After transitioning to a vegan diet and reducing plastics in his personal life, Tom Ford saw another sustainable watch collection (to follow his sought-after Ocean Plastic Collection) as a natural next step. Meet the Ocean Plastic Sport Timepiece, a slightly more casual model.
“All of our products are sustainable because they are timeless,” Ford tells GRAZIA Gazette: F1 Miami. “They’re not meant to be thrown away — they are made to be held onto and to pass on from generation to generation.”
Made of 100% recycled ocean plastic (from the case, strap, and packaging), each watch in the collection removes roughly 35 bottles of plastic waste from the ocean — and is naturally as chic as the designer himself.
In addition to bringing sustainability into his own label, Ford launched the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize in 2020, the only global competition focused exclusively on creating scalable and biologically degradable alternatives to thin-film plastic polybags.
“I think sustainability is a key and very critical issue in our lives now. The large amount of plastic pollution in our oceans is taking one of the greatest tolls on our environment, alongside deforestation, air pollution, and global warming,” Ford says. “It’s incredibly important. In 2017, we were given the Best International Designer ‘Made in Italy Award’ at the Eco-Age Green Carpet Fashion Awards. It was a very important moment to be recognized by my peers for our efforts towards sustainability.”
The Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize challenges designers to come up with a sustainable replacement for the 180 billion thin film plastic polybags used by the fashion industry every year. The current eight finalists, including Genecis, Kelpi, Lwanda Biotech, Marea, Notpla, Sway, Xampla, and Zero Circle will head to final judging in spring 2023. The winners will receive significant support from the Innovation Prizes partner, Lonely Whale, to scale their sustainable goals.
