, he’s less strident.

“It’s different than when I left Gucci,” he notes. “It’s true, what you end up doing is not what you’d send down the runway at all, at all, at all. You mostly try to make sure they don’t look bad, that they look slim.”

And that the look somehow reflects the brand identity.

As for the lack of real fashion on the red carpet, Ford concurs, but argues that too much fashion—read: silhouettes that don’t suggest the waist—is asking for trouble.

“You have to have a waist,” he mandates. “You can be big, but you need to have a waist that has something to do with our standard of beauty. Women have curves, hips, a waist. It isn’t about being thin, it’s about having a waist. And there’s a reason for that. Look at a photograph against a wall. You can look wide with a head on it, or you can have a human shape.”

So no fan of the fashion trapeze or haute sack? Not unless she walks the carpet with her own personal wind machine—he jumps up to imitate a Pat Cleveland-esque twirling and gyration—“and then it will be, ‘she’s on drugs.’”

He’s only half-joking. The red carpet has become a walk of treachery, rife with on-air critics who know fashion, on-air critics who don’t know fashion and millions of couch-potato critics, devices in-hand and ready to rant. Ford maintains his actress friends hate the red carpet, and why wouldn’t they? “I do not know an actress who likes it,” he says. “They’re fearful of what’s going to be in reviews that wouldn’t have been there 25 years ago. They’re fearful of the glam cam. It’s like being on a global game show, and it’s horrible. They’re terrified.”

His advice: “You’re an actress. Play a part. You’re in a movie now, and you’re a major actress stepping out on the red carpet and you’re one of the most beautiful women in the world. Just play the role. Get out of the car.”

During awards season, Los Angeles gets its fashion close-up, on Oscar night squaring off against the ready-to-wear shows for attention and winning. Asked if there’s an overall ascendance to L.A. style, Ford drops the qualification. “There’s an ascendance to L.A.” Yes, he pays attention to the work of Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent—“everyone does,” though he doesn’t like talking about other designers. (He admits to amusement at speculation that arose following Frida Giannini’s departure from Gucci that he might return to the house.) He sees Los Angeles as a bigger picture, a city aging into interesting, while beckoning all kinds of young creative types, those priced out of Brooklyn, to come hither.

“Now parts of Los Angeles are old, parts of it are run-down, it’s starting to feel like a real place and not just a set,” Ford explains. “Because it’s really a 20th-century city, it felt like a set for a long time. It’s developing culturally, physically and metaphorically.”

As for whether he and Buckley would return long-term, right now, they’re happy in London, Jack’s school situation is all set, but “you never know.”

Ford feels very much at home in London, but some home-grown traits linger. He launched the Tom Ford brand with the goal of making it one of the top five luxury brands in the world. That goal receded a bit after Jack was born, but now, the burn is back. “I’m American,” Ford says. “Maybe that’s it—bigger. And I’m from Texas—big, bigger. Why would you not want to be the biggest?”

He stops to qualify his own ambition. He wants maximum scale “without compromising what I do. I don’t want to not be proud of something with my name on it.”

The word compromise has infiltrated Ford’s conversation, a relatively new addition. He invokes it sometimes in passing, and at others, stopping to qualify or explain, lest one infer that he’s relaxing his aesthetic standards. He’s not. Rather, he uses the word in the context of adjustment; the fashion world today is very different from the one Ford exited in 2004. That took some getting used to. Case in point: the pre-seasons. Ford does them but doesn’t show them to editors. He wants them “to stay a delivery, a really nice peacoat, a really good pair of pants. That’s why they’re 60 to 70 percent of the season. Because they’re real.”

The obvious inference is that what Ford puts on the runway is something other than completely real. Yet in the mid-Nineties, a moment of glorious theatricality from the likes of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, Ford made his name as the consummate commercial designer. For all their steam and editorial bravado, his Gucci and Saint Laurent runways featured real clothes.

That was then. “I have this issue with fashion shows and reviews and press,” Ford explains. “I almost wish I were brave enough to send down the runway the clothes that I would order for friends or [tell people] to buy. I believe in everything I send down the runway if Rihanna is wearing it to the Grammy Awards. I believe in it if Miley Cyrus is going to wear it to [something]. I believe in it if a magazine is going to shoot it for their androgyny story. I believe in it if …I am quite torn about that. So how do you resolve it? I don’t know. It’s not the world I left in 2003-04, where you really could do a beautiful show like I did at Saint Laurent and they got good reviews and sold well. I don’t know if that world is still here. Maybe it’s just me.”

While during his fashion hiatus, Ford spent a good deal of time in L.A., he made London his base, following work tenures in Milan and Paris. His long expatriation has provided a perspective on just how different America and Europe are. He’s shocked by what passes for news in the U.S., by how under-informed Americans are of the world. Conversely, he’s moved when visiting New York for fashion events, most recently when he won the CFDA’s Lifetime Achievement Award last year, to experience the industry’s warmth.

“People like each other [in the U.S.] You don’t get that here. Maybe Franca [Sozzani, editor of Italian Vogue] has done it a little.” He’s developed “a nice e-mail friendship” with Joseph Altuzarra, after the young designer self-introduced. On the flip side, perhaps the lack of Euro camaraderie heightens the creativity there. In Hollywood, “No one ever burns any bridges because you’re just forming little things all the time. It’s fascinating.”

He singles out one Brit fashion friend, Stella McCartney, “but we’re real friends.”

Being Ford’s friend means being needled now and then. At one point, the conversation turns to fur, spurred by a reference to the breathtaking mink-trimmed Dior couture dress Nicole Kidman wore to the 1997 Oscars. Ford notes that today, no actress would dare wear fur on the red carpet, yet designers today show more fur than ever before.

“Stella McCartney is showing fur,” he deadpans, referring in deliberate error to her real-looking fakes from pre-fall with prominent outside labels flagging their faux status. “No,” he says, elevating his voice and moving demonstratively into the tape recorder. “I know for a fact it’s real because she’s a really good friend and I’ve seen the pelts.”

But then Ford is an insatiable provocateur. Just as reference to fashion’s most passionate anticruelty advocate results in a fur jest, a question on whether developing his jeans business has impacted his own casual look—suede jacket and “perfectly coordinated double-denim” shirt and jeans—leads, as naturally as day into night, to penis talk. The jeans are doing beautifully and “I’ve got a TF on my crotch.” A glance downward displays a discreet TF embroidery on his fly.

Speaking of crotches, it’s less than a week since Rick Owens showed his men’s collection featuring men in skirts that flapped open to reveal the full monty. While Ford might have cast different penises and would not have gone the erect route, he admires the effort. It irks him that full-frontal male nudity is our last taboo.

“OK, I’m not going to wear it, but I think [Owens] is an artist in the way that McQueen was an artist,” he says. “As an artistic statement—equal opportunity objectification.”

Ford gets up from his chair to grab a framed picture from a cabinet. It’s a full-frontal shot from his 2002 campaign for Yves Saint Laurent M7 fragrance, shot by Sølve Sundsbø. It ran only in Europe. When it did, he received a note from Victor Skrebneski with a print of a photo he’d taken in 1976. It, too, featured a man in full-frontal glory, and was shot for a Saint Laurent fragrance. “I’m sending you a photo I did as a bid for their men’s fragrance,” Ford quotes the photographer’s missive. “They thought it was vile and crap” [even though Saint Laurent himself had posed naked five years previously]. “Congratulations. You’ve broken the male barrier.”

It’s a subject on which Ford is quite serious. A few years ago, he penned a piece for GQ, “a really serious article” for which he interviewed and photographed 10 men naked on the assurance the magazine had secured Condé Nast clearance to run the photographs as-is. They ran with yellow censored bars across them. Ford was furious.

“We use women’s bodies to sell everything, but we have a weird hang-up about naked men,” he offers. Which brings him full circle back to the merch. “Why not put a TF right here? If people are going to stare at my crotch, they might as well see the logo.”

Parenthood hasn’t diminished Ford’s comfort level with nudity on display. Well, maybe a little. Not surprisingly, the Buckley-Ford homes feature plenty of art, including some of the au natural variety. On a corner table in Ford’s office stands a sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman of a naked, wild-eyed, long-haired boy. His penis is hardly unsettling; it has nothing on the boy’s second set of legs that fly out from his hips in a perpendicular frenzy. The lad once resided at the house, but no longer. “I thought it might scare Jack,” Ford said. “It’s a bit ‘Chucky.’”

And these days, Jack is the center of everything, including Ford’s renewed commitment to break into that global luxury top five. One day, it will be Jack’s. “If he wants it, he can do it,” Ford says. “If he doesn’t, he can sell my name.”

wwd.com

 

[Creative]

Tom Ford should stop designing and focus on doing interviews. That's the thing he's good at. Whenever I watch him I forget his awful collections and fall in love with him again.


OMG at Chris Pratt in Tom Ford.

 

[Thefrenchy]

^Agreed

 

[Lola701]

Babies, baths and no more booze: Tom Ford on how he turned his life around
He wears the same dirty suit every day, hasn’t worked out in two years and is tucked up in bed by 10pm. Dan Rookwood meets Tom Ford, father, film director and fashion designer
DAN ROOKWOOD 11 JUNE 2015

Sitting on a sofa in the reception area of Tom Ford International in Westminster awaiting my interview, I tick off some of the things I already know about the 53-year-old American fashion designer and film director. He is a self-confessed perfectionist who insists his staff keep their workspaces so immaculate they could be photographed as still lifes at any time.

His personal maintenance regime is legendary: he works out religiously and takes five baths a day. When he is not walking around his house stark naked, he is impeccably dressed and even flies long-haul in a three-piece suit. Oh, and he likes to be formally addressed as Mr Ford. Don’t call him Tom, don’t call him Tom, don’t call him Tom.

Mr Ford appears, silhouetted in the door frame to his private inner chamber. It’s 11 years since his acrimonious departure from Gucci where, as creative director, he turned the fashion house’s fortunes around from the brink of bankruptcy in 1994. Within five years, it was a £2.6bn megabrand that began buying up other luxury houses such as Yves Saint Laurent (for whom Ford was also creative director), Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta. But in April 2004, after a disagreement over control of business, Ford suddenly left.

After taking a year or so out, during which he battled depression, Ford returned in 2005 with his eponymous brand. He began with eyewear and a beauty line before adding menswear in 2007 and finally womenswear in 2010. His ‘mass luxury’ empire now turns over £650m a year. Business of Fashion estimates his personal wealth to be in excess of £130m.

Then there is Tom Ford the movie director. On the day we meet, he has just returned from an overnight trip to the Cannes Film Festival. Following the debut success of 2009’s A Single Man, which he also produced and wrote the screenplay for, with no formal training, Ford is about to start pre-production on his second feature, Nocturnal Animals, a thriller starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal. Film companies were so wowed by Ford’s presentation in Cannes that a bidding war ensued. Focus Features (and parent company Universal) are said to have paid £13m for the worldwide distribution rights — by far the biggest deal of the festival.

Today, before jetting out to New York for 24 hours, where he will pick up the Council of Fashion Designers of America award for menswear designer of the year, Ford is putting the finishing touches to his S/S 2016 menswear collection, which he is about to present in London.

And on top of all this he has a two-and-a-half-year-old son, Jack, to look after with his partner of 29 years, Richard Buckley, whom he recently married. Jack was conceived via in-vitro fertilisation and a surrogate. Earlier this year, the Italian designer Domenico Dolce was widely condemned for expressing his views on children born to gay couples through IVF. ‘You are born to a mother and a father, or at least that’s how it should be,’ Dolce told Italian magazine Panorama in March. ‘I call children of chemistry, synthetic children. Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalogue.’

It’s a subject Ford feels strongly about. ‘I found [Dolce’s comments] incredibly ignorant — and you can say that — and insensitive,’ Ford bristles. ‘I was quite shocked, I have to say. They [Dolce and his design partner Stefano Gabbana] haven’t retracted it all, they defended it.’

Ford says fatherhood has completely changed him as a person and helped him learn to relax. Hitherto he’s had a reputation for being forensically pernickety, an incredibly exacting control freak. In the past he has described his perfectionism as ‘almost a mental illness’.

By his own admission, he’s still ‘wound very tightly’. He finds it difficult to switch off, especially since quitting alcohol and losing the ‘release’ that gave him. But he describes his experience of fatherhood as ‘meditative’. It’s not a word that would immediately spring to mind for most new fathers — at least not to those who don’t have a full-time nanny. ‘Yes, but it’s stress that’s not about you. It’s stress worrying and thinking about your child, which takes your mind off your work or what you were doing that day or what such-and-such said that pissed you off because you’re thinking about your kid. It’s a break from yourself.’

What’s it like for fashion’s most infamous neat freak having a toddler at home? ‘Our house is covered in plastic toys,’ he laughs. ‘I cannot believe it! I mean, I used to just live for decorating. Our houses were flawless… I think for some gay men, their houses become their children. It was that case for me, but I just don’t care as much any more. I have moments where I think, “Oh ****!” It’s not exactly a pigsty, but it’s not as immaculate.’

Sure enough, casting an eye around his large lair-like office — all polished ebony, umpteen shades of monochrome and, distractingly right in my eyeline, a framed photograph of a man with his penis out from a controversial Ford-era Yves Saint Laurent fragrance advertising campaign — I note his desk is strewn with papers. Admittedly they are the only things out of place in the entire room and that is why they stick out, but still. ‘I would never normally have papers on my desk if I knew a journalist was coming,’ he says. ‘There would be more flowers. Somebody would have spritzed perfume around. But I just don’t care.’ I try not to take this too personally.

As it turns out, Ford’s new laissez-faire attitude has extended to other areas of his life — even his famously fastidious personal grooming routine. ‘When I got up this morning I was going to trim my beard because I knew I was having this interview and I needed to look good. It’s going quite grey, which I sometimes camouflage with Just For Men beard dye — do not put that in the article! — and I just didn’t even have the energy.’ Still, he’s dressed as meticulously as ever, in one of his signature wide-lapelled black suits with a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned to the chest. Or maybe not. ‘This old dirty suit! I literally just pick up the suit from the night before and put it on. Sometimes I have another uniform — jeans, a jean shirt and a different jacket — and it’s one or the other of those outfits. I used to make more of an effort in the mornings but I don’t any more.’

EveningStandard

 

[Lola701]

...

Now into his fifties, Ford remains the ‘exact size 48 perfect regular’ in order to try on all his samples. You’d think his workout regime would be punishing. But since the arrival of Jack he’s had neither time nor energy for tennis or Pilates. ‘Working out has just gone away. In two and a half years I have not worked out once!’ Yet he’s as slim as ever: ‘I really watch what I eat,’ he sighs. Ah, so he hasn’t let himself go entirely. ‘And I’m lucky genetically, I think, too.’ His diet is ‘really quite perfect — fish, vegetables, fish, vegetables, fish, vegetables’ — but his one remaining vice is cheap confectionery. ‘There may be a pack of Percy Pigs during the day or a couple of doughnuts, or if I’m in America, Hostess Donettes — those cheap little white powdery things. I mean, if I even see them, I have to eat the pack! So there’s junk layered on top of a really healthy diet.

‘As you get older it’s all about calories and it’s about fewer and fewer and fewer. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, so I don’t binge-eat when I’m stoned or have all those alcohol calories.’

This wasn’t always the case. Ford is teetotal now, but in his thirties and forties he was a ‘very highly functioning alcoholic’. People close to him knew how much he drank, but his success and prodigious output disguised the problem to the outside world. Until ‘in my forties it really started to show and it really started to get out of control. My life had really started to unravel.’

Things got worse after he parted ways with Gucci and he had what he has called a ‘mid-life crisis’. ‘I became quite depressed. When you’re depressed you drink more and when you drink more you get more depressed. And along with the drinks there were drugs. And when you have that kind of high you also have that kind of low. And I didn’t have a child and I didn’t have — y’know for a couple of years — a career. My life… I honestly don’t think I’d be alive if I hadn’t stopped drinking.’

Living in London did not help in his battle with the bottle. ‘I have to say probably one of the reasons that my drinking did get out of control was living here. You can very easily consume ten drinks a day and be considered absolutely normal. You go to lunch, have a couple of drinks. Come five o’clock at the office, we’d have a couple of drinks. Then I’d get dressed for dinner, couple of drinks while I was getting dressed. Go out, three drinks at dinner. Going out to a club after that, three more. Add that up, you’re at like ten, 12.

‘Sometimes I’d say to my friends, “I think I have a drinking problem” and they’d say,’ — here he affects an English accent — ‘‘Oh, you don’t have a drinking problem! Have another drink!” Once I stopped drinking I found this clarity, which can be painful for a while but my life has just fallen into place. I built a business, made a movie, had a child, I’m making another movie.’

Ford will film Nocturnal Animals in a very tight six-week window between designing collections, wrapping the day before Thanksgiving. ‘I wrote the screenplay, I’m directing it, I’m producing it and I’m financing it,’ he says. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if he also wrote the theme tune, sang the theme tune.

He will set up a film-editing suite at one end of his design studio in London so he can spin both plates concurrently. Ford must be the ultimate multitasker. ‘Actually I can’t multitask. I don’t think of that as multitasking. I’m in the editing room and all I’m thinking of is that and “OK, right, it’s one o’clock, now I’m focusing on shoe heels — don’t talk to me about the bags because it’s shoe heels right now.” I have to focus!’

This coming Monday, the focus shifts to menswear for his London Collections: Men presentation, about which he will reveal little other than to say it is loosely based on New York at a certain time in his life — presumably the Studio 54 years in the late 1970s when he used to hang out with the Andy Warhol set.

Those were the heady, hedonistic years that he has now left well behind. He has absolutely no desire to drink again. ‘It’s very interesting. I can mix cocktails for people, I like being at parties where people are drinking a little bit — until they start slurring and it gets really boring and I want to go home, get into bed and read a book.’

Ford claims not to like going out any more, says he’s an introvert and the glamour is all for show. ‘It’s putting on armour for me to play the part of what people expect Tom Ford to be,’ he says. ‘It’s almost a performance, like going on stage. And it’s exhausting, it’s exhausting, it’s exhausting.’ He’s so dramatic.

‘I’m a very shy person. You probably won’t believe that, but I really, really, really, really, really am. I do not like big parties. I like dinner with six or four good friends or one-on-ones. Most people think I lead a very different life. They see me in a retouched photo selling perfume, or in a magazine, and probably think that I am drinking and girls are lying around my house naked and we’re doing a lot of drugs,’ he says. ‘But really I’m at home having dinner with Richard and Jack and we’re probably going to watch television after dinner and I’m going to be in bed by 10pm or 10.30pm.’

Not that he sleeps much. Ford has long been an insomniac. He says he occasionally manages six or seven hours but most nights he gets only three or four — and even then that’s with the aid of a sleeping pill.

There was a time when he took up to five baths a day, but Jack has also pulled the plug on that. Now he’s down to two. When he gets up he makes himself a giant iced coffee and comes to in the tub. ‘I’m getting the pill out of my system if I’ve been lucky enough to sleep. If I haven’t, then I feel like hell and I kind of ache all over and a hot bath can help that, too.’ He finds a long hot soak to be ‘meditative’, and says, ‘I resolve a lot of things in the bath.’

Our hour is up. His focus must now shift. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Ford,’ I say as he leads me out. ‘Oh please,’ he replies. ‘Call me Tom.’

EveningStandard

 

[Chanelcouture09]

^Accompanying cover.


*Standard.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

net-a-porter partners with tom ford on e-commerce exclusive
by jessica iredale

net-a-porter’s momentum with big brand luxury exclusives is in full swing.

The e-commerce site is partnering with tom ford as the first online retailer of his men’s and women’s ready-to-wear collections. Ford currently sells his collections in 110 of his own boutiques and brick-and-mortar department stores globally, and has his own e-commerce site, tomford.com, which carries the designer’s men’s and women’s accessories as well as beauty — and only ships to the u.s.

Ford’s rtw line will launch in july on net-a-porter and in september on mr porter.

“net-a-porter is extremely strong in selling designer merchandise online and obviously tom ford ready-to-wear online, bags and shoes is a massive draw for our customer,” said sarah rutson, net-a-porter’s vice president of global buying. “we’ve got a proven track record of selling at this level, especially brands that either have very limited e-commerce themselves or no e-commerce.”

in april, net-a-porter rolled out chanel fine jewelry called coco crush — the first time the brand sold online. Ruston said it was an important door-opener with the luxury e-commerce holdouts. There are more exclusives in the works, but rutson couldn’t disclose at this time. Toby bateman, the buying director of mr porter, said brunello cucinelli would be signing on in july. Bateman said the tom ford deal happened before the coco crush initiative, and was a result of an ongoing dialogue between ford and natalie massenet, net-a-porter’s founder and chairman.

“there’s been a broadening of the collection that tom ford is offering,” said bateman, noting the fall and spring 2015 shows. “there’s been a surprising element of sportswear in those collections. That evolution is something that again makes the timing right to work with a company like mr porter. Not only will we be stocking the signature three-piece business suit and tuxedo program, but we’ll also be stocking really the strong denim program, too.”

for women’s, net-a-porter will stock an edited buy of fall rtw, including leather military jackets, patchwork maxiskirts, evening column gowns, embroidered dresses and denim and suede pieces, as well as women’s shoes, accessories, cosmetics and fragrance collections. They will carry a selection of tom ford signature fragrances, the tom ford neroli portofino collection and for the u.s. Market, items from the color collection, including an initial offering of the tom ford beauty fall 2015 runway look.

Mr porter will carry fall rtw including tailoring, formalwear, luxury casualwear, shoes, accessories and grooming collections.

Rutson said one of the benefits of selling on a multibrand platform is that brands are exposed to new customers. But it’s also simply a sign of the times.

“the brands are now absolutely in realization that, once upon a luxury, customers wanted to buy in-store. They wanted to touch and feel in their environment,” rutson said. “it has nothing to do with whether it’s luxury or not. The customer today doesn’t have those ideologies. You don’t have to go to a monobrand boutique to purchase. They’re totally nuanced in buying online.”

*wwd

 

[GIVENCHYlover]

Grat news

 

[Nymphaea]

The Edit: The TOM Commandments

Dress with mystery and don’t rule out black for a wedding: the designer known as the King of Sex, TOM FORD, shares 10 of his ultimate style rules with KAY BARRON.

1 Don't let fashion dictate to you
I always feel a little sad when I see a woman head-to-toe in a runway look. Women also change their hair a lot, but if it’s done in an insecure way, that makes me feel sad, too. You need to make what you are wearing your own.

2 never try to be overtly sexy
I’m more interested in a little bit of mystery. Maybe it’s my age… Or maybe it’s because the women in my life are starting to wear stockings now because they think the skin on their legs isn’t as good as it used to be!

3 Find your uniform
If you have five outfits that you love wearing and always make you feel your best, which are comfortable and confident and just work, why do you need all the others? Yes, you need some variations on the theme – you don’t want to wear the exact same clothes every day – but I think it’s very important for everyone to figure out what their look is.

4 remember: sexiness is about confidence
Sexiness comes from the way you move and the way you handle yourself. It doesn’t come from short skirts and low-cut tops.

5 Reassess your style every five years
Bodies change, looks change, everything changes, so every five years you need to take off all your clothes and reassess yourself. Try your clothes on and see what still works and what should be rethought – not in an emotional way but in a detached way. Also, do it on your own, because it’s not about what your friends or partner think, it’s about how you feel.

6 Make an effort
No matter what your personal style, people have to look at you in the same way they have to look at a building, or a piece of art, or a table, or a new car. You become a part of the photograph, the landscape, someone’s vision.

7don’t believe you need wardrobe essentials...
It isn’t about owning a classic white shirt or a black blazer – I know women who wear that and look like they’re doing a chic androgynous thing, and other women who look immediately like they work on Wall Street. It’s about your own taste; camouflaging the things you don’t like and accentuating the things you do.

8...but everyone needs at least one LBD
Because you never know when you’re going to have to go to a funeral, or a job interview, or a last-minute wedding (maybe you’re not supposed to wear black to weddings, but I would). It’s perfect for everything: you can wear it with sandals and it’s a summer look; with a heel, it’s an evening look. Long, short, fitted, loose, it’s such a key piece. It is always chic.

9 Don’t underestimate the power of makeup
By changing your makeup you can channel the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s... You can do everything with beauty because it’s the character; it’s who you are. I find that fascinating. There was a trend a couple of years ago that saw women dressed casually in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers with mega makeup – I loved it. It’s a great way to express yourself that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have a lot of money.

10 Focus on a feature
I don’t like to see a major lip and a major eye statement [at the same time]. I think if you’re going to accentuate your eyes, great, but then you need a neutral lip. If you’re going to do a bold red lip, it looks the best with almost nothing on your eyes, except maybe a little bit of mascara. I really like to see one makeup statement and just beautiful, glowing skin.

net-a-porter

 

[cheepmunk]

That's surprisingly sensible advice. Did he really say with a straight face that women should not try to be overtly sexy?

I’m more interested in a little bit of mystery. Maybe it’s my age… Or maybe it’s because the women in my life are starting to wear stockings now because they think the skin on their legs isn’t as good as it used to be!

Also, this sounds so unbelievably obnoxious and condescending to me, and yet I can't help but be entertained by him every time he's quoted.

In conclusion, shut up, Tom Ford, and stop making me like you.

 

[Lola701]

That's surprisingly sensible advice. Did he really say with a straight face that women should not try to be overtly sexy?



Also, this sounds so unbelievably obnoxious and condescending to me, and yet I can't help but be entertained by him every time he's quoted.

In conclusion, shut up, Tom Ford, and stop making me like you.

Tom fashion has never been about being overtly sexy. He may use the power of sex but it's not just "sexy clothes". His clothes are not easy to wear. You don't just wear Tom Ford to be "sexy". It's much more about being confident and knowing our style.

And from what i've seen (and as a customer myself), his clients are not about being overtly sexy. SS2015 was much more about an attitude than overt sex.

 

[cheepmunk]

It’s so funny that you said that, because I feel like S/S 2015 was one of his more overtly sexy collections yet. Heh, we probably have different definitions of overtly sexy. I remember a lot of sparkly pasties from that collection. Where is the mystery (to use his own words) in that?

I think he does produce the type of clothes that you describe – powerful and confident – and I appreciate that he’s one of the few designers who go that route when designing for women. But I don’t think that aesthetic and overtly sexy are mutually exclusive, though they’re not always synonymous either. Sometimes his clothes are both, sometimes one or the other. I felt that his S/S 15 collection did have the attitude you describe, but sometimes the clothes overwhelmed it. (Or maybe it was the models. Don't get me started on the models.)

There’s nothing wrong with overtly sexy clothes, and I reject the idea that overtly sexy = trashy (not to imply that that is what you were saying, but just as a clarification of what I mean), so when I say his clothes are overtly sexy, I don’t mean it as an insult. But it’s hilarious to me that, especially in light of the S/S 2015 collection, he of all people would put it on his list of things not to wear. What were the pasties and some of those tops if not overtly sexy?

 

[Chanelcouture09]

 

[GIVENCHYlover]

Tom Ford will be staging his first men’s catwalk at LCM this January

Big news out of BFC HQ this morning: Tom Ford will be putting on his first-ever men's show at London Collections Men this coming January. Following seasons of slick, appointment-only presentations at his head office, the American designer will be setting his models loose on a catwalk for autumn/winter 2016 - something he's never done before for his men's line anywhere in the world. Needless to say, we're already chomping at the bit to see what he's got in store. That said, we'll all have to contain our excitement for a little while longer as it's been placed as the final show of the four day menswear festival - a suitably superb climax for the season.

However, that's not the only shake-up on the schedule. Of course big names like Burberry, Coach and Alexander McQueen are back for another round, but this year they're joined once again by Moschino and Pringle of Scotland - both bringing their shows back to the capital. And with the closure of the Old Sorting Office (RIP), there's also a new venue to explore: 180 Strand (aka a gargantuan, Brutalist building, formerly the Deloitte headquarters).

gq-magazine.co.uk

 

[Phuel]

^^^ Thanks for the article, GIVENCHYlover.

You know, at this point I don’t really care where Tom’s showing— either it’s his menswear, or womenswear. Because, he’s proven that with his own label, it’s the clothes in his shops that consistently impress— not the hyper-stylized versions on the runway. He’s just not that same designer he was when he reigned with Gucci. And that's a good thing to me: People evolve, change, and so do designers.

Seeing, touching and wearing his clothes in reality is where it counts for me whenTom's concerned Aside from the gaudy tuxedo jackets that have (unfortunately) become a staple, signature piece from his menswear, I’m always impressed (and even drooling) when I see his menswear offerings in the flesh (in the cloth?).

I don’t care for celebrities modeling his clothes ‘cause the last thing I want is to be wearing is the same suit/jacket/coat that Kanye or whomever’s the flavour-of-the-season will be associated with in GQ… If anything, that’s a repellent rather than an attraction because none of these people have any style, as far as I’m concerned.

 

[Lola701]

^^^ Thanks for the article, GIVENCHYlover.

You know, at this point I don’t really care where Tom’s showing— either it’s his menswear, or womenswear. Because, he’s proven that with his own label, it’s the clothes in his shops that consistently impress— not the hyper-stylized versions on the runway. He’s just not that same designer he was when he reigned with Gucci. And that's a good thing to me: People evolve, change, and so do designers.

Seeing, touching and wearing his clothes in reality is where it counts for me whenTom's concerned Aside from the gaudy tuxedo jackets that have (unfortunately) become a staple, signature piece from his menswear, I’m always impressed (and even drooling) when I see his menswear offerings in the flesh (in the cloth?).

I don’t care for celebrities modeling his clothes ‘cause the last thing I want is to be wearing is the same suit/jacket/coat that Kanye or whomever’s the flavour-of-the-season will be associated with in GQ… If anything, that’s a repellent rather than an attraction because none of these people have any style, as far as I’m concerned.

Totally but i've have to say that i'm enjoying more buying his womenswear since he started doing catwalk shows. His spring 2015 was just beyond good. I could have bought the entire collection (no pasties ).

What you said about the celebrities is so right. That's why i believe so many mens/women are faithful to his clothes.

But i think it was time for him to take his menswear to another level...even if part of him believe that this decision is influenced by the production of his movie. Between the menswear, the oscar season, the womenswear and then his movie promo tour, 2016 will be a very busy year for him.

 

[Phuel]

^^^ Oooohhhh yes, I do adore that collection (except for the Vegas-stripper shoes) and the Rock-chic imagery: Wise investment, Lola! There was a tease of his Gucci-days there, which I don’t mind from time to time as long as he builds from that rather than just repeat— like so many designers will do. For me, Tom's outlived the hype and the gimmicks, and has maintained his place in high fashion's parthenon.

People can accuse him of being irrelevant all they want, but I always get the impression that it’s usually people who are going by what they see on the interweb rather than making the effort to see his designs up close and personal in his shops.

(A Singel Man remains so good, I hope the new film will succeed on the same level again: Storytelling, characterization, soundtrack, styling and cinematography. Although, Jake being the lead is what’s holding me back from squealing for this new film. Just don’t like him.)