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Tom Ford is certainly a man who loves bombshells – and we’re not just talking the Hollywood starlet variety.
The prolific fashion designer, beauty entrepreneur and Oscar-nominated movie director first sent shockwaves through the fashion business last year by announcing he was shunning the traditional fashion show merry-go-round (i.e. revealing new collections on a runway six months before they drop in stores so wholesale buyers can plan and glossy media can whip up a frenzy).
Rather, he teased us with the news he would trial a risky new See Now, Buy Now runway show concept that’s fuelled by social media. (Think of it this way: Ford’s departure from the ‘historical’ way of doing things was fashion’s version of Brexit.)
Kate Bosworth, Tom Ford and the Oscar-winning star of his first film, A Single Man
Credit: Getty Images
Supporters called him a revolutionary. Industry purists were horrified at his tradition-irreverent mindset, worried it would put the ‘fashion week’ concept as a whole at jeopardy. Could this be the end of the big four fashion weeks altogether if other designers all followed suit? (Tommy Hilfiger, for example, also showed in LA with a See Now Buy Now show this season. Burberry jumped on the bandwagon the same time as Ford.)
Then the Texas-born Nocturnal Animals director moved his eponymous line’s ready-to-wear show from its London Fashion Week home to Los Angeles last month (all roads clearly lead back to Hollywood and its starlets for Ford). VIPs and customers at or watching the runway show via social media could shop what they saw that very same day.
In theory, it could have (should have) worked given the world’s new penchant for instant gratification. But clearly, Ford’s big risk didn’t pay off. The designer announced today he’s abandoning the experiment, hinting in an interview with industry journal Women’s Wear Daily that he lost money as a result. The problem wasn’t the concept, he said, but that the rest of the retail industry wasn’t set up to make it work.
Gigi Hadid on the Tom Ford AW16 runway
Credit: NOWFASHION
By holding back clothes intended for a big reveal in his mid-September fashion show, he missed crucial sales in late August – a peak time at the start of the new fashion season. “You can’t have a show with clothes that have been on the selling floor for a month,” he said. “We lost a month of selling. We had merchandise sitting in stockrooms.”
Ford will also shift his design HQ and staff – along with his husband and son – from London to a new Los Angeles base, where he has rented a large studio space once used by Hedi Slimane. Along with the Buy Now concept, he’s also written London Fashion Week off as another failed experiment and will instead showcase in New York each season moving forward.
“Paris is crammed full of competition. Milan – been there and done that. London, I’ve tried and tried and tried,” he admitted. NYC, he says, now feels right as the place for his collections to get maximum international exposure.
Ford with Rihanna at an AmFar charity dinner in 2015
Credit: Getty Images
All of this interesting, but what does this mean on a practical level for those of us who simply love buying fashion? Most likely that others who have joined him in Team See Now Buy Now (such as Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger) will also consider filtering back into the old school way of doing things.
That means we’ll be teased with pictures of lust-have clothes on runways that money can’t buy for another 4-6 months. It also means high street chains will have months (which is eons in the fashion universe) to copy runway looks before they hit the designer stores that actually ‘own’ them. Good news for lovers of fast (and cheap) fashion perhaps, but a terrible turn for anyone who values fashion and creativity in general.
See the full Tom Ford AW16 Runway Collection Here
In an industry that celebrates bravery and experimentation in a creative sense, but is steeped in purist tradition, Ford shook things up. It mightn’t have worked this time, but we suspect it’s just matter of time before he shakes things up with a fresh bombshell we’re not expecting. In the meantime, it will be Ford’s stunning designs that set him apart from his peers, rather than championing a modern – and brave – new ways of selling clothes.
Besides, who doesn’t love a man who ‘fesses up when he’s made a mistake?
