Tom Ford
In 2009, a film called A Single Man arrived in cinemas, written and directed by a man better known at the time for his work in fashion. That film marked Tom Ford's debut as a filmmaker, and it announced him as a figure working across two distinct creative fields.
Ford was born on August 27, 1961, in Austin, and his education took him through several institutions: Santa Fe Preparatory School, St. Michael's High School, Simon's Rock at Bard College, New York University, the American University of Paris, the Paris College of Art, and Parsons School of Design. His career in fashion brought him to prominent creative roles at two of the industry's major houses — Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent — where he served as creative director at each. In 2005, he launched his own eponymous fashion brand, adding the role of entrepreneur to his professional profile.
Alongside his fashion work, Ford continued to develop his career in film. He took on the roles of writer, director, and producer, following A Single Man with Nocturnal Animals in 2016. Both films he wrote and directed himself, establishing him as a filmmaker with a consistent hand in shaping his projects from script through to production. His work in fashion and film has run on parallel tracks rather than in sequence, with neither appearing to displace the other.
Ford's contributions to the fashion industry were recognized formally through his involvement with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He served as the organization's chairman from 2019 to 2022, and he also received the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award. That award stands as a concrete marker of how his peers in the American fashion world have assessed his career to date.
Quotes by Tom Ford
Tom Ford's insights on:
Fashion is much more collaborative than one might think. You have to have an idea and vision, and you have to communicate that vision to a team of people, and you have to create an environment that allows those people to give the best that they can give.
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.
It’s really never fair to judge people because none of us know what’s going on inside anyone else’s head.
We have the Terminator as governor, and we had an actor as president, so why shouldn’t we have a fashion designer as a senator?
Your name is a funny thing. It stands for what you’re about, and everything I do is really about pride.
In my adult life I’ve understood that if I put an enormous amount of love and honesty into something, usually that shows in the end.
Just like girls need to learn to be comfortable in heels before they go out in them for the first time, a man should try wearing a suit throughout a normal day. I do most things in a suit-and sometimes even in a tuxedo-and so I’m really comfortable in one.
If I’m sending emails, and I get all wound up and stressed and don’t know what to do with myself for 20 minutes, I just go soak in hot water and lie there, thinking, ‘What should I do?’ So it’s meditative.
Women are objectified in our culture. And more and more, it takes a great deal of confidence, especially as a woman, to break the mold. You know, you’re afraid that you’re going to covered in a magazine as a “fashion don’t.” That’s why you see all these girls on the red carpet looking the same.
