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

Most fashion brands do a small capsule men’s collection. For example, if you go to Gucci, there’s a men’s collection but it isn’t really head-to-toe everything. It’s not a men’s store that has five floors of menswear just devoted to men and every single thing they need. What I’m doing now is kind of a reaction to everything we did at Gucci, where we democratised luxury to the point where I don’t know if it was a true luxury product anymore. It was a great product. But I couldn’t find the level of service that I wanted from anyone and I realised that there was a missing gap between fashion designer and tailor that no one was meeting in the market.

And from a business standpoint, I also thought about Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani, who still dominate the world of menswear in terms of actual men all over the world, they’re both in their 70s . . . There was no one working in menswear that was creating a company built completely for men.

Do you remember the moment you realised you wanted to do a menswear line?
I can’t remember the exact moment, but I’m sure there was one because that’s how I am. I might have been in bed and realised “yes.” But I was also really missing designing. I was missing building things, I was missing being around beautiful things and being able to think of an idea and make it. I also realised through retiring, for only really about six months, that I will never retire and that I will never retire again. I don’t need to fantasise about it because I realised that about 90 percent of the enjoyment of my life comes from work.

The Tom Ford brand will expand at quite a clip, yes?
We have 18 stores opening this year. We opened our first store in Osaka with Lane Crawford on February 1 in Hankyu, a beautiful shop-in-shop where we were the number one selling vendor opening day. We sold US$40,000 in the first two hours, and response has been great. We’re doing a shop-in-shop in Hong Kong as well [opening this month in Lane Crawford, ifc mall]. But we also have two different locations for stand-alone stores in Hong Kong under negotiation now. Because that was our goal and it had been very hard to find good real estate. We have a five-floor flagship store opening in Milan in June, which is the old Ermenegildo Zegna store that we’ve gutted, and I hope it will be ready on time to open for the menswear shows in June.

No place is harder than Hong Kong when it comes to finding the right location.
[Laughs] No kidding, no kidding, no kidding. It’s been tough.

It seems that Tom Ford is going beyond bespoke, if that’s possible. It’s Savile Row with more snap. You’re super precise. The same way Cary Grant could phone his Savile Row tailor from a film set and tell him to move a buttonhole one-eighth of an inch. You’re designing for a really impeccable gentleman.
[Pauses] International impeccable gentleman. That’s nice.

But do enough of them exist in the world today?
The difference is Cary Grant was a very stylish man. He knew how to direct his tailor, and not everybody today knows how to do that. Therefore, we’ve created a hybrid between a tailor and a fashion designer. We’re doing something I don’t think has existed. We want to make every man look like Cary Grant, with a little help from us.

Do many or any of your clients “direct” you?
We do have some, but I like to think I’ve thought of it all for them in advance. I don’t say this in an egotistical way, but I’ve never had someone say to me “could you do that?” and I hadn’t already done it or thought about it, because that’s my job.

In fact, you dress the man in full.
We are getting men who’ve been dressing at tailors and men who’ve been at fashion brands but who want more selection. If you need a top hat, we make them. If you need a morning suit, we make them. Now, we’re not going to be doing huge business in morning suits, but in England everyone still wears morning suits for weddings, and if you want one, where do you go? Who has that?

Who’s your target customer – you?
I am. I like to design for me as I am, me if I was 60, me if I was 25, me if I were thin, blond, six foot tall and 25; everything runs through a filter of “Would I wear that if I were that person? Would I want to see my father in that or my nephew in that?” But I happen to be our actual target customer. Our real target is men in their 30s and 40s, urban customers, very sophisticated, [a man who] knows himself, who wants beautiful tailored clothing but with a bit of a modern shape.

So this is couture for men?
In a way. It’s the closest to what women have had in Chanel for a long time. They can go and buy a very high level of ready to wear, but you can also have something made for you. But men really haven’t had that, that kind of a company that just caters to them.