‘Nobody knows what the hell their legacy is gonna be. Only time will tell’ — Tom Ford on being the ‘sexy designer’

Tom Ford turned 60 at the end of August. If it was less so for him, the birthday was surely some kind of watershed for popular culture. The man whose libertine sensibility helped shape a quarter of a century of style was now easing into his seventh decade. That was enough to make anyone stop and wonder where time goes.

Fortunately, there’s a new book to clarify how, where and why. Tom Ford 002 is the lavish companion volume to the door-stopper that appeared in 2004, soon after Ford traumatically parted ways with Gucci. The new instalment marks a decade and a half of exhilarating, challenging changes for Ford: professionally, with the global growth of his own brand and his move into film-making (both A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals were Oscar-nominated). And personally: leaving London for Los Angeles, and having a son, Jack, now 9. But most shattering of all: three weeks after his birthday, Ford’s partner of 35 years, the fashion editor Richard Buckley, passed away.

A month on, the designer rings from his home in LA. I have interviewed him so often over the years he could be my Mastermind subject, however it’s been a while and, considering the circumstances, I’m surprised he decided to go ahead with the call at all. But there was always that — Tom the consummate professional, even during his tumultuous, substance-plagued 40s. So here he is, voice still the same laconic drawl, except when he laughs. His laugh was always special, like a release. Even while everything has changed, some things just don’t.

When you were putting the book together, what struck you most when you reflected back?

One of the things that I talk about is that you get to give the world your taste once. And it’s true, I think there’s a common thread to all of my work because, of course, I’m the same person and I tend to like the same things. There’s a reflection of the times in that there’s certain things that I wouldn’t do today that I did then. But getting older, having a kid, it changes your perception of what you want to put out in the world. And in my case, it’s less overtly sexual but still sensual. On the other hand, I know that my thinking has had to evolve, though I do think it is holding back creativity in a lot of ways.

You mean cancel culture?

You really have to think and rethink everything you do. ‘Oh my God, will it offend anyone, is this going to be misinterpreted?’ As a designer, of course we always appropriated things from a lot of different cultures, but it was seen as a form of celebration and honouring that particular culture. I would think, ‘Oh, this is beautiful, I want to put this out in the world’. And now you have to think twice because it can be called out as appropriation. If it’s not your own culture, you’re not really allowed to pull from it. Yves Saint Laurent would never have been able to do a Chinese collection, a peasant collection. How would he ever have been able to do a peasant collection in today’s world? There are so many things that could never have been created, but at the same time, this shift needed to happen.

There is a zero-tolerance policy, which is great in many ways but very difficult to manage if you are a public person or if you are running a company. You have to think about all of it. The good thing is that people are now able to show the world and be proud of who they are. I believe you should be whatever you want to be. If I am casting a transgender role in a movie I have a lot of great transgender actors to choose from. If I am casting a gay character I have a lot of gay actors to choose from. But it’s gotten tough to be creative. Actually it has gotten very hard to be spontaneous, I think, in today’s world because you have to rethink yourself. You can’t just let yourself go. You’re starting out trying to design or trying to write or whatever with a kind of framework around yourself. I do feel it hinders the ability to just be loose. What I usually try to do is be loose, analyse it and say, ‘Alright, what should I rein in, what should I not rein in? Is this right, is this wrong?’

Are you finding that with film and with fashion?

Oh God, yes. Absolutely! I mean, I haven’t made a movie yet [since the start of the pandemic]. With Covid, I thought I was going to be very creative. Well, actually I didn’t think that. I started off Covid like everyone. I had to furlough an enormous number of employees and we had to close stores temporarily. My father died right at the beginning of Covid — not from Covid — and I cried but not in the way that I cried when I had to get on the phone and make the announcement that we were going to have to furlough employees. That was one of the most emotional things, up until Richard died, that I had gone through. It just made me realise how emotionally attached I am to everyone who works with me, and to the company and to what I do.

You once told me you would love to devote yourself to film-making but didn’t because ‘there are too many people who depend on me with what I do in fashion’.

There are a lot of people who depend on me and that’s what I suppose I really felt. However, when we had all that space, I have a book that I’ve been needing to adapt and I kept thinking every day, ‘Okay, I’m gonna start that,’ but I didn’t feel remotely creative. I felt very disturbed by things going on politically, of course, and just dealing with it every day, I did not feel creative, I felt shell-shocked. Which I think a lot of people did.

Did you feel your work should reflect, absorb and express that whole experience?

I wasn’t able to produce. My factories were closed in Milan, my atelier was closed. There was one collection, it was put together with spit and glue basically. It wasn’t going to the stores because stores were closed. But collections since then have reflected it, certainly the last one I put on a runway. It was joyful, it was ‘let’s move on, let’s get back to beauty and energy and to having fun’. It’s reflected now — or it was in that collection — in terms of optimism for the future.

Do you think the pandemic has reaffirmed your faith in fashion?

I don’t think my faith in fashion ever wavered. As I said, I was maybe not feeling terribly creative. When you’re staying at home, you’re not going anywhere, not seeing anything and not being inspired by the outside world, other than through the television, I think it’s hard. But I believe in fashion, absolutely.

One difference between the 2004 and 2021 books is that I feel you in the earlier one, and in this new one I sense you directing alter egos, male and female, like models Jon Kortajarena and Mica Argañaraz. Is that down to the passage of time?