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THE TALENTED TOM FORD

Multitalented, provocative and perfectionist, suave and debonair, Tom Ford exudes an opulent sensuality.  His personal aesthetic and amazing ability in defining our idea of what’s sexy, hot, or beautiful right now specified his success. A success that gives him the freedom to do and say what he wants when he wants.
Tom Ford on the couch of psychoanalysis.

WHEN FASHION BECOMES POLITICAL ISSUE

Tom Ford is not an easy man. He doesn’t want to please people. And notably, he is not afraid to speak his mind freely. He’s not one to hold back, even when it comes to politics. He declined to dress Melania Trump quite a few years ago before she’d become First Lady. She’s not necessarily my image,” Ford said during his appearance on “The View.” And to justify his saying he added that his clothes were “too expensive” for women who want “to relate to everybody.”  Ford went on to explain that even though he was a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton, he likely would not have dressed the former secretary of state had she won.

Instead, he dressed Michelle Obama in 2011 on the occasion of a dinner with the Queen at the Buckingham Palace, in London. I dressed Michelle only once, for a dinner with the Queen. I think it matched the occasion and she honoured me with her choice.

This is one of these times when fashion becomes a high political issue. In an interview with Women’s Wear Daily, he said that Mr Trump’s win was “a wake-up call” for him. “I think when you sense that there is a divide in your country and that there are people who perhaps you’re not relating to, and that those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a world of very liberal human rights and privilege, it’s a wake-up call that we’re not addressing a big part of the country that does feel disenfranchised,” he said. “It made me feel more nationalistic if anything. The whole country is not like New York and L.A. and the world that I am used to living in.

the code magazine Tom Ford interview

“My goal is to
help women
become
the best version
of themselves”

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

From Texas, his birthplace, to New York at the studio of Cathy Hardwick and Perry Ellis.Luck, hard work, instinct, worthy partners. Today it’s all done for beauty and publicity. The fact that I can stand in front of a camera feeling comfortable definitely helped.” he said in his interview at Hellenic Vogue.

But what do we really owe to Tom Ford?
For certain, the rising of Gucci.  At the time when “no one would dream of wearing Gucci” and the fashion house was struggling financially, Tom Ford was the only who accepted the challenge. Ford and his longtime partner, fashion journalist Richard Buckley, moved to Milan. Within a few years, he managed to take off both the reputation and profits of the House.
The provocative ad campaigns he created for Gucci and later for YSL.”When I shaved G for Gucci into the model’s pubic hair it was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek statement about branding – we had Gucci emblazoned on everything in those days – so I said, ‘why not the pubic hair too? It wasn’t just about sex.”  I’ve been guilty of provocation but it’s also just common sense marketing – put a bottle of scent in a woman’s cleavage, or between her thighs – and men will notice,” he says.

At 55, his statements and racy advertisements still provoke. He started his own company for personal reasons: he had something to say, clothes he wanted to see made, and he wanted control of it. The New York Magazine wrote, “Every season, Ford created an ‘It’ piece, a must-have, a season-defining trend, photographed to death, knocked off ad nauseam.” 

His transition from fashion to film industry came naturally. For him, whether he designs or directs a film, it’s the exact same process. Directing a film is “the ultimate design project.”  “If you want to come close to playing God, write, direct, produce, edit a film. You design a world, you design everything about it and everyone in it–what they say, do, whether they live or die. It’s just so exciting.”

who is the real tom ford?

Designer and director, a perfectionist visionary for women’s and men’s clothes and accessories, beauty and grooming, Tom Ford is a designer of life.
In another life though, he would have been an architect or plastic surgeon.”I would love to be a cosmetic surgeon because it’s architectural.” Or an actor. “Not an actor,” he says, correcting himself in mid-sentence. “I wanted to be a movie star.” 

For a man who may be one of the biggest fashion influencers of the late 20th century, he seems much more in love with movies than the apparel business.

Fashion or film industry? “While fashion is exciting because it changes all the time, it is also fleeting. Film, though, is forever. In a way, therefore, film is the ultimate design project.’

He’s a modernist who speaks with nostalgia about the past. I think the 1970s will always be the decade for me. Obviously, I grew up in that era, but the beauty standard was touchable, kissable.
Is he a megalomaniac? ‘I’m a perfectionist to the point of insanity. I don’t think I’m a megalomaniac, though you’d have to ask the people who work with me. Either we click, or they don’t last very long.’

This article originally appeared
in the CODE Magazine

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