A PRESTIGE HONG KONG EXCLUSIVE
THE MAN IN FULL - TOM FORD
by Jessica Michault and Stephen Short

I find his dress too invisible. How would you sharpen it up?
Well, I think that may be calculated. He may not want to look like he spends too much time on his appearance, and I understand that. I can’t say it’s like a burning desire, where I get up every day and I think, “Wow, I need to dress Obama.” I’m actually quite content with who I dress and who I have dressed, but you asked the question, so I’ve answered it.

I appreciate that. Do you know him personally?
No, I have not met him and I don’t know him.

What about Hillary Clinton?
No, I’ve never met Hillary either. I’ve met her husband. In fact, Bill Clinton wore a tie that I designed when he signed a peace accord back in the early ’90s or so, whenever he was president.

You have a lot going on in Asia. How did you get together with Lane Crawford, which will oversee your Asian operations?
For a long time I knew Lane Crawford when I was working at Gucci and Saint Laurent. Lane Crawford today is wholly different from how it was back then. I think what [President, Lane Crawford Joyce Group] Bonnie Brooks and [President, Lane Crawford] Jennifer Woo have done is great.

The revamped store in ifc mall is unbelievable, isn’t it?
Oh my God! That store is sooo beautiful. It’s sooo beautiful. And you know, I spent an enormous amount of time in Hong Kong during the 1980s.

Really? That’s not well known.
I had my sample room in Hong Kong when I worked at Perry Ellis America. Everything was produced in Hong Kong. I used to stay at the Regent Hotel back then. So from ’86 to ’89 I would spend three to four months per year there. I would go around the factories all day, gather my suitcases full of samples and go back to my hotel room. I don’t like anyone knowing, but I’ll tell you something. At that time I was so skinny, I was a perfect women’s size eight. I would put everything on myself. I could immediately look at a shoulder and say that’s 17, that’s 16-and-a-half, that’s 15-and-a-half, change the shoulder bridge, and so on. I’d go back to the factories and say, “Change that, change that and change that.” Then I’d go back to the hotel and try it all on again. That’s the way I worked for a long time.

Did you learn any Cantonese in Hong Kong you can share with us?
[Laughs] Let’s just say I used to know a few words in Cantonese, but I’m not going to repeat them for you now.

Did you think you would come back to fashion when you left in 2004?
No, I thought I was never going to do fashion again. I was a textbook-case burnout. I’d been burned out from not only designing two collections, which I was very proud of, but the last two years of my time at Gucci were complex contract negotiations almost every day with PPR. And it was more and more apparent that what they wanted was not what we wanted. I just saw François [PPR Chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault] the other night, actually. I gave him a big hug and a kiss. We’re friendly, I like him enormously as a man, but as business partners we had different visions. And so it started to become apparent that we were going to have to leave and that was very traumatic because I had devoted an enormous amount of myself to the company, as had Domenico. So, no, I really thought I was not going to come back to fashion.

What were your impressions of the menswear market before you launched Tom Ford?
I was examining it through the eyes of a consumer. When I left Gucci, I thought, “Well, what am I going to wear?” because at Gucci and YSL I made my own clothes for 14 years. So I went to all the competition, because I thought, “I love Prada, I love the skinny little Prada suit,” but when I went I found that there were five jackets and four pairs of pants and maybe the cut was a little too trendy for me, and the fabric was not what I would want.

I couldn’t find a company that addressed my needs. So I started having my clothes made on Savile Row at Anderson and Shepherd, who did a wonderful job, but it was kind of a struggle to ever get them to do anything different – cut a lapel extra wide or give my jacket shoulder a bit of a roll. And I started realising that I’m a fashion designer, I can go and draw and battle with them and say, “Why don’t you cut the lapel this way” and I can get what I want, but for the average consumer I realised there was a big niche in the men’s market.