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

What are your failsafe rules to help make me look like an international impeccable gentleman?
I usually tell the client, nip the waist in more because it will create more air between your waist and your arm, which will make you look thinner, which will look better in photographs. Always keep your jacket buttoned. If I had one rule for men, it’s this. Keep your jacket buttoned always. It instantly makes your silhouette. It’ll take pounds off you if you keep it buttoned, just in terms of your shape. Especially if you’re someone who’s being photographed, you really should always have your jacket buttoned.

How do you perceive the Asian male?
The Asian man might seem more gentle than his American counterpart, but it’s just a different aesthetic. It’s like the English always seem gay to Americans. They’re not, but it’s just that in Europe, and in Asia in a different way, maybe men are more comfortable . . . I just don’t know how to answer that question because, you know, there certainly is an Asian macho style, which isn’t the same as American macho or European macho and Italian macho.

How do you keep yourself looking so great. It must take a lot of effort?
It does, but I don’t put in the effort in a gym. For example, I’ve been skiing recently in Aspen. I ski a lot, I ride, I play tennis at least three times a week. I do Pilates, I do yoga. I’m a physically active person. I weigh myself on a scale every day, every morning at the same time. If I gain more than two or three pounds, like I have right now, I’m going to eat vegetables tonight.

That’s a very precise approach to diet.
Yes, seriously. But I still live. I don’t ever cut out vodka and tonics. My trick is that if I eat vegetables at night three or four days in a row, I quickly snap back to my ideal weight and I just am very conscious of it. I always have been.

It obviously works.
That’s just the way I am, I guess. But I can’t say I stand in front of the mirror and criticise and think, “Shit, my stomach’s looking floppier, my butt’s starting to sag or, you know, what am I going to do about” . . . and I’m not crazy about it. I realise I’m getting older. We’re all getting older. I don’t mind getting wrinkles. I don’t mind looking my age, but I just want to look the best version of my age and feel good, too. And . . . I like clothes . . . so when I put on a suit I want to feel like I look good, you know? Why spend all that energy, time, effort and money buying beautiful clothes if you’re not going to keep your body in the best shape it can be in.

It’s a kind of pride thing. I take pride in my appearance. And dressing well is kind of good manners, if you ask me. You’re inflicting yourself on the public in the same way as a piece of furniture. When you’re standing in a room, your effect on that room is the same as a chair’s effect, or a sculpture. You’re part of someone’s view, you’re a part of that world, and so you should . . . I find it’s a show of respect to try to put on your best face and look as good as you can.

I’ve heard that you’re a hygiene fanatic who takes baths three times a day.
I take baths, yes, but it’s really nothing to do with hygiene. Sometimes at my ranch, I won’t bathe for three or four days. I take baths because when I’m in the city and working, I find it relaxing when I get up in the morning and need to wake up slowly. I’m not a great morning person, so I lie in a hot bathtub and just kind of come to life. Then I take a bath before I go out to dinner, as I’m exhausted by the day and I feel like I need to lie in that bathtub, so I can put on a crisp shirt and go out to dinner and then when I come home I want to lie in the bath and wash all the cigarette smoke off myself from wherever I’ve just been . . . and just relax enough so I can go to sleep . . . because I don’t sleep very well. So it isn’t a cleanliness thing. In fact, I think Americans are often too clean. And sometimes I don’t use soap when I take these baths. The goal isn’t to soap myself up and scrub everything off. It’s just to sort of lie in the hot water. It’s relaxation.

Growing up in Texas as a boy, what were your first memories of luxury and fashion?
My first memories were of my grandmother. She was the typical Texas woman. She always had the latest Cadillac, she had big hair and big jewellery and she was flamboyant and she was verrry Texas. So for me, that was glamour at that moment in time. Looking back, it wouldn’t be what I would call glamorous today, but she was very glamorous when I was a child. She was like a cartoon character. She always smelled great, she always looked great and she always had on something new and she was always full of life and wonderful. Which was a stark contrast to my mother, who now I find much chicer than my grandmother, but she was much more subtle and restrained, which as a child didn’t seem as interesting as a woman who had big earrings that made noise when she moved her head.

So that Texas taste, big hair and a lot of make-up – until I left Texas and lived other places in the world – was my standard. Everyone looked like a beauty queen and it was all about that Miss America look. And I have to say that to this day I still have a thing for big hair.

My more mature formation of glamour came when I moved to New York in the late ’70s. I’m stuck in that era because it was my late teenage years and my early 20s, and that is very formative because you’re becoming sexual and becoming attracted to other people and you’re really starting to become an adult and starting to fantasise about your adult life. So that kind of slick minimal glamour of the ’70s will always be a part of my taste. Just like Giorgio Armani is in the 1930s and Nicolas [Ghesquière] is maybe in the 1980s. I guess everyone is rooted in the period that they’re a product of.

You’ve been with your partner, Richard, a long time, and recently on the Internet there’s been talk about how you said you wanted to have a son. How hard or easy will that be?
That story seems to have jumped all over the Internet in the last few days. And it was just that. It doesn’t matter if it’s a son or daughter. I’ve always wanted to have a child and I’m getting to the age where if I’m going to do that, I’m going to need to do it soon. It is something I’m thinking about, but I can tell you I have not taken any formal steps. I do not have a child in the works [laughs]. If I’m going to do it, then it must be in the next couple of years because I’d like to still be able to pick the child up without pulling my back out. It may be one of the last things in my life that I haven’t . . . well, there are a lot of things I haven’t accomplished, but that’s certainly a major one.

Karl Lagerfeld told me he feels Chinese women inhabit clothes in a different way from Western women. Do you agree?
I think the way Chinese and Japanese women wear clothes is so different. I find that Chinese women inhabit clothes very well. What I love about the Chinese is that this is a culture that has understood luxury for centuries and centuries and centuries. In fact, I find them very comfortable with things that Westerners might think were maybe too luxurious. I find as a fashion designer that’s an ideal situation. The Chinese have no fear of luxury.