Below is an interview with one of the most stylish men on the planet; Tom Ford.
When I first got back into fashion with fragrance and eyewear, I wasn’t sure I was going to do anything more than that. The whole thing has developed organically. Men’s developed organically because I didn’t have anything to wear, and still at that point I didn’t think I would ever do women’s [again].
It wasn’t until probably two years ago that I thought, OK, I will actually do women’s again. To tell you the truth, I was watching a film with Tilda Swinton · I’m not going to say which one · and she had some good clothes. It was Christmas. I was in Mustique and I get all the Academy screeners. I was watching films and I picked up the phone and called Domenico [De Sole] and I said, “I want to do a women’s collection. I’m ready to do it.” And I thought he was going to jump through the roof with joy
It happened organically. I told myself I would not come back to women’s until I felt I had something new to say, and I decided I’m only going to do it if I have fun.
Which means I’m going to do it my way. If it’s successful, great. If it’s not, I’ll close it. But I think it will be successful. I’m probably not going to show [on the runway].
I will do just what I do with men’s · showroom presentations for magazines. I don’t want to design collections for newspaper reviews. I want to concentrate on real women and the real customer. That was also one reason last night I showed on idealized versions of our real customers, all different women of all different ages. It was all about individuality, individual style, different body types, women who have their own style.
WWD also asked Tom about how he didn’t want anyone who wasn’t in the presentation to see the pictures of the collection.
This was his reply:
Nothing until December. This fashion immediacy thing · yes, if you can order the clothes immediately, if you can see them and press a button and they can be shipped to your house, I get fashion immediacy.⁄I don’t get the need for this immediacy. In fact, I think it’s bad.
The way the system works now, you see the clothes, within an hour or so they’re online, the world sees them. They don’t get to a store for six months. The next week, young celebrity girls are wearing them on red carpets. They’re in every magazine. The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store.
They’re overexposed, you’re tired of them, they’ve lost their freshness, you see somebody wearing it and you say, “Oh, that’s that jacket that was in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Or [a] customer doesn’t want to wear that jacket that was in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In addition, all of the fast-fashion companies that do a great job, by the way, knock everything off. So it’s everywhere all over the streets in three months and by the time you get it to the store, what’s the point?
I’m holding everything back, controlling all the photography. I’m sure there were some leaks last night from people shooting with cell phones. I wish that that hadn’t happened. I don’t know if it did · I’m sure it did. I’m holding the photography back. I’m holding all the clothes back. The clothes are not going out to magazines before January issues.
The clothes are not going to celebrities before December. The images are not being released online until December, when they’ll go online on my Web site. I’m putting together a little film. I had that thing so well covered last night, with video and film cameras as well as Terry [Richardson] and six of his team shooting all of our house photography.
It was very well covered, but I control all those images. I’ll select and retouch those images and then put those images out at the time that they serve the customer, which is December or January, when people are starting to think about their clothes, because these won’t be in store until February. This first season, it will only be in our own stores. Next season, it will go into limited distribution
