When Tom Ford launched his women’s ready-to-wear collection in September 2010, I wasn’t in it People get invited and FOMO is unbearable. I distinctly remember seeing some lucky people 13 scrambling to exit before the finale on the show before it. No one wanted to miss Ford’s debut.
What made the FOMO especially bad: He announced in advance that there would be no photography (or almost none; pre-scandal Terry Richardson was the house lens guy). This was before Instagram ended clapping — you need two hands to clap, and there’s always a camera phone these days — but even then, Ford’s no-photo ban is unprecedented.
Of course, since his days at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, fashion shows have been an important item in the brand’s annual marketing plan. His decision to ditch the visual estate was bold and memorable, not least because Beyoncé, Julianne Moore, A Single Man, Lauren Hutton and many other celebrity friends were in the There—and not in the front row, but on the runway. charm!
The no-photography policy didn’t last long, but there have been other tactics since years. In
, Ford became one of the first American designers to experiment with a “see now, buy now” schedule, in an effort to close the gap between his fashion shows and store deliveries. This rethinking proved too radical for a slow-moving industry, but Ford bravely led the way. He also 2015 pioneered the Oscar-time Los Angeles fashion show we saw in Donatella Versace this past March, narrowing the gap between the runway and the red carpet. gap, if nothing else.
We won’t see Tom Ford’s Tom Ford show anymore; late last year he sold the company to Estée Lauder for $2.8 billion. His successor, when that man is named, might have covered the runways with white rose petals and scented the air with Fucking Fabulous, but Ford opted not for a pompous, ostentatious farewell, but for his greatest The archive holdings of his works serve as his signature. .
Clicking on them triggers many red carpet memories. There’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s sensational white shift gown and 2010 cape at the Oscars, and about the first season of Zendaya’s pink molded breastplate and flowy skirt Euphoria, which, more than anything else, cemented her style icon status. Also included is the stretch sequin and mesh dress worn by Rihanna in the 2016 issue of Vogue.
Ford considered social media’s impact on fashion as he returned to the show in the post-pandemic spring 2022. “By their very nature, today’s photogenic clothes mean they’re not timid at all,” he improvised at the time. Chez Tom Ford was never real. As the worlds of fashion and Hollywood become more intertwined, it seems too bad for the American designer, who navigated both worlds with such control and confidence, to leave. Where can we get our charm fix now? But if an era is coming to an end, it’s possible to see Ford’s cinematic vision on the big screen, at least sometime in the future.
