"Someone asked me recently about male
nudity, and I brought up the subject that, in our culture, we use female
nudity to sell everything. We’re very comfortable objectifying women.
Women go out and they are basically wearing nothing. Their feet and toes
are exposed, their legs are exposed, their breasts are exposed.
Everything is exposed—the neck, the arms. You have to be really
physically perfect, as a woman, in our culture to be considered
beautiful.
But full frontal male nudity challenges us. It makes men nervous. It
makes women nervous. Other times in history, male nudes have been
regarded in a different way. The Olympics were originally held nude. The
reporter I was explaining this to said, 'This would make a great
story.' I explained how when I come home I actually take off all my
clothes, and I wear no clothes until I leave. I eat naked. I do
everything completely naked. He said, 'That would make a great
interview.' I said, 'Fine, we have to do it nude.'"
He was in very good shape. Anyway, we did
the interview. The interviewer was straight, and I made it a point to
desexualize the interview even though I was sitting with my legs wide
open, completely naked. At the end of the interview, I put on a dressing
gown and he put on his clothes, and I sat next to him on the sofa and
said, “Was that sexual?” He said, “Absolutely not.” And I said, “That’s
because I didn’t make it sexual. Sexuality is in the eyes, it’s an
expression, it’s in a look.” Then, all of a sudden, I looked at him in a
very different way, and it made him very nervous.
When Tom Ford walked away from womenswear more than six years ago, he
wasn’t just vacating his post as creative director of Gucci Group, where
he designed for both Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent—he was leaving an
industry that he helped shape and reinvent. He’d brought a new
understanding of glamour, beauty, sophistication, and, above all, sexual
seduction to fashion, so when he announced in 2004 that he was quitting
to try his hand as a film director, it sparked something of a communal
identity crisis. Who would fill the void, rise to the occasion, and,
more importantly, have both the creative talent and business acumen to
fulfill the dreams of customers and the expectations of stockholders?
Tom Ford’s Spring 2011 womenswear collection, presented at Ford’s
Manhattan store to a select few journalists, editors, and fashion-world
heavies, was the biggest show of the season that you never saw, partly
because Ford decided to mark his return to dressing the female form as a
way of protesting the current state of the industry: fashion as
impersonal, aggressive, and aloof; fashion as playing to the critics
instead of the customers; fashion as instantly accessible via the
Internet to a global audience that obsesses over trends without ever
experiencing the quality, the complexity, and the refinement of the
clothes themselves.
The presentation was Ford’s manifesto-like argument
for bringing back to high-end fashion the excitement, intimacy,
immediacy, and sense of fun—all qualities that have been arguably
sacrificed over the last decade for the mass-takeover approach favored
by many of today’s designers.
Ford invited only 100 guests to his Madison Avenue showroom on the
evening of September 12, 2010. Playing emcee on the microphone, with
photographer Terry Richardson and his team securing the show’s only
visual documentation, Ford announced each look as it came down the
runway worn by one of the many actresses, artists, models, musicians,
socialites, and muses the designer had personally chosen to walk in the
show—among them, Julianne Moore, Beyoncé Knowles, Daphne Guinness, Lou
Doillon, Lauren Hutton, Karen Elson, Marisa Berenson, Natalia Vodianova,
and Stella Tennant.
While Ford refused all requests for media sneak
peaks and red-carpet opportunities, what was evident in the collection
was that Ford’s continuing obsession with and glorification of the
female form had not gotten tame—he brought out the slips and curves of
the body with silk fringe, leopard print, suede, and leather.
Ford hasn’t abandoned his second career—in fact, he is in the process
of finishing the screenplay for his next film project. But as his
friend, the painter John Currin (husband to another of Ford’s
presentation muses, the artist Rachel Feinstein), caught up with him in
Los Angeles, it was clear that Ford relished being back on his home
turf, making clothes for women and making women feel the way only he
can.
JOHN CURRIN: [laughs] The small acorn that will grow into a great oak of a scandal later, right?
FORD: [sighs] Ah, yes, I know what that’s like. You say the littlest thing, it gets misinterpreted.
CURRIN: Well, I’m here to ask you some questions, and I think a good
one to start off with is about your childhood. What were some of your
first memories of seeing beauty?
FORD: That would have been as a little kid living in Texas. My
grandmother was probably the first person who I thought was beautiful.
She was incredibly stylish, she had big hair, big cars. I was probably 3
years old, but she was like a cartoon character. She’d swoop into our
lives with presents and boxes, and she always smelled great and looked
great. She always had the latest things. She was larger than life to me,
even as an adult, but when I was a child it was really like she was
from another planet. It seemed like she lived in a different world, and
wherever that was, I wanted to go.
FORD: No. In fact, I didn’t learn to appreciate those things until
much later in life, because I grew up mostly in New Mexico, which is
famous for sunsets and mountains and trees. That’s the reason I have a
place there and spend so much time there now. When I was a little kid,
all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get
to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I
really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in
a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.
CURRIN: Your movie had some of that feeling; for instance, with its
collection of small moments of cultivation—the way things are folded or
put in a drawer.
FORD: Well, I do that myself, and that character was very, very, very
autobiographical and very different from the character in the Isherwood
book. That’s really about putting on a sort of armor to go out in the
world. The character played by Julianne [Moore] was quite literally
based on my grandmother. It’s funny, that movie was cathartic for me. It
was really my midlife crisis on the screen. [Currin laughs] It
was! I was working through all of those earlier notions of what was
important in life. And George has a moment where time stands still, and
he really feels his connection to the universe and understands the
meaning of life, in a way, and that he doesn’t need to live any longer,
and he dies. I never used to say that he dies, but I think enough people
have seen the film by now, so I can give away the ending. But as an
adult working in the fashion industry, I struggle with materialism.
And
I’m one of the least materialistic people that exist, because material
possessions don’t mean much to me. They’re beautiful, I enjoy them, they
can enhance your life to a certain degree, but they’re ultimately not
important. Your connections with other people are important, our
connection to the earth. And that’s why I go to New Mexico as often as I
can. And what I find to be the most beautiful thing in the world now is
nature—sunsets, trees, my horses.
CURRIN: I didn’t mean it pejoratively that your aesthetic is always about cultivation.
FORD: My fashion aesthetic. I guess I’ve yet to express another aesthetic.
CURRIN: What’s interesting in the movie is that the
aesthetic is so unsexualized. It was orderly and beautiful, but with
this tragic panic underneath. But it was weird how it did look like you
and your world to a degree, or how most people envision it.
FORD: Well, I think most people don’t actually know me. They know the
projection of me that I use to sell things. And they know me from an
expression of material beauty. I’m actually very introverted. I’m very
shy. I’m very emotional. I think those are human experiences that
everyone can relate to. So this movie wasn’t about sex. It was about
love.
That was on purpose, because a lot of people equate homosexuality
with sex and not necessarily with love. It was important that I keep the
movie not about sex. It was about the same struggle that everyone goes
through, if you’re intelligent, at some point in your life. You ask
yourself, What is this all about? Why am I living? What does this mean?
Why am I here? Those are the questions George is asking himself.
CURRIN: If I could segue then to—
FORD: To high heels? Yes! Let’s get to high heels. That’s a great segue right into fashion.
CURRIN: Actually, yeah, because you are saying that people associate
homosexuality with sex—or oversexed men and sexual relationships. But
when you’re making a sculpture or image of a woman, is there a sexual
aspect to it?
FORD: It is never even calculated. When I’m making an image of a
woman, or dressing a woman—I have a reputation for sex and making a
woman sexy, and men as well—but I don’t start out saying, “Oh, I’m gonna
make this woman look sexy or sexual.” I simply stand there and put her
in front of me and say, “What can I do to make her more beautiful in my
eyes? Let’s pull in the dress here, let’s do this, let’s do that.” The
end result is something that other people consider sexual, but for me
it’s just beautiful. My expression of beauty is something I do
naturally. I love the human body—the female body, the male body.
I work
in a way to try to enhance the body, and so you often see a lot of the
body or the silhouette or outline, and that’s what people equate with
sex. But I’m very comfortable with sexuality. It’s not anything that’s
ever freaked me out. I’m very comfortable with naked bodies. Someone
asked me recently about male nudity, and I brought up the subject that,
in our culture, we use female nudity to sell everything. We’re very
comfortable objectifying women. Women go out and they are basically
wearing nothing. Their feet and toes are exposed, their legs are
exposed, their breasts are exposed.
Everything is exposed—the neck, the
arms. You have to be really physically perfect, as a woman, in our
culture to be considered beautiful. But full frontal male nudity
challenges us. It makes men nervous. It makes women nervous. Other times
in history, male nudes have been regarded in a different way. The
Olympics were originally held nude. The reporter I was explaining this
to said, “This would make a great story.” I explained how when I come
home I actually
take off all my clothes, and I wear no clothes until I leave. I eat naked. I do everything completely naked. He said, “That would make a great interview.” I said, “Fine, we have to do it nude.”
take off all my clothes, and I wear no clothes until I leave. I eat naked. I do everything completely naked. He said, “That would make a great interview.” I said, “Fine, we have to do it nude.”
CURRIN: How old was the interviewer?
FORD: Oh, 55 or 56. [Currin laughs] He was in very good
shape. Anyway, we did the interview. The interviewer was straight, and I
made it a point to desexualize the interview even though I was sitting
with my legs wide open, completely naked. At the end of the interview, I
put on a dressing gown and he put on his clothes, and I sat next to him
on the sofa and said, “Was that sexual?” He said, “Absolutely not.” And
I said, “That’s because I didn’t make it sexual. Sexuality is in the
eyes, it’s an expression, it’s in a look.” Then, all of a sudden, I
looked at him in a very different way, and it made him very nervous.
CURRIN: I wanted to ask if you’ve ever felt any remorse in your work,
because that is something I’ve felt before in my work. You don’t seem
like someone who feels a great deal of remorse about anything.
FORD: No, I don’t.
CURRIN: I sometimes get the feeling that I look at women to objectify
them, and I start to feel guilty. I wonder if that ever plagues you?
FORD: I think I detach the physical from the spiritual. It’s my
business to make a woman or a man beautiful, and I’m working with a
model in a fitting, and I’ve objectified them to the point that they
become an object. They’re something that I’m modeling or shaping or
sculpting, but I’m very aware that even though I make them physically
beautiful, their soul and personality and character is somewhat detached
from that.
It’s great when you have a combination of the two— that’s
what makes a true beauty. Some people are physically beautiful but yet
they’re completely uninteresting, and thus they’re not beautiful. I
detach the two. And I turn the same eye on myself: When I look in the
mirror, I say, “Well, this eyebrow is starting to sag,” or “I’m going
gray right here, I need to fix that.” Or “I’ve eaten too much. I need to
do a few more push-ups, blah blah blah.” But that’s completely separate
from me as a human being. It’s purely the body that I move through the
world in, and people react to it on the surface. So, no, I don’t have
any remorse, because I separate them. Do you?
CURRIN: Yes. I think it’s mixed up in my lust for women, or my sexual desire for women . . .
FORD: That’s why I think gay men make better designers.
CURRIN: Are gay men free? Are you unburdened by lust? Is that an advantage of being a gay man?
FORD: I lust after beautiful women. First of all, I love women. But I
lust after beautiful women in the way that I lust after a beautiful
piece of sculpture—this will probably get me in trouble—or a beautiful
car. I believe everyone’s on a sliding scale of sexuality. There are
moments where I am sexually attracted to women. But it doesn’t overpower
my first impulse; my lust for them is the same as my lust for beauty in
all things. It’s not like I ever think, “Oh, my god, I’ve got to spread
her legs and fuck her.”
CURRIN: Isn’t that the sticking point—
FORD: What a well-chosen word. [both laugh]
CURRIN: But the very thing that is required by art, which is to
isolate and objectify and to look from a distance at something, is the
thing that is considered oppressive when men do it to women. And that’s
what gets you into trouble.
FORD: I think that’s wrong. I’m an equal-opportunity objectifier. I
think it’s the exact same thing. I’m sorry, I don’t understand why our
culture both worships and objectifies beauty, and then slams those of us
who participate in it. Because I make that detachment, I’m capable of
objectifying a beautiful woman, but that doesn’t demean her in any way.
She’s beautiful because she’s a creature who exists physically, in the
physical world, who happens to be in a moment of prime.
CURRIN: That would seem to be a theme of your fashion work: the
complete freedom from guilt. Part of the fantasy of the ad
campaigns—which I think Americans look at as a leisurely European
playboy—is the evocation of a person not really hampered by guilt or
remorse or worried about the unhealthy aspects of their lifestyle.
FORD: This may sound corny, but the only thing I feel remorse about
is when I hurt someone, hurt their feelings, or make them feel bad. I’m
obsessive about that. “Oh, my god, did I say the wrong thing? Did I hurt
them? Did they understand what I meant?” But the creation of visual
images or design, I have no remorse over. I’m not somebody who regrets
anything, because I’m very happy with where I am and everything I’ve
done in my life. Everything that’s happened to me, I’ve learned a lesson
from—or if I didn’t, I was foolish, and I will repeat the same thing
and eventually, hopefully, I will learn a lesson.
CURRIN: Do you think that is an unusual trait among Americans?
FORD: I think we’re very uptight in America. You have to remember
that we’re descended from Puritans. Whether or not the country is now
composed of immigrants, our culture as American really begins with the
landing of the Pilgrims and a puritanical view of things. It was a group
of people who escaped Europe because they felt it was depraved in a
certain way, and that culture still permeates. I’ve lived in Europe for
the last 20 years, so I’m kind of a hybrid. I feel very American in
certain ways, and in lots of ways I feel more European.
CURRIN: How do Europeans feel about you? Do they see you as a
stereotypical American who’s hardworking and controlling, or do they see
you as one of them?
FORD: I think the Italians feel like I’m one of them. I think that’s
because I resurrected a brand that was very close to their hearts, and I
lived in Italy for a long time and speak Italian. The English, who
knows? As for the French, the first thing out of every French reviewer’s
mouth was something about being an American. The French are very
nationalistic, which I think is very backward, honestly. I think today
you have to be international and global. It’s very narrow to think in a
nationalistic way. Unfortunately, Americans do the same thing, because
most Americans don’t even have a passport. They don’t travel.
CURRIN: I’m so envious of Europeans for their history, their painting
ability, their style and aesthetic, and I sometimes think “American
painter” is an oxymoron. I wonder if it’s the same way for a designer.
FORD: Just remember that you’re descended from Europeans. You’ve just
grown up in this country. You can still call yourself a European who’s
living in America.
CURRIN: Northern Irish. That’s not quite European . . .
FORD: Not continental . . .
CURRIN: It’s not Monte Carlo.
FORD: That’s not one of my favorite places in Europe.
CURRIN: [laughs] I’ve never seen it. I’ve never been there. What I know of Monte Carlo is probably mostly informed by your advertisements.
FORD: That’s not what Monte Carlo is. It’s really a lot of people who
are overly tanned and have too much collagen and too much money and
diamonds that are too big.
CURRIN: It’s like Los Angeles.
FORD: On steroids.
John Currin is a New York–based artist. His recent exhibit, “New Paintings,” was shown at New York’s Gagosian Gallery.
This is an excerpt of the cover story.
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