Tom Ford : Life after Gucci

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Chaka Khan.

 

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Tom’s New York Days

Tom Ford’s gone vegan (with a side of sugar), is rethinking fur, and loathing red carpet politics. And — oh, yes — he’s about to stage two fashion shows within 48 hours, beginning with his men’s show tonight.
By Bridget Foley and Jean E. Palmieri on February 6, 2018


It has been a solid decade since Tom Ford launched his men’s wear collection, but, with the exception of a formal show to mark the opening of his London store, he has opted to present his men’s collections in intimate presentations. Until tonight, when Ford’s men’s wear hits the runway at the theater he has installed in the Park Avenue Armory. The collection has evolved significantly from its tailored roots to encompass a full lifestyle range, which Ford wants to showcase in its entirety. On Thursday, his women’s wear will get equal time.

In a wide-ranging phone interview on Friday afternoon from L.A., Ford explained why he chose to do two shows rather than go coed. He addressed other topics as well, some industry-centric (fur; diversity on the runway); some not (his dietary shift). Talk time with Tom is never dull.

WWD: Hello, Tom. There are two of us here, so you’re on speaker.
Tom Ford: Speakerphone is really intimidating. It feels like a live transmission, like you can’t screw up.

WWD: You could have opted for Skype, but happily you didn’t. You’d be sitting in judgment on my messy office.
T.F.: Do you remember on “The Jetsons,” because that’s our generation, they had that television phone thing, and they would hold up a fake mask to talk, and one day the mask fell off and both women looked like hell? That’s what we all need – a fake avatar of ourselves for FaceTime and Skype. Then I’d do it all the time.

WWD: I need the avatar of myself and an office avatar.
T.F.: You could just set the whole thing up. Actually, that’s a really good idea.

WWD: It is a good idea. In the meantime, let’s turn to your men’s show. Why did you decide to show men’s in New York? Why now?
T.F.: First of all, it’s been 10 years since I launched men’s. I have done presentations with men that were like miniature shows, meaning the guys would come out one at a time, one at a time to roomfuls of people, over and over throughout the day. I also had a small, just-men’s show in my London shop when we opened there. And then, of course, I put men on the runway with women when we did our New York buy-now/see-now/wear-now — whatever it was called.

But it’s been 10 years, and our men’s wear has evolved. A lot of people think of us as tailoring, and we certainly are one of the fashion companies that dominate tailoring. When men think about their ideal suit, hopefully they come to us. And they do; our business is very strong. But over the last maybe five years, we have also broadened quite a bit. We offer every product a man needs — more casual clothes, jeans. The collection has evolved, and I wanted to show that on the runway so that people were aware of it. Also, I’ve been showing women’s in New York and living in Los Angeles. I thought, what a great thing to be able to tag men’s to the very end of New York Fashion Week: Men’s, and then show women’s at the beginning of New York Fashion Week: Women’s. It just made perfect sense.

WWD: You’ve said that living in L.A. has influenced your approach to women’s. Is that true for men’s as well?

T.F.: I’m showing some tailoring because tailoring is important and one of the things that we do best. Our suits have 35 hours of handwork in them. It’s very hard to find clothes that are made that way.

But living in Los Angeles, everyone knows that the L.A. lifestyle is more casual than London, where I lived for the last 20 years. It starts to change your aesthetic regarding color and, possibly, a bit more flamboyance. Things work in Los Angeles that don’t necessarily work in London, which in men’s wear, at least the kind I do, is quite a traditional city. I think more and more, the [rest of the world] lives more the way people live in Los Angeles than in London. I love London. It’s a traditional place; it’s like a throwback to another time. My few favorite restaurants in London, you have to wear a jacket and tie when you go. I love that. I love that tradition. Maybe I wish I still lived in that period but I don’t. I live in 2018 and the world, whether we like it, don’t like it, is more and more casual. So living in Los Angeles is making my clothes, both men’s and women’s, more relevant in terms of my ability to dress a global customer instead of just these pockets where men, in particular, are very traditional. You have that pocket in New York. You have it with Hollywood agents. If you go to the CAA building, everyone is wearing a suit and tie. And you have it, of course, in Milan and you have it in London. Much of the rest of the world, they want luxurious pieces but they are dressing in a more casual way.

WWD: Do you have any personal views on New York Fashion Week: Men’s, and how it stacks up against other cities?

T.F.: I’m really happy about New York Fashion Week: Men’s. I investigated possibly showing there, I think, as long as a year ago, when it was first starting, maybe two years ago. And I’m very happy that it’s landing right at New York Fashion Week: Women’s.

I’ve shown men’s and women’s together on the runway. I think I might even have started that in the mid-Nineties at Gucci. You know, I had a red velvet suit on a man walk right past the red velvet suit on a woman, and I used to always put men in my women’s shows and I’ve done it before.

I think some brands do it very well, where there is a unified image between men and women. [For me], there is a slightly different vibe to my men’s wear than to my women’s wear. While they may be the same couple, it isn’t necessarily exactly the same rhythm, vibe.

WWD: Talk about that. How does a coed show impact the design process for each collection?

T.F.: They do have to work on a runway together, so it affects how you design. Men’s wear is usually what suffers because you have to pump it up to hold up on a runway next to the women’s wear. Men’s does not swing radically from season to season in the way that women’s fashion does. Putting men on the runway next to women — it forces you, because it’s one show, to pump it all up. One brand that I think does this very well is Gucci. I think Alessandro [Michele] mixes the men’s and the women’s together beautifully because it is one thing. But his men’s wear customer is very different than my men’s wear customer.

WWD: Positive words on Gucci!

T.F.: I have to say, I love Alessandro. I love what he’s doing. It took me many years to get over that [the ugly departure form Gucci]. Actually, Alessandro helped it because I think he is terrific and what he’s done with the brand is amazing. Somehow that has made me feel better about the whole thing than when I didn’t think that they were doing such a great job. So I’m happy for him. I’m happy for the brand, and I think he does a terrific job. I think he has an amazing vision.

WWD: He certainly does. About Gucci, do you still have then some sort of a sense of…

T.F.: A proprietary sense?

WWD: Yes, a proprietary sense.

T.F.: It’s a proprietary sense, absolutely. There was no archive when I arrived. It was a cardboard box with some pictures in it. I bought the Gucci Cadillac and I bought the Gucci Lucite piano and I assembled all of that. Dominico [de Sole] and I put all of that together. We bought all those brands, and Gucci was my life for 14 years. So I’m much happier seeing Gucci thrive than I was seeing Gucci flounder.

WWD: That’s impressive. When you put men and women together on the runway at Gucci, why did it work then?

T.F.: The very first breakthrough show I had for Gucci wasn’t women’s; it was men’s, in Florence. It was velvet pants and car-paint patent Gucci loafers. Then the following season I continued that for women, and there was a very, very definite link between the two. You know, the Gucci guy and the Gucci girl, a lot of people took pictures of them together, holding hands. I think there’s one in my book of Kirsty Hume and a guy, and they’re holding hands wearing his-and-her clothes. It was a unified look. That’s what I also wanted to say at that moment: This is the Gucci look for men, for women. It’s a world. I mean, Ralph’s men and women would go together, too, because it’s a world. Certain brands, there is a world.

What I do for men is more traditional, classic men’s clothes. What I do for women is fashion. My men are more the boyfriends or husbands of the women in my show, rather than they are cut from the same mold and are exact counterparts. So when I put them together on the runway, I guess it was a year-and-a-half ago in New York, I had to try to bump some of the men’s patterns up a bit so they could hold up with the women’s. It’s a different thing. You have to consider it. They are different solutions, but it is a considered thing.

Men’s wear buyers and editors, they’re excited by a change in the lapel. They are excited by a change in a shoulder or by the use of a new fabric, by very subtle things. That doesn’t excite the women’s wear editors and buyers; they are excited by a dramatic change. I would never say never, so who knows, maybe one day I’ll show them together. But for the men’s show now, that’s what I want people to be looking at — the details. It’s a different industry.

WWD: You show men’s on Tuesday and women’s on Thursday. Advantage or a disadvantage to be doing two shows so closely together?

T.F.: From a financial standpoint it’s a huge advantage. I build that fashion theater, I use it once and then 48 hours later, I use it again. [Laughs.] I’m using it twice rather than building two different theaters in two different places at two different times. So from a financial standpoint, it’s a huge advantage.

WWD: Does it bother you that the “big reveal” for the set is at men’s rather than women’s?

T.F.: I have never liked the concept of a gigantic set, a complicated set. I think it just masks weakness in the clothes. I like showing on a simple runway, always have, under a spotlight, one thing at a time, very traditional. My men’s runway is just like my women’s.

WWD: The runway is the same, but you said the industries are very different.

T.F.: It’s night and day. They are totally different worlds. The editors are different, magazines are different. Everyone in men’s wear works just as hard as people in women’s. But because things move more slowly, I think there’s less disposability. I don’t even know how to phrase this. When you’re in an industry where things move so fast, sometimes maybe it affects your behavior, it affects your boredom threshold; it affects the need to see more, consume more, throw things away, toss it out, “Oh that’s old, oh that’s new, oh get that, oh go there.” Whereas men’s is – I hate to use the word genteel, but it is. It is still a more genteel industry.

WWD: Do you like it better?

T.F.: No, I can’t say that. There are advantages to both. I have a pretty low boredom threshold, and I think if I only did men’s – which is why I came back to women’s – I wouldn’t feel creatively satisfied. I like something that moves and changes and is dramatic and it’s got flash and power. But I also like making clothes that I want to wear.

I suppose my men’s collection is more organic in that I started it because I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to wear. I thought, “OK, if I can’t find this, then there are other men in the same position.” And so I designed things for myself. Or — and we have talked about this before — I design things for the hypothetical six-foot-three version of my 27-year-old self. But it’s a different thing. I don’t know if I answered your question.

WWD: In some ways, the industry seems set in its ways and in others, it’s progressing very quickly. Fur, for example. After years of fur all over the runways, suddenly, two major proponents, Michael Kors and Gucci, just stopped. Where do you stand?

T.F.: Oh my God! The fur question! There’s no way to answer this fur question without getting in trouble with somebody. I was attacked by PETA at a Women’s Wear Daily event. Do you remember this? A woman came up and started to talk to me, and I thought, “Oh, she wants to ask me a question.” She reached in her handbag, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was reaching for something. I thought it was a gun. It was a giant container filled with tomato juice, which came flying out of her bag, all over me, all over my clothes, all over everything. It wasn’t that I was upset that I was standing there dripping with tomato juice, but it was one of the most violent, frightening things that has ever happened to me. It made me very cautious and very wary when anyone is coming up to me, and I see a hand move in any direction. I’m always quite aware. I know PETA doesn’t act in that way any longer, at least I hope they don’t.

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WWD: Your stance on fur?

T.F.: This is a hard question to answer because I have recently become vegan — within the last year.

WWD: Really? Do tell.

T.F.: I’ve been vegan for about the last year. When you look at how most of our meat, our animal products, are raised, from a health standpoint, I didn’t feel that I should eat those things anymore.

The fur thing – of course, is a natural thing. [Going vegan] starts to make you question that. I have started using much more fake fur. I’m not yet ready to say that I’m fur-free. Now, however, I have limited the fur in these collections and going forward to food byproducts, which does not sound very sexy. “I’m selling you a food byproduct!” That means cowhide, it means shearling, it means not doing fur that is raised purely for its pelt.

WWD: So no mink?

T.F.: No mink, no fox. I have used a lot of fake fur this season. I’ve also used some shearling and what is called pony in the industry but it is not pony, it is cowhide. There’s longhaired cowhide and shorthaired. So I have been very conscious of using animal skins that are food byproducts. Because whether I’m consuming meat or not, other people are, so these are things that are collected.

I’m also very torn about this because fake fur is terrible for the environment. People think of fake fur as a disposable thing. They buy it, they wear it a few seasons, they throw it away, it doesn’t biodegrade. It’s a petroleum product. It is highly toxic. And then, you could argue that tanning leather is a highly toxic process. A fur coat gets recycled. People wear them for 30 years, they give them to their kids, then they turn them into throw pillows. So I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve been very honest, and it’s probably going to get me in all sorts of trouble with everybody, but I don’t know the answer.

WWD: Was the decision to only use food byproduct fur the result of a single epiphany or a process?

T.F.: It is something that I’ve slowly moved toward, just as my diet has evolved. Yes, it’s been a gradual process. I don’t know. It’s a very hard thing to answer.

Also, I have a customer who is very used to wearing leather and fur; it’s a part of our business. It was certainly a big part of our business at Gucci. By the way, Gucci is a leather goods company. I know they’ve banned fur, but they’re making a lot of leather handbags, I think. I don’t know what the answer is. I would like to hope that we could all have a discourse about it without running the risk of having someone reach into their handbag and douse us with some sort of red liquid, or [do] something even more violent.

WWD: Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could have discourse about a lot of topics?

T.F.: It’s the environment we live in in today’s world, not to be too political, where it’s become acceptable to not show respect to people who don’t necessarily share your point of view.

WWD: Back to the dietary evolution…

T.F.: I think the nail in the coffin was a film called “What The Health.” I had already been thinking about it and tapered off consumption of animal products. I watched that film — by the way, it’s very one-sided but very well-done — and I just thought, you know what? I just don’t feel like eating animal products anymore.

WWD: When we talked six months ago, you had a box of doughnuts in your store and you swore you’d just eaten several.

T.F.: OK! I do cheat with baked goods. That’s true. I will eat a baked good that clearly has some eggs in it. But I don’t eat eggs and I don’t drink milk; I use almond milk. And I don’t eat any animal flesh, I don’t eat fish, I don’t eat chicken, I don’t eat meat. But yes, I do cheat with some baked goods, because most vegan baked goods just don’t do it like a box of Hostess doughnuts. And I still eat a lot of sugar.

WWD: You still eat sugar?

T.F.: I mean, I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. Now I don’t eat any meat. I’m essentially vegan. But, yes, sugar.

WWD: Overall, you feel better?

T.F.: I do, actually. I feel physically better being vegan, or eating a plant-based — because “vegan” sounds sort of pretentious – eating a plant-based diet. I feel much better.

WWD: Let’s go back to the runway.

T.F.: Yes. Yes, let’s do!

WWD: There’s nothing negative in saying, “I’m eating healthily.”

T.F.: I’m kidding you. It’s fine. It’s very funny when you become well-known and you’re doing an interview and you realize that people actually care what you eat. It’s fascinating. But anyway…

WWD: There’s so much going on in fashion on so many levels today. One conversation is about diversity on the runway.

T.F.: I have always been incredibly racially diverse on my runways, always, always, always, always.

WWD: Now diversity also means body type.

T.F.: There is a practical reason that most models are the same size, and that’s called a sample collection. You make a sample collection [according to] a standardized selection of measurements for models. One reason people show one size on a runway: I can’t, eight hours before the show when I’m in a fitting and I decide to use a certain girl, custom make an outfit for her. My clothes are made. They are all made in the same size.

This is an industry thing. Whether we all decide to start making all of our clothes in the next size up, that’s a different thing. But there is practicality, there’s a reason models are a standard size. They have always been a standard size. Go to any era; models were a standard size, and the clothes were made in that size. And in today’s world, models are a standard size. You make your collection and the girls come in, they put them on, if they don’t fit the clothes, they don’t get the job. I’ve used very curvy girls and thinner girls, but somehow they managed to fit in the clothes when they come in for their fitting. I don’t know whether that’s answering your question.

WWD: Ashley Graham has looked gorgeous on several runways. But she is one person. No other really curvy models have broken through on the runway.

T.F.: It’s so funny to hear you talk about this stuff because I think this is very insider stuff. I’m sitting here thinking, I don’t hear all the same things you hear, because I wasn’t even aware there’s a discussion about diversity of size on the runway. I didn’t realize that it had become anything that would warrant quotes from me in an interview. So I’m fascinated.

WWD: It’s not so insider. Once a topic hits social media, everything is an issue.

T.F.: Well, everything is an issue. That’s a different subject. So yes, maybe I’m foolish to not have thought that this would be an issue. Everything is an issue, that’s true, yes.

I’ve done shoots with girls who are [not skinny]; if you hire somebody for a shoot, you have time to make her something. And I’ve certainly dressed women of different sizes. So it isn’t that I’m obsessed with just a certain size girl. But the practicality of it is, you have a sample collection and it gets used in the showroom, it gets used on shoots, it gets used on the runway. It’s all the same size and girls need to fit into that if they want to model.

WWD: Another major topic in fashion: cultural appropriation. While everyone is aware of the need to be respectful and informed on references, some designers decline to go on the record with an inspiration, or even stay away from certain motifs they’d like to explore, because they’re fearful of backlash.

T.F.: I don’t know where all this is going to go. I don’t know what we’re going to be able to do in our culture anymore, or say. Yves Saint Laurent spent a lot of time doing collections inspired by North Africa. I did an African Saint Laurent collection because it’s part of the history of the house. I don’t know. I do think we have to leave ourselves a little bit of room to be expressive and creative and…

WWD: Usually, when a creative person looks to another culture for inspiration, it’s because he or she finds something compelling about it.

T.F.: Of course! Of course! Of course! Why would you build a collection on something that you didn’t find beautiful? And why, if you’re one race, can’t you find the fashion, the style, the culture of another race beautiful? I mean, in a way, we should be celebrating that.

WWD: A couple of CFDA things. The Health Initiative has been expanded into the Health, Safety and Diversity Initiative. It encourages, among other steps, that designers seek out venues that allow models privacy while dressing.

T.F.: Yes. I’ve always done that. I’ve always thrown out all photographers, all press when we start to get the girls dressed. I’ve always been very aware of modesty — not even modesty, but propriety, backstage. We give all the girls robes, and we throw every single photographer out and don’t allow any cameras or Instagram, anything, when the girls are getting dressed.

WWD: That’s good. What about the guys?

T.F.: The same.

WWD: What do you think about the notion of some New York designers showing in December and June? Alexander Wang first went public with the idea, and [CFDA chief executive officer] Steven Kolb seems very interested in it.

T.F.: I think it’s fascinating. I have to say I would love it. Doing four collections? It’s crazy. In men’s, we do two collections and we break apart our buy into three deliveries. So we show one season, we show spring, but it’s really spring one, spring two, spring three. And we show fall and it’s fall one, fall two, fall three. We don’t do pre-collections. I would love it if that was the way women’s, if your pre-collection and your [runway] were mixed and shown at the same time. By the way, I don’t show [women’s] pre-collections. The reason is that pre-collections were always meant to be the very wearable clothes, what people might even call basic, but [still] were representative and containing the DNA of the brand. Those things don’t necessarily mean much on a runway.

WWD: The CFDA apparently only floated the idea selectively, apart from Alex, mostly to those who have left New York for Paris – Rodarte, Proenza, Joseph Altuzarra, Thom Browne. Were you approached?

T.F.: No. I wasn’t approached. But again, it requires a re-fit of the business. Just like see-now/buy-now/wear-now, whatever it was called, I think that could work, too. But it requires the entire industry to rethink and reorganize and unite in a certain way. I don’t think you can kind of throw it together in one season. Maybe you can. I don’t know.

I would have to really plot out the logistics of what it would mean for us as a company in terms of when sketches get done and when fabrics have to be [delivered]. But the idea of it? Because it’s unsustainable now — four major collections a year that have to be presented to the press and sold, it’s unsustainable. There is no downtime. The fact that everyone’s hiring separate teams for their pre-collections? If you’re a designer, how do you have a separate team? I can’t have a separate team. Otherwise, why should I put the Tom Ford label on it? Because if I’m going to be involved in it, I’m going to do it. What does a separate team mean? I’m the one there doing it. So how does that work? It has become unsustainable, the cycle.

WWD: To the women’s show. Will it be, as we discussed last season, casually oriented for day with pieces and then very glamorous at night?

T.F.: It’s like we talked about last season. Day clothes are evaporating, so it’s about a potent jacket, a potent pair of shoes, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt for day. And then at night you’re done up; at least my customer is. You might wear some of those evening pieces mixed in with something very casual in the daytime.

WWD: When you only need one potent item for day, what is the ramification for the business?

T.F.: It means every single thing you design, at least in the luxury sector, has to be potent. I’m not saying basics don’t mean anything, as we were talking about earlier, “pre-” used to be about that. But it has to be the most beautiful cashmere sweater ever known. It has to be the most amazing thing. No one needs just another black skirt, unless it’s got an interesting cut or an amazing fabric or something about it that means something. For my customer — this will sound terrible in print — I get calls from our store managers all the time saying we need more things that are more expensive. When [they] say more expensive, they mean more special.

We sell incredible, almost one-of-a-kind, almost-couture for women more than men. Men — our suits are $5,000 off the rack, and up if you have them made-to-measure. Our made-to-measure business is terrific, one of the fastest growing areas of what we do with men’s.

WWD: Really?

T.F.: It’s about customization — it’s about making something that not everyone else has, it’s about coming in and being involved in choosing the lining, the fabric, the cut, the shape, the size, the buttons. It’s part of that need for something special. A luxury customer does not need anything – they have everything. So it’s an emotional purchase. It has to be something that moves them, it has to be something that excites them, it has to be different, it has to be amazing. And it has to be something they’re going to keep. Which means that the things have to be potent.

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WWD: Speaking of potent – the red carpet. How has this red carpet season been different for you?

T.F.: It’s different for me because almost every single actress has a contract, so there are almost no actresses to dress. I don’t do [contracts]. I make the clothes, I give them the clothes, they wear the clothes and then I usually get them back because I archive them. I keep an archive of all the things of mine celebrities have ever worn. But I don’t pay celebrities to wear my clothes, and almost everyone this season — Best Actress, Best Actor, Supporting — they almost all have a contract.

WWD: Whether there’s a cash payment or an actress is “just” getting a free dress, whether to return or keep, what do you think of the concept of, “Don’t ask me who did my dress. I want to talk about something more important?”

T.F.: I don’t dress those people. If I give you a free dress and someone asks who it is, you need to say who it is. Otherwise, why am I giving you a free dress?

WWD: Good for you.

T.F.: If I’m giving you a free dress, it’s an ad. So if someone says, “What dress are you wearing?” you should say, “Tom Ford. And he’s great. He made this for me, and we had a conversation and I love yellow and he made me a yellow dress.” I don’t know. That’s kind of the idea.

There was a time when actresses went to the Oscars in clothes they bought. Remember that? Back in the Seventies? Actually, you had a lot more personal style. There’s some things in my women’s show you’ll see next week, and I thought, “If someone had the guts, this is what they should wear on the red carpet.” But nobody’s going to wear it because they want a strapless thing with a built-in corset that fits them at the waist and is in a pretty color and they can put their jewelry with it, that they’ve got the jewelry contract for, and they’ve got to do their hair in a little chignon at the back and it’s got to have just so many little pieces sticking out. It’s just – ugh. I’m getting to the point where I actually hate dressing individuals for the red carpet.

WWD: So the red carpet is becoming like weddings for you? I know you hate doing weddings.

T.F.: Yes, I do! And it is. Because now, you’re not only working with an actress. You’re working with a stylist and then the agents are looking at it and then their husbands and boyfriends are looking at pictures and everyone takes a picture of it and da, da, da, da, da. “Do we like it?” and, “But what does it mean if she wears pink? What does that say about her? Does that say she’s an ingénue? She shouldn’t be an ingénue, she’s got that film coming out; we need to portray her in a more grown-up way. So let’s do her in navy blue.” Oh, my God! I mean, I don’t know why people need designers anymore for a red carpet.

WWD: Whatever happened to falling in love with a dress?

T.F.: Some people still do, and some people still have guts and some people wear clothes very well. And I love dressing those people. Although a few of them this season have contracts with other brands and I can’t.

WWD: Will you name some that you love dressing?

T.F.: I always love dressing Gwyneth. Not that many people would have walked down that runway in a cape before everyone was wearing capes [2012 Oscars] and stood that way and held herself that way and been proud and moved. She is not afraid. She’s great. She has presence and knows how to wear clothes. There are others, but I don’t want to get into a list. And as I said, there are some that I would love to be dressing but they’ve got contracts.

WWD: Would you consider doing a contract with anyone?

T.F.: No. A, those contracts cost almost as much as a fashion show. I mean, are you really getting enough bang for your buck? I don’t know. And B, no, I just [don’t like the idea].

WWD: I find it odd that major brands often agree to do dresses that have nothing to do with their brand identity.

T.F.: Because red carpet clothes — they’re frozen in their own red-carpet zone. They don’t have anything to do with what goes on in the real world in terms of fashion anymore. Nothing at all.

WWD: Tell us something more about the men’s show.

T.F.: I’m launching underwear and watches in this show.

WWD: And?

T.F.: [The underwear] — I think they’re very sexy. They’re very real, but I also think they are very sexy.

WWD: Men’s only, right?

T.F.: Yes, for the moment. Although if you’re a woman and you want to wear men’s underwear you can certainly buy them.

WWD: And the watches?

T.F.: I love the watch, it’s incredible. I’m very, very, very, very happy with it.

WWD: A single watch design?

T.F.: It’s a single watch design. Right now, it comes in two different sizes and in different finishes and different colored faces. But it is a watch; it is the Tom Ford watch. This watch has given me the vocabulary to now do another one, but it isn’t like I’m going to have 50 watches. I may ultimately have five models.

Great watch brands, which is, of course, what I’m aspiring to be — Hermès has what, five, six, seven models? Rolex, they have very few but they’ve done an incredible amount of business; Cartier the same. I’m not competing with Cartier and Rolex; that’s a much higher price point. I would say I’m more directly competing with the price point and the target customer of an Hermès watch. I’m very excited about it because it’s a very simple concept that no one has ever done, and is, as far as I can tell, nowhere in the market. It’s something I have wanted for years, and never understood why somebody didn’t do it.

WWD: Only men’s?

T.F: There are two sizes. I don’t necessarily believe in a woman’s watch and a man’s watch. A Cartier Tank is a Cartier Tank, and you buy it in different sizes. An Hermès Arceau is an Hermès Arceau, and you buy it in different sizes. Maybe it’s a different strap.

WWD: Any other new projects, whether definite or swimming around in your head?

T.F.: I could certainly get into home furnishings. I make cosmetics and fragrance and men’s grooming, and I’m working on a women’s and men’s skin-care collection, which I’ve done incredible research on for the last two years. I’m not ready to talk about [it] yet, but that’s a completely different segment of cosmetics. I’m also launching an entirely different collection of cosmetics called Extremê, which is exactly what it sounds like: products that are more extreme and more daring, which will appeal to still a luxury customer, but maybe a slightly different luxury customer. It’s amazing.

WWD: When is that launching?
T.F.: I’m debuting it at this women’s show. We have so many products lined up for launch in Tom Ford Beauty, Fragrances. I’m very involved in that and I love it. And then I have eyewear. We sell 1.8 million frames a year, so that business is very robust. Our men’s wear, our men’s accessories, men’s shoes, women’s wear — I suppose women’s underwear might be next, but I pretty much make most things now.

WWD: How does your brand break down between men’s and women’s?
T.F.: At this point I am probably 60-40, but 60 men’s, 40 women’s, which is, of course, kind of the reverse of what most brands are. But I started men’s in 2007. I didn’t start women’s until 2011. And I’m very established in the men’s market.

WWD: Is there anything that we’ve left out that we should discuss?
T.F.: Oh my God, I don’t think so. Should we talk about my childhood and my sort of upbringing? My mother and my relationship with my siblings and how that made me feel?

WWD: Are you mocking us, Mr. Ford?

T.F.: I’m teasing. Teasing is different than mocking.

WWD: Yes it is. We appreciate that. We’ll save the sibling talk for next time. See you next week.

wwd

 

[Miss Dalloway]

^ Thank you so much for posting the entire interview, and to everyone else that posts. I LOVE his interviews, it's never boring, ever!

 

[FadeToBlack]

Does anyone else remember a video interview Vogue uploaded on Youtube between Tom and Andre? It was whilst he was at Gucci and Tom was wearing Jeans, a White Shirt and A Blazer? and I remember they discussed how Tom loved Denim and how he was sat at a meeting at Gucci in his favourite pair of jeans and didn't have underwear on and flashed everyone in the room because there was a rip in the crotch? I can't find it on Youtube and wondered if anyone had it?

 

[eugenius]

Tom..wearing JEANS (designer jeans, obviously) enough x's to warrant a hole in the crotch? That's about as believable as Donatella showing up in flats.

 

[Lola701]

Does anyone else remember a video interview Vogue uploaded on Youtube between Tom and Andre? It was whilst he was at Gucci and Tom was wearing Jeans, a White Shirt and A Blazer? and I remember they discussed how Tom loved Denim and how he was sat at a meeting at Gucci in his favourite pair of jeans and didn't have underwear on and flashed everyone in the room because there was a rip in the crotch? I can't find it on Youtube and wondered if anyone had it?

Here for you

https://vimeo.com/63210062
There are also episodes with Karl, Nicolas, Miuccia, Helmut...

 

[FadeToBlack]

Lola... I love you! That is the exact interview!!!! Karma!!!!

 

[Lax89]

Anybody knows when his next show will be ? I can't find any news online

 

[MissMagAddict]

Tom Ford on Melania Trump (and the Future of American Fashion)
March 20, 2019
On the Runway | By Vanessa Friedman

The new chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America never said that thing about Melania Trump — and says American designers must look outward.

Tom Ford at Vanity Fair Oscars party in February.Danny Moloshok/Reuters
On Tuesday the designer and filmmaker Tom Ford was the second-highest trending topic on Twitter for a reason that had nothing to do with the actual news he was making.

He was trending because of a quote that had been attributed to him stating Melania Trump was a “glorified escort” and that he was refusing to dress her. His office, however, was quick to point out that he had never said any such thing. Rather, in a 2016 interview on “The View,” he said that (at one pre-campaign time) he had been approached to dress Mrs. Trump, but he declined because she wasn’t “really his image” and besides, he believed the first lady should wear American and wear affordable — and his clothes were neither of those things.

This matters not so much because it is yet another example of the nefarious ways false information spreads over the internet (though it is that) but because on Tuesday Mr. Ford also became chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the industry lobbying group, watchdog and, occasionally, scapegoat.

That makes him the effective face of the industry. And that means that what he says, or what he is said to have said, and what he stands for, will become even more fraught, because he no longer simply speaks for himself, but for American fashion. He succeeds Diane von Furstenberg, who held the post for 13 years, making her the second longest-serving leader in the group’s history (her predecessor, Stan Herman, lasted 16 years).

“People keep saying to me, ‘Why did you agree to do this?’” Mr. Ford said on a call from Los Angeles, where he is based. “The answer is: Out of a sense of duty, I guess. At a certain point in your life you’ve learned enough and done enough, you should share what you know. I think that sense of giving back is very American. It’s certainly much less a European thing. I think I can do a good job and I think I have a vision for it, so why not add it to my list of things to do?”

It’s an interesting time to add the CFDA to a to-do list that includes women’s wear, men’s wear, beauty, accessories and filmmaking. The lack of racial diversity at many fashion brands is still very much an issue; Calvin Klein, once a tent pole of American style, just announced it was closing its designer-led Collection line; there’s a general sense of an identity crisis at New York Fashion Week as young designers jump ship for other cities or decide to sit seasons out; and everyone is worried about the future of department stores, once the style conduits to the country. Not to mention the fact that fashion still has a somewhat fractious relationship with the current presidential administration.

“Diane approached me and then Anna approached me and then Steven approached me and then Diane approached me and then Anna approached me and then Steven approached me,” said Mr. Ford, referring to Ms. von Furstenberg; Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and artistic director of Condé Nast; and Steven Kolb, chief executive of the CFDA.

“I was courted for awhile,” Mr. Ford said. The hard sell reflects both the seriousness of the job and the complications of taking it on at this time. They put a heavier onus on what could be a ceremonial position, and mean it will be incumbent on Mr. Ford to articulate some sort of way forward for the industry and the CFDA’s 495 members.

As to what, exactly, that way forward might be, however, he declined to go into detail until his term officially starts in June, after the organization’s annual fashion awards (nominations were just released, and the fact that Sander Lak of Sies Marjan is in the running for women’s wear designer of the year, when last year he won emerging designer, reflects the general confusion). What Mr. Ford would say was that he felt his international background — his years as creative director of Gucci and, later, Yves Saint Laurent from 1990 to 2004, his time based in London with his own brand from 2010 to 2016 — would inform his message.

“I think the key to the future of American fashion is to become more international and more global,” Mr. Ford said. “Having recently returned to America, one of the things that struck me the most in every industry and in American life was how isolated America was and how inward looking. I’ve always thought of myself as an international designer, designing to a global market, and I think that American fashion needs to think that way. Even if you’re just starting a business you have to be immediately thinking about what’s going to help you be marketable to the world, and not just to America.”

And even more than that — not just to New York. Although the CFDA is based in Manhattan, Mr. Ford, who has been a member since 2000 and has won seven CFDA awards, including the lifetime achievement prize in 2014, has no plans to move, or to be in the city more than the “four or five times” a year he currently visits. He also has no plans to make himself an example of a designer who recommits to New York Fashion Week on a long-term basis.

“I have a global business and sometimes I may need to show in another country,” he said (he has shown in London and Los Angeles). “Sometimes I may need to show in Asia; I may need to show in Europe. I was very honest and upfront about that. But I think the CFDA is an American thing and not so much a New York thing.

“Arguably New York is the center of a certain America, and I realize part of the CFDA is organizing and — I don’t want to say policing — New York Fashion Week. But it is also encouraging American designers to be successful and part of that is embracing the fact we live in a big world,” he said.

It’s an interesting statement, and one that verges on the political in a time when the fight over a border wall has been one of the defining discussions of the year. Under Ms. von Furstenberg, the CFDA lobbied for greater intellectual property protections for designers, embarked on a model health initiative, raised the volume on the conversation about diversity and inclusion, and brought new American designers to Paris for a fashion week showcase. Now it is up to Mr. Ford to choose his issues and decide how to direct his new cast.

“I’m pretty steel-willed,” he said.

source | nytimes

 

[MissMagAddict]

Bridget Foley's Diary: Tom Ford on the CFDA, Houses — and Melania Trump

Tom Ford almost skipped over “Hello.” “Which one of these things do you want to ask me first?” he pretend barked over the phone from Los Angeles.

Even by Ford’s high-profile, high-glamour, high-newsmaking standards, there were several compelling boxes to check. On Tuesday, the board of the CFDA made it official in a unanimous vote: Ford will succeed Diane von Furstenberg as the organization’s chairman. He assumes the post in June, after 13 years during which von Furstenberg has been the CFDA’s face, its guiding light and its heroine. That sea change was the original and primary purpose of our scheduled call.

But who doesn’t love a tony real estate angle? Earlier in the day, WWD reported that Ford bought Halston’s famed house on East 63rd Street in New York in a deal that closed in January, but he’d managed to keep quiet until now. It would have been nifty news even had Halston not been a major influence on Ford’s career.

Rounding out the topics: Tom’s supposed slam at Melania Trump. It came from out of nowhere on Tuesday morning, swiftly reaching Twitter’s number-two trending topic.

Despite his opening question, Ford preferred to set the agenda himself. “Let’s get the other stuff out of the way so we can concentrate on the important thing, which is the CFDA,” he said. “Let’s get the Melania quote out of the way.” Tom, as you wish.

WWD: Did you say, recently or ever, publicly or in private, about Melania Trump, “I have no interest in dressing a glorified escort who steals speeches and has bad taste in men?”

Tom Ford: No! Never! Never, ever, ever have I said that Melania was an escort. I said on “The View” years ago, before [Donald Trump] was elected, that I would not dress her nor would I dress Hillary Clinton, because the first lady and the president in the White House need to be wearing clothes made in America — mine are not — and clothes at a price point that most Americans can relate to, and my clothes are too expensive. I dressed Michelle Obama once and once only, when she was in England for a white-tie dinner party with the Queen and I was living in London. And that was different.

That’s all I said. I’ve never said anything derogatory about Melania, I never would say anything derogatory. It’s so weird, isn’t it, in today’s world the way someone out of nowhere can just make up a random quote and start circulating it on the Internet?

WWD: On Twitter, people were saying: “We can’t find where he said that.”

T.F.: Because I never did. They’re never going to find it because I never said it.

WWD: You are very cool with your stardom. Are you ever even a little bit impressed by the general-population interest in you? Someone can attribute a random, made-up quote to you and it sets the Twittersphere on fire?

T.F.: The number-two, most-trending tweet or whatever it is in America today. I just find it crazy. I mean, there are lots more important things to be concerned with today in the news than a quote from a fashion designer about the first lady, but anyway.

WWD: Does it awe you even a little that you have that power?

T.F.: I don’t think of myself that way. I think of myself as a dad who comes to the office and… Maybe it’s because I am grounded every day by [my husband] Richard Buckley, who is not going to let me feel like any sort of a star.

**WWD: Point taken. Before we get to the house… ** T.F.: Well, let’s just do the house so we can get to the CFDA, the important thing.

WWD: To the house.

T.F.: You did some homework. I felt like it was the Mueller report or something — the same LLC that bought the Betsy Bloomingdale house?

WWD: Old-fashioned reporting by a young reporter, Kathryn Hopkins. Is the purchase of the house at all tied to your CFDA chairmanship?

T.F.: Nooo, not at all. And yes, I did buy the house. I was in that house in 1979 or 1980, only once. I was not a friend of Halston’s, but I was introduced to him and I went by that house with a friend to pick someone up before we were going to Studio 54.

WWD: How old were you?

T.F.: I would’ve been 18. That house, it stunned me. It is and has always been one of the most inspirational houses that I was ever in, and one of the most inspirational interiors. I love [architect] Paul Rudolph. He designed [the Halston] house in 1966 for a pair of gentlemen and then redesigned it when Halston moved in — designed all the furniture. To me, it’s is just one of the great American interiors.

It’s a terrific house in New York. It’s got a garage that flips up. You drive in and the garage closes and it’s like a vault. Yet inside, it’s spectacular. I intend to basically put it back to the way it was the very first time I saw it when Halston lived in it. It’s very simple, very minimal, and there’s not a lot to do. I don’t have to knock down any walls. I basically have to just put in a lot of gray carpeting and the furniture.

I stayed in it when I was in New York the last time [for my fall 2019 ready-to-wear show]. I have sometimes said that New York is not my favorite place. But as [my son] Jack is living in Los Angeles, in the future I want him to know how to wear a pair of real shoes and a jacket and go to a restaurant and go to a play. So it’s a kind of house for the future and for the rest of my life.

WWD: It’s hard to find post-Halston pictures of the interior online. It wasn’t changed much?

T.F.: No there’s not a lot I have to do. It’s been very well-respected. Some very surface changes were made, which I think were a mistake, and so I intend to put it back. But it’s very contemporary, a very modern house. It could have easily been designed today. It’s timeless.

It’s a great piece of architecture and enormously pleasant to be in. I felt instantly at home when I stayed there even though it hasn’t been redone. Hugely comfortable and dead silent inside, yet full of light. You close the door and you forget that you’re right in the middle of New York. It’s wonderful.

WWD: But you’re definitely not moving to New York?

T.F.: No, not at all. I go to New York four or five times a year and for Jack’s school holidays, I’ll be going more. It’s a place to be when I’m in New York.

WWD: One more thing about it. Do you think people will read symbolism into it — Tom Ford buying Halston’s house?

T.F.: It’s fine if they do. I think Halston was one of the greatest American fashion designers. I have always said I was inspired by Halston, his simplicity, his modernity. But I didn’t buy the house because it was Halston’s. I bought the house because I loved the house.

Now, do I share certain design similarities and taste with what Halston liked, a certain streamlined minimalism, certainly with regards to architecture and interiors? Absolutely. So what would have appealed to Halston as a house appeals to me as a house as well. It’s a great house. Inside, it’s one thing. Outside it’s very — what is the word – private. While I was staying there, I had a couple of people come by. I would tell them the address and they’d walk right past it and call me — “where are you?” I’m like, “You just walked past it.” It recedes. It’s enormously private and that’s one of the great appeals.

It’s interesting that it was built for two gay men because, of course, in the mid-Sixties, they wanted to live their life without being observed. And, of course, it worked well for Halston and the things that were going on when he was there. So it’s really a kind of refuge in the middle of New York, which is amazing. And it is so dead quiet. You don’t even hear a horn honk.

WWD: Will the CFDA take you here more often now? T.F.: I don’t think so. I was very straightforward with Diane [von Furstenberg] and Steven [Kolb, chief executive officer of the CFDA] when talking about that. I think that I’ll be able to be in town for board meetings, and that Steven is committed to coming here [to L.A.] a lot when we need to have meetings. And of course, I’ll be at the CFDA Awards, which I often attend, anyway. You know, in today’s world, you can work so well remotely. I work with Italy and London every day.

WWD: The CFDA chairmanship is a huge role. Why are you taking this on? T.F.: I think a sense of duty. I am American, I think I have a lot to contribute. I’ve been in the fashion industry for 35 years. My first few years working were in America on Seventh Avenue. The last 28 years of my career I’ve been in Europe, other than the last two years here. But my American sensibility, my American approach to the business, I think was one of the keys to my success. I am American at heart, even though I have international experience as a designer.

I think this concept of giving back is an American concept. It’s something that you don’t encounter nearly as much in Europe. As Americans, it’s kind of built in that you get to a certain stage in life and you feel that you need to contribute to the next generation, you feel you need to give back, so to speak. I don’t mean it to sound like I’m donating to a charity, but it seems the right time in my career, and a sense of responsibility and duty, really.

WWD: What will you contribute? T.F.: I don’t want to get too specific, because I have yet to even have a first board meeting. Diane is still the chairman of the CFDA.

However, the number-one thing that I think I will bring to this is that I think the future of American fashion is to become international. One of the things that struck me the most moving back to America is the isolation that all of us living in America feel in every industry. We have become an island and we’re becoming more so. I think the key to American fashion is to become more international. Yes, we’re Americans, we live in America, we work in America, but that’s not the key to our future. That’s certainly not the key to the luxury industry or to the fashion industry, because everything today is global.

So I think the perspective of someone who has spent most of his [career in Europe], I do think I can bring to [the CFDA] a global perspective [of the industry].

WWD: You’ve often said, including just last fall when we spoke for WWD’s report on “The State of American Fashion,” that you don’t think of fashion as being national or regional, you think of it as being global. You don’t think of yourself as an American designer.

T.F.: True.

WWD: How does the CFDA fit into a picture in which designers don’t identify as American?

T.F.: Because there are a lot of young designers in America, and there are a lot of American companies that do show. I think that it’s really just a change in the mind-set of how American fashion sees itself in the world. The CFDA still organizes the shows in New York, the calendar, and I think that the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund does some quite great things. I think young designers need to be supported. I think there is definitely a need for the CFDA.

WWD: You’re coming into this at a moment of great volatility in the industry globally but particularly in the U.S. Many American businesses are challenged, and there seems to have been a falloff international interest in American fashion. Are you at all daunted by the position you’re about to assume?

T.F.: Everything is a pendulum. If things were going as well as they possibly could be going, then that’s the dangerous time to take a job because how do you sustain that? And, as I have said, I have not even had a board meeting yet, so I don’t know the ins and outs and the real workings of the CFDA…Let’s just say that I feel I have a vision and something to contribute, otherwise why would I have taken the position?

WWD: How did this come about? Who approached you?

T.F.: Diane approached me, as well as Anna [Wintour], and discussion has been ongoing for a while. It’s very hard to say no to Diane. It’s very hard to say no to Anna. And the thing is, it’s also very hard to say no to me. So I think I’ll be a good successor to Diane.

WWD: It’s tough to say no?

T.F.: It’s one reason I think Diane and Anna are so successful. It’s very hard to say no to them. When they’re determined, they get it done. And I think that it’s very hard to say no to me. When I’m determined, I usually get it done. I think that’s an important part of the position — being someone who it’s very hard to say no to.

WWD: So your candidacy had been on the table for a while?

T.F.: In a more casual way. It became in a very serious way I would say in the last six months. I’m glad to know I was ratified this morning. I wasn’t so sure.

WWD: Official congratulations.

T.F.: Thank you. The CFDA has been very good to me. I remember when I started out in New York on Seventh Avenue in the Eighties, how much the potential of winning a CFDA Award one day meant to me. And I remember the very first one I won and how much that meant to me. I’m not boasting, but I’m staring at seven of them that are sitting right here. They’re one of the only awards that I keep out because they are very meaningful to me.

WWD: Would it be as meaningful to win another one now, this far into your career?

T.F.: Oh, my God, of course. Because the longer you go through your career, the more you like to know that you’re still valid. So, of course winning another CFDA Award would be meaningful because it means OK, I’m not out of the race yet. What I’m doing is still making an impact. So, absolutely.

WWD: What do you think is the greatest challenge of your role, coming into the CFDA right now?

T.F.: As I say, I haven’t even attended a board meeting yet. But following Diane — she has done such an incredible job. She is literally — and this phrase can sound good or bad — but she is larger than life. Diane is a force. She has raised the visibility of the CFDA in so many ways. She really, truly is a hard act to follow. I hope that I can make as much of an impact or even a fraction of the impact that Diane has made to American fashion and the CFDA. She really lends a face to the CFDA.

WWD: Definitely.

T.F.: Diane is very outspoken. You don’t not notice Diane. She represents the CFDA in a way that brings attention to it. You need touchstones and figureheads, I think, to give institutions a personality and a character.

WWD: Can you see yourself as chairman for 13 years, as Diane has been?

T.F.: I’ve committed to a two-year term.

WWD: Have you ever been on the board?

T.F.: Of the CFDA? No.

WWD: How did you manage that?

T.F.: Well, I didn’t live in America and I didn’t even become a member of CFDA, until 2000. I was living in Europe through all the Nineties.

WWD: Do you feel comfortable speaking about what you see as the CFDA’s greatest opportunities and your greatest opportunities in the role?

T.F.: Again, it’s too premature for me to tell you all about what I’m going do with the CFDA. I need to go to some board meetings and [develop] my plans.

WWD: Nuts and bolts, sponsorships. The CFDA just parted ways with Swarovski right before the Awards.

T.F.: I don’t know enough about this to even comment.

WWD: When does Diane’s term end and when does your term start?

T.F.: Mine starts next January, almost a year from now. That’s why this is all really premature. We are almost a year away. Diane is pushing to hand it over to me earlier. [Note: After our conversation, the CFDA confirmed that DVF and Ford have agreed that the formal changeover will take place in June.]

WWD: Pre-Swarovski, the Emerging Designer Award was named for Perry Ellis. Do you have any thoughts on renaming the award now?

T.F.: Noooo these are too specific, I can’t answer these.

WWD: OK, no more specific questions.

T.F.: You can ask them, but I can’t comment on them.

WWD: So, nothing specific about New York Fashion Week?

T.F.: I need to get in there and understand all of the concerns. I need to really get involved to be able to answer these questions.

WWD: No, I understand that.

T.F.: I’m sorry. I’m sorry to disappoint you.

WWD: Not at all. Are you prepared to referee squabbles?

T.F.: Well, I think so. Aren’t I? Are there a lot of squabbles?

WWD: I would imagine there are some. Last fall, for the “State of American Fashion” piece, I interviewed Steven and he alluded to, perhaps, expanding the membership of the CFDA beyond designers. So I guess to brands, to retailers, maybe even to press, is that something you —

T.F.: I have no idea about that. I haven’t had any working discussions yet with Steven or anyone other than “will you accept? Will you not accept? We’ll make it work for you.”

WWD: This is an easy one. Diversity and inclusivity have been major focuses of the CFDA. Do you expect that to continue under your watch?

T.F.: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s the world today. Absolutely, yes.

WWD: Are there any other issues that are important to you that you can talk about?

T.F.: Again, I need to get in. Making an uninformed comment is always stupid because often there are real reasons for why things are what they are or what you can change, what you can’t change. I need to get in and actually understand the workings of it before I make random, irresponsible potentially reckless comments. So I can’t comment yet.

WWD: I understand that. Still, you are by nature not politically correct, and are generally not guarded in your speech. Have you thought of, as Archie Bunker would say, having to stifle yourself sometimes, as the face of the CFDA?

T.F.: You know, as you get older, I’m sure you have found this, there is no time to mince words. You’re just direct. Sometimes that offends people, and sometimes they’re excited by the fact that somebody is just so direct. I certainly intend to be direct. I’m not going to change my personality. But in my job running my own fashion company, you do have to be careful how you phrase things. You can’t just be as candid as you might be at a dinner party. I think there is a way to be direct and to also be respectful and understanding of what is considered today as P.C. and what is not.

WWD: Are you excited about this new CFDA venture?

T.F.: I am. I have a lot going on in my life, which is something that I was very vocal about in expressing to Steven and to Diane and to Anna. That was my great concern. I have the assurance that somehow they’ll work hard to make it work for me. So I hope that we can make it all work, just purely from a time constraint.

WWD: But you’re ready to roll up your sleeves?

T.F.: Of course I am. I never get involved with anything that I’m not fully committed to. I can’t help myself. Someone says, “Oh, it’s not going take any of your time.” Well, of course it will because I’m a perfectionist and anything that I’m involved in I want to be the best, so of course I am.

source | wwd

 

[dior_couture1245]

Gotta admit, I think this could be really great for American fashion. Diane is a fashion character, but has never been a serious or seriously impactful designer. So I’ve always felt that her CFDA always felt out of touch.

Now, Tom’s fashion heyday is over...but he at least is someone rather serious and sophisticated and smart and has left a large and looming legacy over high fashion.

In that sense, I am very curious what kind of agenda he will implement that could steer American fashion into a new frame of mind. I don’t expect a revolution...but I maybe am anticipating a subtle shift in attitudes and maybe even expectations with him at the helm.

 

[MissMagAddict]

Tom Ford, Fragrant Vegan Vampire
By Maureen Dowd
April 8, 2019

HOLLYWOOD — Tom Ford has come early to rearrange the furniture.

He thinks that the already stylish room in the hottest new private club in town, the San Vicente Bungalows, could be even more captivating. So a team of eight club staffers gets busy under his direction, pulling a potted plant from the terrace for one corner and setting up two dozen glowing amber votive candles.

Mr. Ford himself redoes the white flowers, plucking out the roses and leaving in the ranunculus, because he doesn’t like mixed blooms.

The Murphy bed he can do nothing about.

As I enter, the designer is lost in thought, still fantasizing about redoing the room in his own preferred palette, draping chocolate brown velvet on the walls.

Everything in life can always be more sensual and beautiful, if you think about it. And Mr. Ford is always thinking about it.

From the time he was big enough to push furniture, at 6 years old, he was rearranging it in his house, sometimes swapping his for his sister’s. And giving his mother critiques on her hair and shoes.

And that’s why being Tom Ford is awful, in a way.

He always sees what’s wrong. And you can’t help but feel bad for him because you know his flawless flaw detector is always on.

“I am a hyper-hyper Virgo,” he said. “Perfectionist, anal-retentive, supposedly. Seemingly uptight, seemingly aloof. We’re definitely homebodies also. We love the home.” (Or in his case, six.)

Mr. Ford has been known to go to a movie in the middle of the day wearing a suit, and to make hospital corners with other people’s slipcovers.

“I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but he actually can make things better,” said the actress Rita Wilson, a friend. “He’s not afraid to say you need to cut three inches off your hair or lose weight.”

Even on vacations in the tropics or river rafting, she said, Mr. Ford looks eerily perfect. He used to tailor white T-shirts he bought at La Rinascente in Milan, but now he wears his own brand. “The cut of the sleeve has to be just right if you want your biceps to look right,” he said.

In 2003, as the creative director of Gucci, he personally shaved a “G” in a model’s pubic hair for an ad, adding definition with an eyebrow pencil.

Lisa Eisner, who has done jewelry collaborations with Mr. Ford and inspired the Alessia character in his 2016 film, “Nocturnal Animals,” said that he doesn’t expect everyone to be as persnickety as he is.

“At Graydon Carter’s wedding, I drank way too much and ran out to go to the bathroom and got sick on his shoes — really good Tom Ford shoes,” she recalled. “He just laughed and wiped it off.”

And his friends praise his fierce loyalty.

Ms. Wilson recalled that after her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, when she had to present at the Tonys feeling vulnerable because “you have had part of your body removed,” Mr. Ford designed her a beautiful dress to wear that “made my shape look like a normal shape. And he did it with such sensitivity, generosity and love.”

Mr. Ford did not check his phone during the three hours we spent together. He has perfect posture and lovely Southern manners and stands up when you return to the table from the bathroom. His voice, as one fan wrote in a YouTube comment, sounds like what melted chocolate tastes like.

Admiring the votives’ golden aura, I confessed that I’m obsessed with lighting and have been known to unscrew bulbs in restaurant booths or flip off lights at parties.

“Oh, I do that,” Mr. Ford said. “At Tower Bar, if you go to my table, the corner table at the back, there are these overhead spots and on mine it’s blacked out, because I told them, ‘You have to get rid of that spot or I’m not going to come here. No overhead lights.’”

Dim Bulbs

Tips for optimizing your glow like Maureen Dowd and Tom Ford.

Jeff Klein, Mr. Ford’s friend who is the hotelier behind both the bungalows and the Sunset Tower hotel where the Tower Bar is, called an electrician to put in a special switch for Mr. Ford’s table, which can be flipped off when he’s on his way.

“Why, oh my God, overhead light,” Mr. Ford continued, warming to the subject, “where your brow is going to create shadow right there, your nose is going to create a shadow like this, you look like hell, you look like you have no hair, even if you have a lot of hair. Nobody looks good in overhead lighting.

“That’s why I don’t go to Barry and Diane’s lunch party,” he confided, referring to one of the most coveted invitations in Hollywood, on Oscar weekend at the Coldwater Canyon mansion of Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg. “I don’t like the middle of the day. Take a picture at noon, anywhere in the world. You’re going to look like hell — hell. Everybody looks like hell. Unless you’re 18, maybe, or under. Even then you don’t look your best. I like daylight, but not to go out in public.”

‘Painfully Shy’

Mr. Ford cloaks himself in black, planted a black garden in London of black tulips and black calla lilies, contemplates death constantly and plans on designing a black sarcophagus. He is 57 but for decades has not seemed to get any older. And he’s wearing Beau de Jour (one of 39 Tom Ford fragrances), a scent meant to evoke the allure of Cary Grant’s neck.

I told him that all this makes him a member of my favorite cult: sexy vampires.

His face lit up. “A vampire cape was one of the first things I got when I could tell my mother to make something for me, and it was black satin on the outside and red satin on the inside,” he said. “And I had the vampire teeth and I had the LP with the music from ‘Dark Shadows.’ I was obsessed and I wanted to be a vampire because vampires are sexy. They don’t age. Talk about seductive. I’m not talking about Nosferatu, you know. But vampires were usually rich, they lived in a fabulous house or castle. Wore black. Vampires are great.”

Ms. Eisner demurred: “Tom smells too good to be a vampire.”

She said that those who know Mr. Ford simply through the famous shots of him with naked models and actresses probably think he’s “a sex pervert, someone who thinks about sex 24-7. Nope, he’s not that guy at all. He’s very loyal to his friends. Very married.”

Richard Buckley, Mr. Ford’s husband since 2013, confirmed that the facade of gleaming black lacquer is deceiving.

“The one misconception I think most people have of Tom is that he is some kind of press wh*re who loves to have his picture taken,” said Mr. Buckley, a longtime fashion journalist with whom Mr. Ford had a coup de foudre during an elevator ride 32 years ago.

“He is, and always has been, painfully shy,” Mr. Buckley said. “He did acting when he was in his early 20s, so he is able to ‘turn on’ for interviews.” Referring to their 6-year-old son, he added: “And Jack has never been photographed. In London, we have a court injunction to keep any newspaper or magazine from running pictures of him. In Los Angeles, there is a law.”

(The designer takes Jack — who already prefers black despite drawers filled with colorful clothes — every day to school, where “the mothers have to see Tom Ford looking great at 8 in the morning while they look like hell,” an amused Ms. Eisner noted.)

Mr. Buckley, 70, said dryly that their lives are not “all champagne and caviar,” opening up about his nightmarish struggle with the aftereffects of radiation for the throat cancer for which he had surgery for in 1989, three years after the men became involved.

“Tom has seen me through so much, from throat cancer to my brother and mother dying 48 hours apart, to more bouts of pneumonia than I can count,” Mr. Buckley said.

Mr. Ford made his husband gray merino wool turtleneck dickeys with keyhole slits for his tracheotomy tube, and, for formal events, a black silk scarf with slits.

“Tom is actually quite good at sewing,” Mr. Buckley said. (These days, a designer need not be.)

Recently, it was announced that Mr. Ford will succeed Ms. von Furstenberg as the head of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a job he was persuaded to take by her and Anna Wintour.

“He’s a cross between a Rolls-Royce and the Marlboro Man,” Ms. von Furstenberg told me. At a time when Donald Trump’s America is turning away from the rest of the world, Mr. Ford, who has spent half his life working and studying in Europe, says he will reach out because “if American fashion is going to flourish, it has got to drop the idea that it’s American fashion and become global.”

“It’s a turbulent time in some ways for fashion, which has been rightly criticized for its lack of inclusivity, for not having enough women in C.E.O. positions,” Ms. Wintour said. “These are things Tom cares about.”

Indeed, back in the Gucci days, Mr. Ford was one of the first designers to prominently feature African-American and Asian models on the runway and in ad campaigns.

André Leon Talley said that Mr. Ford stands out because he’s “not like most of the cruel snakes in fashion and in cutthroat business. His is an unapologetic universe of sultry, melting-pot sexuality, often fusing or blurring the genders.”

Virgil Abloh, the creator of Off-White and the artistic director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton, said that, at the C.F.D.A., Mr. Ford will not be “just a puppet of the industry going with the flow. He has rigor in his work and his personality, and he will bring challenging ideas.”

Mr. Abloh said that Mr. Ford’s provocative Gucci ads inspired him when he was a teenager in Illinois, into skateboarding, hip-hop and normcore. “I was an outsider,” he said, “and he made me believe in fashion.”

Warhol Nights

Women’s Wear Daily sleuthed out the news that Mr. Ford was the buyer, for $18 million, of the Paul Rudolph modernist four-story townhouse on 63rd Street in Manhattan where Halston once lived, hosting some of the wildest parties of the 1970s (Mr. Ford’s favorite decade) for glitterati like Truman Capote, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Liza Minnelli.

In Los Angeles, Mr. Ford lives in a $39 million Holmby Hills mansion, formerly owned by Betsy Bloomingdale, that is a study in black and white, complete with a Scottish butler named Angus.

He also has property in Santa Fe, where his family moved when he was 11, including a $75 million ranch, which he’s selling, that includes a Western movie town used to shoot such movies as “Cowboys and Aliens” and “All the Pretty Horses.” When a colleague told him that the Rudolph place had been on sale for eight years, he snapped it up.

“I’ve kind of lived in that house in my mind for many years,” Mr. Ford said. “It has dark brown glass, it has a garage, it has a legal curb cut.” There are 32-foot-high ceilings, skylights galore and a roof garden.

New York had long seemed stressful. “It felt like all work, if I walked down the street and somebody saw me, they would get on the phone and call so-and-so and then so-and-so would say, ‘You need to come to my party,’ and ‘You need to go to her opening,’ and ‘So-and-so needs to see you,’ and it just wasn’t fun.”

But then he thought about his son. “I love L.A.,” he said, “but I do want Jack to know how to put on a jacket, go to a restaurant, go to a museum, walk on the street, go to a play.”

Mr. Ford first visited his new house in the heyday of Studio 54, which is where, after years of dating women, he realized he was gay.

He was studying art history in his freshman dorm room one night, feeling disoriented about the move to New York. “I just said, ‘Oh my God, please, please, please let something happen to me.’ Knock, knock, knock. I went to the door and there was Ian Falconer, this guy from art history class, in a little blue blazer, and he said, ‘Do you want to go to Studio?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me, Studio 54?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m going with some friends.’”

One of the friends was Andy Warhol, who picked them up in a Cadillac limousine. “The stretch Cadillacs were fabulous. There were two jump seats in the back. And it was literally like a movie, everyone got pushed aside and we walked right in the door. ‘Oh my God, here I am, Studio 54 for the very first time’ and I drank a lot, did a lot of coke.”

Even back then, he always visualized the sort of cinematic life he has now, with several Warhols on the wall, including a triptych of vulvas and a “Big Electric Chair.” He sold a fright-wig self-portrait of the artist at Sotheby’s for $32.6 million to pay for his stores in China.

That night at Studio 54 was the first night he ended up with a man, and it “freaked” him out. “And I said to him, ‘This was great but this isn’t really what I do or who I am’ and I went back to my dorm room. And I tried to sort of deny that, and then I remember friends that were gay saying, ‘Why are you dating a girl? You’re really gay.’ I suppose I struggled with it for maybe six months. Maybe it was coming from my family background in Texas where, you know, guys are guys. I was nervous about telling my parents, but they’re liberal Democrats who met at the University of Texas and it was pre-AIDS and they were totally cool with it.” (His parents were real estate agents.)

“And I learned later on that it was a plus because people thought if you weren’t gay, you couldn’t possibly be a good designer.”

‘I Need My Armor’

Tom Ford is elegantly dressed, naturally, all in Tom Ford: a black double 002 watch with a removable woven leather band; a white cotton French cuff shirt (“because it’s one of the only things a man can have, a pair of cuff links”); trousers, plain-weave; the black velvet peak lapel jacket favored by Hollywood moguls; and a pair of black cap-toe Chelsea boots. Men in Los Angeles never wear the proper shoes, in his opinion.

“I don’t feel secure in a slip-on or a tennis shoe,” he said. “I think it’s the Texan in me. I could never go to a business meeting in a tennis shoe. You feel soft, bouncy, not in control. I don’t feel good in sweaters either, when I’m out. I feel soft and mushy and vulnerable. I need my armor.”

What about that time in St. Barts when he was nude on the beach and Anna Wintour happened to walk by?

A talented mimic, Mr. Ford describes the awkward moment: “‘Hi, Richard. Hi, Tom.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, hi, Anna!’ Oh, I’m naked! It was a wake-up call.”

(When I asked Ms. Wintour about it, she answered breezily: “Everyone was naked in St. Barts in those days. And if it happened, I’m sure Tom looked as perfect as he always does.”)

Politicians also need their armor, and Mr. Ford, who toggles from Turner Classic Movies to MSNBC to CNN to the BBC, was happy to muse about makeovers for them.

On Hillary Clinton: “I supported Hillary but when she talks to a camera she lifts her chin and all of the sudden, it’s a haughty pose. Now Princess Diana, when she answered a question, she would look up at you from underneath doe eyes, which made you go, ‘awww.’”

On Elizabeth Warren: “She needs shoulder pads!”

On Kamala Harris: “She looks great.”

On Pete Buttigieg: “I started thinking of advice for Mayor Pete and Chasten, but then I realized what’s so great about them is that they’re so natural.”

On President Trump: “He’s a very tall man, but he’s also not the slimmest thing. The elongated ties, it’s one more vertical that could, in his head, make him feel slimmer. He also never buttons his jacket, which I find very odd. I’ve run around rooms at a party buttoning people’s jackets because it gives you a waist.”

And what about the time Mr. Trump Scotch-taped the back of his tie? “Well, Scotch tape is a miracle,” Mr. Ford allowed.

He was drinking a Coke with his grilled artichoke and cauliflower steak, having become vegan, allowing himself the occasional piece of salmon, after watching the documentary “What the Health.” He cheats with baked goods, jelly beans, Starbursts and Skittles. “Sugar is my weakness,” he said. He weighs himself daily, holding at 165 pounds, and hasn’t had a drink for 10 years.

“For several years leading up to stopping drinking — because I drank a lot — on the mornings after, I would have to send flowers to this one and flowers to that one and, ‘Oh, I can’t believe I did that’ and ‘I can’t believe I said that,’ and I told Richard for at least a year, ‘Oh my God, I wish I could just not drink at all.’ And the drinking was the open door for the drugs. Three drinks” — he mimes sniffing a line — “and anything I could hoover, anything was going to happen.”

Living in London for 17 years didn’t help. “You go to lunch there, you have two or three drinks," he said. “In my office at 5 o’clock, cocktail hour started, because we work in fashion until 8 or 9, so you’re drinking, so now we’re up to five drinks.” By day’s end he might be up to a dozen.

When Mr. Ford moved to the land of green juice and kind bud, culture shock ensued. “I was at an afternoon party at a friend’s house, and Martin Short said to me, ‘Do you think you might have a drinking problem?’ Because it was lunch and I was just kicking back the vodka tonics and I didn’t think anything of it. It was the first indication I had that, ‘oh, maybe this isn’t normal.’”

He worked with a therapist for a year, tapered off and then one weekend just stopped.

‘An Unsustainable Thing’

Mr. Ford’s critically acclaimed movies, “Nocturnal Animals” and “A Single Man” (2009), are so drenched in color that they bring to mind the mesmerizing luminosities of Venetian painting.

“I don’t allow the cinematographer to see the film until I’m finished with it because I have very specific ideas and I sit there, frame by frame, on the computer and color-correct every scene,” Mr. Ford said. “And I have the ability to take those mandarin oranges and pop them and then desaturate the rest of the image. And you can manipulate the colors, so it is really like painting.”

He had a new film deal fall apart on him last summer, and he has just bought the rights to a 600-page book he won’t name but has been wanted to adapt for 12 years.

Naturally, he’s looking for more control. “In fashion, we would never design something and then hand it off to somebody else to advertise it,” he pointed out. “All movie trailers sound the same and look the same. I guess what I’ve learned is that there’s this sort of myth that it’s a magic thing that only professionals know how to do and I just don’t buy into that anymore because I feel like I know how to do it better.”

I was surprised to learn he has an aversion to color in his clothes and homes. He tried some, aside from the art, in his Santa Fe home but quickly backtracked because it was too “challenging.” He even painted the bright yellow tractors on the ranch black, to go along with his black Angus cattle, black horses and black backhoes.

“I don’t like color on me because I don’t like to scream, I like to recede in a way,” he said. “I was always shy and so I would feel silly in a bright color.”

He said he feels enormous empathy for women who get frightened about their looks fading. “There’s nothing more powerful in our culture than a beautiful woman,” he said. But “it’s an unsustainable thing. One day it stops. And I have lived through it with so many female friends and part of my job is to imagine myself, the female version of myself, would I want to wear that? Where would I go in it? How would I feel in it? Would I feel vulnerable?”(Mr. Ford said if he were a woman, he would be Ali MacGraw.)

He confessed that his hair “is a little more salt and pepper than it looks. I mean, Diana Vreeland stayed with black hair all the way until the end.

“I’ve been open about using Botox and fillers, although I can move. You have to be very careful with it. I do it about once every eight months. When I go to the dermatologist, I get a hand mirror, I take a white pencil and I say, ‘Right there.’ If I could do it myself, I would.”

Now that he is a parent (and no longer walking naked around the house, as he once did), does he feel the need to tone down the sexuality of his fashion ads?

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” he said, adding that it may also be because of “the hyper-politically correct culture. I mean, you can’t say anything anymore. I was shooting an ad campaign last week, and the guy came up behind the girl and was kissing her on the neck and he was holding her wrists from the back and I said, ‘No, no, we have to change that. Put his hand in her hand.’ I don’t know that any of us will survive this scrutiny.”

His friend and collaborator, the photographer Terry Richardson, was banned from Condé Nast and several fashion houses as part of a wave of #MeToo accusations.

“Ugh! I love Terry,” he said. “And I have to say that I never in my entire life saw any of that with Terry. One of my assistants went out with Terry for two years and he was the kindest, gentlest person in the relationship.”

I wondered about the fracases over cultural appropriation. “Two shows ago, I showed the girls with scarves on their head, which were not durags and that was not where that idea came from,” he said, adding that it came from the ’70s, which I know to be true, because I wore them in college. “And a couple of people wrote that it was durags and appropriation. Well, first of all, if you’re appropriating something, why isn’t that great? You’re celebrating it.”

After we split a lemon meringue pie, the designer dropped me at my hotel in his chauffeured Range Rover.

The next day I flew home. On the plane, I saw a picture of Priyanka Chopra on Page Six, the gossip section of The New York Post.

She was wearing the same Tom Ford red ruched tulle dress that I wore for the interview. With horror, I realized that I had been wearing my velvet corset belt backward all night, with the hooks behind and laces in front.

Mr. Ford was too polite to mention it.
———————
source | nytimes
images not included.

 

[Benn98]

Tom Ford and Julianne Moore Discuss Working Together, Dressing for Instagram, and the Future of American Fashion

OCTOBER 10, 2019 7:01 PM
by CHRISTIAN ALLAIRE

Tom Ford and actor Julianne Moore have a history of working together. Moore starred in Ford’s 2009 film A Single Man and routinely wears his designs on the red carpet. (Who could forget the chic black-and-white number she wore to the 2013 Golden Globes, among other winning Ford creations?) Today at Vogue’s Forces of Fashion conference in New York City, the two friends sat down to discuss a range of topics, including their shared Hollywood successes, working together, how fashion has changed with social media, and what the future of American design looks like.

Moore on Her Relationship With For

“Of all the people that I know and I’ve worked with, I get asked about [Tom] more than anybody else. [He’s] someone who has achieved so much. People admire him, and they’re like, ‘Who is this guy? What is the mystery of Tom Ford?’ He’s much more human, normal, and easy than you would imagine. Tom is direct. He gives you the information. You say, ‘Tom, I don’t know what to wear,’ and he’ll say, ‘You need to wear this. The armhole is too big. The neck should be here on you.’

Ford on How Fashion Has Change

“Nobody wants to wear clothes. It’s changed a lot since I first started in fashion. People wore real, proper clothes all day long. And then you also changed into proper clothes for evening. Now, people wear T-shirts, jeans, maybe a great pair of shoes, a great jacket, and a bag—no matter who you are. Fashion is consumed in such a different way. You used to have trends in fashion where platforms were the shoe, and they stayed the shoe for two or three years. Now, everything is in fashion all at the same time—fashion, stilettos. There’s more freedom and expression of who you are.”

Moore on the First Time She Met Ford

“When I first met Tom, it was in 1998; it was the first time I was nominated for an Academy Award. My baby was two months old. I wasn’t really in Tom Ford shape. I came into the Beverly Hills Hotel and I was really nervous because I was going to meet this giant of American fashion, and here I am with my baby. The first thing Tom did was pick up my little boy—who’s now 21—and said, ‘I want one of these.’” (“I finally have one,” Ford retorted.)

Ford on the Difference Between Designing and Directing

“They’re very similar. If you are a designer or a creative director of a large company, which I have been for a long time, you have to have a vision, and you have to have the most creative people around you that you can have. You have to find a way to help them be their best selves, and to bring out their best performance. And then you have to guide and lead these people to ultimately fulfill your vision.”

Moore on Starring in Ford’s A Single Man

“As an actor, there’s nothing worse than a friend of yours saying, ‘Hey, I have a script.’ Tom and I ran into each other at the Met, and I asked how his movie was going, and he said, ‘Can I send you the script?” I thought, Oh no. But he sent it to me and I read it, and it was absolutely perfect.” (Ford explained that he wrote the part specifically for Moore.)

Ford on the Insular Nature of American Fashion

“I lived in Europe for the last 28 years. I moved back two years ago. And I can feel myself already becoming less aware of the world. When you turns on the news, all it is is America, America, Trump, Trump, Trump. We don’t have the same perspective that Europeans and people in Asia have. We don’t have a global perspective, and that’s so important because we are all in the same world.”

Ford on Dressing for Instagram

“The things that photograph well on Instagram are maybe things that in real life can look a little silly. It’s caused us to become slightly cartoon-like. You need that traffic quality, something that will read as an image. Less and less, we react to each other in a real way. Instagram leaves you feeling ugly, fat, inadequate, dull, pathetic, sad. It makes you want to just jump off a building. But I like the ads! I buy a lot of things from them.”

Moore on Shopping More Strategically

“My New Year’s resolution was to stop shopping. I realized I wasn’t shopping with any thought behind it. There was so much consumption, and I was like, ‘What would happened if I stopped for a year?’ What’s happened is it’s forced me to go deeper into what I own and to wear what I have. And if I’m like, ‘Why don’t I wear those shoes? Oh, because I hate them.’ Then I can get rid of the shoes. Not shopping is helping me refine my taste, consume less and more thoughtfully, and to avoid fast fashion.”

Ford on Customers Getting Personal

“I had a woman slap me one time because her shoe heel broke. She took it so personally. I was standing in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel waiting to get into a car, and a woman came up and slapped me and said, ‘I bought your shoes and wore them to an event, and the heel broke and I looked like a complete fool.’ She thought I had decided to personally ruin her night by making that heel break. It was scary.”

Ford on His Definition of Success

“Success is being satisfied with yourself as a person. It’s feeling that you have done good in the world. It’s choosing what you want to be in the world, how you want to relate to other people. If you’re happy and satisfied with whatever you’re doing, you can’t measure it by materialism.”

Vogue

 

[Lola701]

Two things that I love about Tom more than any other designer (Karl was like that too... he is totally aware of what’s going on and he is totally honest about himself...That’s why his interviews are the best.

 

[MissMagAddict]

How Tom Ford Becomes Tom Ford
An intimate look at what makes the fashion designer tick, by the man closest to him

By Richard Buckley
September 25, 2021

Richard Buckley (1948–2021) was, for 34 years, the man in Tom Ford’s life. He died just this week, and this may have been his last contribution to the world of journalism—a world he knew all too well. Richard leaves behind him a wonderful family, most importantly the couple’s son, Jack, and a sterling career as both a writer and an editor for magazines and newspapers that spanned oceans and titles, including Vanity Fair, Italian Vogue, and Vogue Hommes International.

At a new-normal post-vaccination dinner party recently, Tom was talking about how he hated one of his collections because it hadn’t been ideal. One of the guests at the table said, “You are really a true perfectionist,” to which Tom answered, “Yes, and it’s a nightmare, because no matter how hard you try, it is never perfect.”

That, however, hasn’t stopped him from trying to chase the impossible during our 34 years together, as maddening as it may be for me and the others around him.

On our first date, in November of 1986, Tom told me, “In 10 years I will be a millionaire and showing my collections in Europe.” As I already had six years of fashion-industry experience under my belt, I sat there thinking, “Poor thing. He will become so disillusioned when the system chews him up and spits him out.”

That time, like so many others over the years, he would prove me wrong. He achieved his goal in nine years.

Dealing with the Critics

But it’s not as if there haven’t been, and continue to be, obstacles along the way. After four years at Gucci—and with Dawn Mello, his former boss, gone and no longer breathing down his neck—Tom was named Gucci’s creative director. In many ways, Dawn was a fantastic mentor to Tom, but after her countless years as Bergdorf Goodman’s fashion director, she was a retailer and merchandiser at heart. As anyone in the fashion business knows, merchandisers are all repressed designers.

Tom’s first collection post-Dawn, spring-summer 1995, was important because it would be his first solo outing, and his future depended on its being a success. But already, another fashion house, in a mean-spirited move, refused to release the models for Tom—even though its presentation was six hours later than his, and the Camera Nazionale, the Italian fashion council, had given Gucci a crack-of-dawn time slot at Milan’s Fiera. Those who did make it were generally hungover.

The following morning at the Jil Sander presentation, I tried to read Suzy Menkes’s International Herald Tribune review over someone’s shoulder, but I couldn’t see it. I skipped the next show, went home, and bought a copy of the paper on the way.

Let’s just say Ms. Menkes’s review was not kind. I broke down reading it, sobbing all over the page on the kitchen table. Still very emotional, I called Tom to tell him how sorry I was to read the review, and I asked if he was upset. Oddly enough, he did not seem fazed by the pan at all, and told me not to worry, because there would be many more bad reviews; it was all part of the process.

About a month later, he and I finally sat down and spoke about that first collection. He asked me what I really thought of it. To be honest, I hadn’t liked it much, either, but I couldn’t bear Suzy’s dissing his hard work. I told him the collection was “pretty and nice” but wasn’t sexy. “Whatever a woman puts on, she wants to feel sexy,” I said. “There was nothing sexy there.

The following season, fall-winter 1995, Tom went rogue, grabbing a time slot off of the official show calendar. He got the models he wanted and everything else: the runway, the lighting, and even the men in suits serving drinks, later to become a hallmark of Tom’s tenure at Gucci and at Saint Laurent. The reviews of that show were pretty much raves, including Suzy’s. Tom had amped up the sexy quotient, they liked it, and from that point forward he ran with it. I guess my words had sunk in.

Then, as now, Tom sets a very high standard for beauty, and he works by gut instinct. He sees everything, down to the last detail. I’ve actually never known anyone else with the ability to be so observant or precise. Nothing gets by him. And let’s just say he can be a little imperious in his work, but then he wouldn’t be where he is today if he wasn’t unyieldingly in command. And, although I sometimes hate to admit it, he is always right.

I learned a long time ago not to comment on his collections before they are shown, even specifying that I not see anything. When fashion friends ask, “What have you seen?,” I can honestly tell them, “Nothing, I’ve seen nothing.” Usually he would show me Polaroids the morning of the show—now images on his phone—but I’ve found that the few times I have seen things in advance and told him I didn’t like them, they have ultimately succeeded, maybe not from my own subjective aesthetic, but certainly from that of the rest of the press and the buyers who attend the shows.

Music and Lyrics

I do help Tom with issues with the press. After 34 years together, with him as a designer and my 25 years in the business as a journalist, I have a strong working knowledge of both sides of the fence, and I can give good counsel about how he should handle certain situations, those as mundane as seating placements at press dinners. There are times his “people” will pooh-pooh an idea because they know he won’t like it, but then I will go to the mat and try to convince him that they are wrong.

Over the years, Tom has also asked me for advice on music for his shows, and I often submit suggestions to him. But he usually knows where he wants to take the music. My one big success was right before the fall-winter 1996–97 collection. He called from Milan to say he was having trouble with the music. The next day, I was in the Fnac music store in Paris and heard “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees at a listening post. I literally called him from Fnac and told him to get someone to go out and buy the album. The night of the show, that “Killing Me Softly” closed out the collection with cutout jersey dresses.

I tend to go silent after one of his shows. I do not run backstage and fawn all over him, and I know that hurts his feelings. Truth be told, I am always a total nervous wreck before his presentations, to the point where I physically blank out. I am so neurotically sensitive in that moment that if someone speaks to me, I don’t really even hear the voice. Once the show starts, my eyes dart around the room, looking at the expressions on journalists’ faces. If a model walks by me and I see even one loose thread, I am sure the press will write that the clothes are poorly made.

I remember a show where the poor model, who was walking the runway for her first time, was so nervous she fell over not once but twice. The first time, she literally collapsed right in front of the bank of photographers, and the second, she fell over sideways into the audience and someone in the first row caught her and pushed up back upright. I was sure the show would be killed because “the shoes were impossible to walk in.” It has always been a real problem for me that I cannot watch Tom’s shows objectively, as I would anyone else’s, or enjoy them even slightly.

It was always very difficult for me to walk around from show to show the day after one of Tom’s presentations. Because these were my peers, I had to pretend I didn’t see people, so I averted my eyes when they hadn’t liked the collection. It was difficult to kiss Cathy Horyn, from The New York Times, and Suzy Menkes on both cheeks despite their reviews. As Tom told me in the beginning, it’s all part of the process.

Only once have I relaxed during one of Tom’s shows. It was in February 2020 at Milk Studios, two days before the Oscars. There might have been a few members of the press, but mostly the audience was there to have a good time no matter what he presented. That evening, when the crowd started whooping to the first thumping sounds of the Beth Ditto cover of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” remixed with “The Next Episode,” by Dr. Dre, I thought, This is a party!, and I could, for once, let go and have fun.
source | airmail.news

 

[kasper!]

TOM FORD alumni

Alessandro Michele - Gucci
Alessandra Facchinetti - Gucci, Valentino, Tod's
Christopher Bailey - Burberry
Clare Waight Keller - Chloe, Givenchy
Francisco Costa - Calvin Klein Collection
Frida Giannini - Gucci
John Ray - Gucci Men, Dunhill
Peter Hawkings - Tom Ford
Stefano Pilati - YSL, Zegna, Agnona

Francesco Russo - Sergio Rossi
Pablo Coppola - Bally
Samuele Failli - Alaia head footwear designer

Please correct if I am wrong.

 

[LadyJunon]

TOM FORD alumni

Alessandro Michele - Gucci
Alessandra Facchinetti - Gucci, Valentino, Tod's
Christopher Bailey - Burberry
Clare Waight Keller - Chloe, Givenchy
Francisco Costa - Calvin Klein Collection
Frida Giannini - Gucci
John Ray - Gucci Men, Dunhill
Peter Hawkings - Tom Ford
Stefano Pilati - YSL, Zegna, Agnona

Francesco Russo - Sergio Rossi
Pablo Coppola - Bally
Samuele Failli - Alaia head footwear designer

Please correct if I am wrong.

Looking at that whole list really shows that Michele was an anomaly.

 

[Lola701]

TOM FORD alumni

Alessandro Michele - Gucci
Alessandra Facchinetti - Gucci, Valentino, Tod's
Christopher Bailey - Burberry
Clare Waight Keller - Chloe, Givenchy
Francisco Costa - Calvin Klein Collection
Frida Giannini - Gucci
John Ray - Gucci Men, Dunhill
Peter Hawkings - Tom Ford
Stefano Pilati - YSL, Zegna, Agnona

Francesco Russo - Sergio Rossi
Pablo Coppola - Bally
Samuele Failli - Alaia head footwear designer

Please correct if I am wrong.

Failli is at Versace now…

I would add Milan Vukmirovic, Vanessa Seward.

So far, Tom, Nicolas and Karl at Fendi have had a lot of alumni.