Tom Ford solutions my cellular phone call in exactly the way I’d hoped he would: with a voice as clean as butter and the grace of Cary Grant.
We are in contact to explore his hottest project, a espresso-desk ebook charting the past 15 a long time of his vocation – or “post-Gucci”, as those people acquainted with luxurious vogue prefer to describe the period that has followed Ford’s departure from the Italian super model.
Tom Ford 002, which spans 444 internet pages, consists of imagery by photographers this sort of as Mert and Marcus and Inez & Vinoodh and a foreword by Anna Wintour. The list of celebs highlighted reads like the lineup of one particular of Ford’s style clearly show front rows with Drake, Rihanna, and Jennifer Lopez amid the headliners.
But to start with, the gentleman prefers smaller chat. “You’re in London? How excellent. I miss it,” he states of the city he utilized to connect with property.
Texan-born Ford speaks to me from Beverly Hills, the place he has lived given that decamping from the British isles in 2019. It is lunchtime where he is, and the sunshine is shining. “I do a lot of Zooms, but it is fantastic to converse like this. It indicates I did not have to get up and acquire a shower beforehand,” he says. It is reassuring to find that the gentleman credited with reinventing sexual intercourse attractiveness is having fun with a duvet day of types.
Laid back is not a phrase usually involved with Ford. As a designer, he remains fiercely faithful to the breed of higher-octane glamour he employed to renovate Gucci into a billion-greenback business. His brand name, which spans womenswear, menswear and cosmetics, is a standing symbol for the super-abundant. Its scintillating advert campaigns, instantaneously recognisable as Ford’s, are an extension of his aesthetic.
A self-confessed “hyper Virgo”, Ford has an unforgiving eye for everything from floral shows (solitary-stem bunches only) to the length of a shirt cuff. He is also fashion’s starriest designer. Catwalk exhibits for the eponymous label he released in 2004 catch the attention of a guest checklist to rival the Oscars. Julianne Moore and Rihanna are regulars. In 2013, Jay-Z named a music in his honour.
Photograph: Lenny ‘Kodaklens’ Santiago
Ford is at relieve between Hollywood’s prime tier mainly because he is in it. Following parting means with the Gucci team, he switched from vogue to movie established. Ford’s movies – A Solitary Gentleman (2009) and Nocturnal Animals (2019) – were being nominated for Academy Awards. Both are beautiful to view.
At dwelling, where he life with his 9-year-outdated son Jack, Ford’s everyday living has been upended. Richard Buckley, his lover of 35 years and Jack’s other guardian, died in August. It would seem poignant that Ford’s new e-book, the outcome of a lot reflection, need to surface on cabinets when he is processing these reduction. “When Richard saw the e-book, he reported: ‘That’s a large amount of drinking water under the bridge’ and turned and remaining the area,” Ford suggests.
A photograph of Jack is among Ford’s favourite additions to the book. “It is the only shot I have ever introduced of him publicly. He was five when it was taken, so no one would recognise him from it,” he states.
A candid Q&A with Women’s Have on Daily’s Bridget Foley is also highlighted. In it, Ford discusses every little thing from exiting Gucci to remaining element of the only gay couple at the golfing club and describes his son as his “number a single focus”.
The designer also highlights the efficiency of great taste in the Buckley Ford family’s genes. “One time when he was 5, somebody at college questioned what was the worst factor you could assume of. Jack mentioned: “Brown sneakers with a black belt.”
Photograph: Simon Perry
Work on the guide intended that Ford used lockdown sifting by thousands of images. “It was an fascinating matter to invest so a great deal time seeking back,” he tells me, “it is not something I do normally.”
His reluctance to acquire inventory is a hangover from his days at Gucci, when there was no time to pause for reflection, a period of time that led to burnout, and he had what he has known as a “mid-life crisis”. “It’s tricky to glimpse again when you are continually anticipated to create,” he states. “I recall owning evening meal with Karl Lagerfeld and him telling me that I’d only realize how well matters have been going in the potential when I experienced the opportunity to go again.”
Definitely, this time of contemplation has enabled Ford to recognise how a lot factors have advanced. He cites an “obsession with political correctness” as a downside for this technology of style designers. “Cancel tradition inhibits style mainly because fairly than sensation totally free, the tendency is to start locked into a set of rules. Every thing is now deemed appropriation. We used to be equipped to rejoice other cultures. Now you just cannot do that.”
Ford, the elected chair of the Council of Manner Designers of America and perhaps, the world’s chicest environmentalist, welcomes the get in touch with for the luxury world to lessen its effect on the earth. He started by carrying out his little bit at household. “I switched to aluminium straws, acquired rid of solitary-use plastic,” he states. In 2017, Ford declared he was a vegan. “I seriously really do not want to meat,” he suggests, and credits the Netflix documentary What the Health and fitness for inspiring the improve in eating plan.
He is making use of the exact same attitude to his organization – Ford’s label turns around $2bn (£1.48bn) a calendar year, although Tom Ford Natural beauty turns about $1bn – shelling out awareness to aspects this sort of as packaging and workers’ legal rights. “People are well seemed soon after,” he says.
In Ford’s intellect, accurate luxurious fashion is sustainable by its nature. He tells me that he not too long ago compensated $90,000 for a costume he made for the duration of his tenure at Yves Saint Laurent to increase to his archive. “The clothes we make are not meant to be thrown absent,” he says.
Ford would seem to be fascinated and repulsed by the digitalisation of style.
“The upcoming of style is increasingly cartoonish,” he says. “Instagram has damaged down the procedures. People today costume up to acquire pics of them selves to write-up online, every thing is exaggerated – in particular the eyebrows.”
He lately watched Faux Famous, the HBO documentary about influencers, and uncovered the revelation that Instagram buyers had been utilizing toilet seats to give the illusion of getting on a airplane “completely hysterical”.
Can we anticipate to see an airport selfie of him quickly? “Never!” he states. “I’m quite non-public.”
You can depend on Ford to maintain it classy.
