There’s something a little surprising on Tom Ford’s website, and it reads kind of like… honesty.
Unlike most designers colonizing the web, who focus on e-commerce adventures and aggregated marketing moments, with some tips and feel-good truisms thrown in, perhaps with photos of the designer demonstrating his “lifestyle” approach, Mr. Ford has a blog post that explains the genesis of his spring collection — otherwise known as the “pastie collection” — along with a gallery of mood board images.
In itself, that’s not so rare, but what sets this post apart and makes it worth reading is the fact that he addresses some of his more negative reviews (including one by yours truly). And he also admits to a generally known, but little-discussed reality of the fashion world: that celebrities sometimes don’t wear the dresses designers make for them.
In this case, it was Rihanna, and the event was the Council of Fashion Designers of America awards in June.
“I had designed several things for her specifically for that evening which she did not wear, but when I saw her, it did not matter,” Mr. Ford wrote.
She wore, as some of us might remember, a sheer dress that in some people’s minds barely qualified as a dress: It was more like the idea of a dress.
In any case, in a world obsessed with relentless image control, these admissions of fallibility and self-examination work, as I am sure Mr. Ford knows, very effectively to his advantage. They humanize him. And the rest of the fashion world should sit up and pay some attention.
After all, it was Mr. Ford who arguably pioneered the former strategy in his Gucci years. He has, apparently, moved on. Perhaps the rest of the fashion world might consider it, too.