Granted it was nearly a month ago now, but Tom Ford in conversation with British Vogue's editor Alexandra Shulman at the first ever Vogue Festival was an experience I'll never forget. Alexandra Shulman introduced him as 'superman', and there probably isn't a more apt adjective. With his work from Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and his own label Tom Ford, he has proved to be one of the most influential designers of the last twenty years, and at the head of the Gucci group he demonstrated that the right designers vision when correctly employed works for all areas of a brand. And that's without mentioning his Golden Globe, BAFTA and Oscar nominated film A Single Man.
With so many great quotes and pieces of Tom Ford wisdom, I thought I could turn them into a quick short article, just picking out the best bits, but there are so many of them. Instead, as not to demerit anything that was said and give those who didn't get the chance to go the full story of what happened, the unedited (except the removal of 'you know' which he says a lot and the addition of punctuation) Tom Ford/Alexandra Shulman conversation. It may be long, but to me it proved the vision and intelligence of someone who will (hopefully) continue to create a perfect world.
Alexandra Shulman: Who wouldn’t want a piece of your world or even just a lipstick really. Tom maybe not the world you grew up in, what was it...
Tom Ford: That’s definitely not the world I grew up in! In fact the world I grew up in was what made me want to create that world. That world probably links to films when I was a kid and fantasy. We all grow up to try to create the life that we thought we would have, that we wanted, that we dreamt about, and that’s our goal. Luckily I get to do it, which is nice. Although my real home life doesn’t quite look like that [referring to his ad campaigns], no half naked girls with perfume all over them, it’s a touch more quiet.
A: When you were growing up in Texas in the 60s were you aware of the kind of youthquakes going on in Europe?
T: I was aware of what was going on in Texas. I was a kid growing up in the middle of the hippie period. I grew up in a small university town and people with long hair...
A: You had long hair?
T: I had long hair as a young kid, up until I was about 18. But I had such long hair that I remember one time we stopped for gas and the gas attendant, I was about 9 and wearing pants and a shirt that did up at the front and some beads I made, I remember the guy saying 'the girls room is that way' to my mother.
A: I can’t picture you as a hippie I have to say.
T: I’ll wear it next time we see each other.
A: Ok! When you first started in fashion, what did you want to achieve - was it the clothes that you wanted to design or was it that world you wanted to create?
T: I have to say I did start out with the vision of that world. Richard I told this to on our very first date 25 years ago, I think he thought I was crazy. I mean, I love fashion. I love designing individual things. But creating that entire world, the world you just saw, the world I will hopefully be lucky enough to continue to create, that’s what really fascinated me. Ralph Lauren was the first really to do that and he really created that world and Calvin Klein in America too at that time.
A: It’s interesting that they were American, and that the Americans much more saw the idea of creating a whole kind of lifestyle and environment more than the Europeans did.
T: Well I think Americans are businessmen, not that everyone else in the world isn’t of course. Having worked on 7th Avenue, it’s very clear. If you did a collection and it didn’t sell you’d be fired the next day, so that merchant mentality really did push American’s in that way. However, Yves Saint Laurent - when I first started at Saint Laurent there were 127 licenses so everything, all over the world, and in America you had Halston doing this and Calvin doing this and other companies doing it, but you also had the Europeans doing it. I think that world concept really came from Ralph [Lauren]. Coco Chanel had a modest, not modest, but she had a version of it as well. If you saw the Chanel exhibition at the MET a few years ago, I mean she invented bronzer in the 20s, quite amazingly.
T: We’re so far apart, I feel like we should be closer.
A: Okay... that’s as close as I’m going to get, I don’t trust this one at all.
T: I’m untrustworthy.
A: Do you remember the first time that you saw something that you created made in a shop?
T: Oh yeah, absolutely. It was when I worked in Cathy Hardwick, a woman in New York who was a great friend, and it was my very first job as a design assistant. I also remember the first thing I saw with my name on it, it was a pair of sunglasses. I had been used to seeing my name attached to Saint Laurent or attached to Gucci, but I remember when I saw this. It meant something to me.
A: And when was that?
T: It was in 2005 or 2006.
A: The world you’ve created is very glamourous and it kind of taps into most of our definitions of glamour, was glamour something that you blatantly were interested in or was it a biproduct of what you...
T: I think, it’s just... it’s funny because a lot of people do tell me that I create glamourous things and glamourous images. It’s an odd word actually I don’t like or think about, it’s just what I see. It’s like sexy, that’s also weird that’s attached to me. In a fitting I don’t start out and say, 'how are we gonna make Alex sexy?' But I would get some pins and pull things. I know you’re already sexy, she came this way, I didn’t do this to her outside. It’s my natural taste, it’s my expression of my natural taste and you can call it whatever else. I think what I like though is influenced by the late 70s, being in New York, that sort of very streamlined, minimalist glamour. Halston, Elsa Perreti, you know marble, using opulent material, materials used in a very sleek, smooth way but I think that that is built forever into my...
A: And they are kind of what most people conceive of as kind of glamourous.
T: They were very glamourous, and all those people were very glamourous, and it was a very glamourous time.
A: Are you someone who likes to sit in a room on their own and have their Eureka moment or are you a collaborator who always has to ping pong ideas around?
T: Both. My favorite part of the day is lying in the bath tub, and I do it all the time...
A: Hold on, wait, what do you put in the bathtub?
T: Me!? Hotwater, me. I just lie down and I think about the things I’m gonna do for the day and I have a notepad actually, not far, it’s sort of drippy but you know... Then when I go into the office, I think if you surround yourself with people who you feel have great taste and energy and effort, I absolutely think I’m collaborative. In the end, my names going on it and I have to say 'thanks, you know, no' but you have to work with people, being a creative director and a design director or a film director you’re job is to inspire people and to surround yourself with great people, to have a vision and then to help those people give you their very best and at the same time to steer and lead them, and learn from them, to what your original intent and vision was. So you have to be able to work with people.
A: And how do you say to someone you don’t like what they’ve done?
T: I don’t like that.
T: I’m pretty blunt, I’m just like 'yeah it’s great, no I don’t think so.' I’m probably sometimes rude. I was talking to one of your editors outside and I just told her her eyebrows could go darker. I didn’t mean it, I was just looking at her and I thought you’re eyebrows could go darker. I tend to say what I think.
A: Okay, don’t start on me.
T: I threatened to come out with her book...
A: Which I banned him from doing...
T: She did.
A: I thought that would be so embarrassing and then he was going to read from it.
T: I was gonna do a reading.
A: Okay... what are your worst characteristics?
T: Perfectionism to the point of insanity. It’s horrible. And probably telling people that they’re brows aren’t right or that their breast implants aren’t the right shape or actually showing them how to massage them so that they become the right shape. You know, honesty. I no longer drink alcohol, I haven’t for quite a few years, but I did drink a lot and I was honest with a sort of mean streak and I was saying to {undistinguishable} who works with me in the car a few minutes ago that not drinking after four years, it’s like a truth serum. It’s different, I just, I say what I think - without the mean streak. Honesty is probably something that...
A: You mean not drinking makes you more honest?
T: It’s a different kind of honest. You know, had I have been drunk I would have said [imitates southern accent] “Your eyebrows are like hell!” Instead of “maybe your eyebrows should go a little darker.” It’s just different.
A: You and Richard have been together for I think...
T: 25 years!
A: Maybe he should answer this but you’re on stage, how does he deal with the amount of fame that you’ve had in that time?
T: How does he just deal with me, period. I think that’s the question. You’d have to ask him that.
A: But you must know a little bit.
T: Richard, there’s no fame at home I’m telling you. There’s none of that. Richard keeps me very grounded.
A: You’re very open about your sexuality and being gay. So why do you...
T: I’m not gay?!
A: After twenty five years of being in a relationship?
T: Yes! He’s a man, I mean we don’t necessarily have to put boxes around it.
A: No boxes, but all the same...
T: Have you ever slept with a woman Alex?
A: No.
T: And from this day there’s probably never going to be another picture of anything I make in British Vogue!
A: Okay, still I want you to answer this question, so why do you have yourself in photographs advertising as a kind of heterosexual male?
T: There are lots of pictures of me with naked boys too, maybe you just didn’t find them, I’m about equal opportunity. I don’t just objectify women, you know, men, women, dogs. But I’m selling make-up and I am, in a sense, the face of the brand. People often ask me who is your muse for menswear. I mean I try everything on, I look at everything. I’m the face of the brand and actually I don’t necessarily like having my picture taken, I’m extremely extremely shy, I’m extremely private. Anyway, I don’t remember what your question was! Oh, putting myself in the picture. Actually we have done a little market research and when launching something like make-up, people really respond to a personality, a character, someone, and I think with the most successful designers there is an imprint of their personality, there is a point of view in the brand, that is what makes it the brand. You feel Miuccia’s personality in Prada, you feel Karl’s personality split with Coco Chanel’s in Chanel, you feel the personality of the person creating the brand. And not everyone knows who I am yet, so that’s why I’m in the pictures.
A: With the Tom Ford clothes, when you were doing Gucci, every show had a different, sort of... it was all tied into that 70s vibe. One would be Club Tropicana, one would be Studio 54. With Tom Ford I get the feeling that you very deliberately created something that is external to trends, you’re trying to be something that’s much more timeless. Would that be right?
T: I would like to say that’s right. I think good clothes, even if they are created in a moment of a strong trend, good clothes really last forever. It doesn’t matter if it’s last year, 3 years ago, 5 years ago, if something is good it’s good. I do want to create things that people keep and making things really beautifully is very much what I’m about right now. Making the best quality, the best quality fabric, the best quality stitching, the best shape, the best cut, and I’m trying to make people look as beautiful as they can look, and feel as good as they can feel.
A: Do you find it harder to make new friends now that you’re famous
T: Other famous people are easy to make friends with! No, yes I do find it harder to make friends. A lot of people don’t believe that. Richard and I are often talking about this, we’re usually at a dinner party with other people and so sure, whenever anyone comes up to me on the street and says hi... yeah...
A: That totally makes sense.
T: Do you?
A: No! I’m almost famous. What do you like doing when you’re not working? Which I know would be very very little amount of the time.
T: Well for my 50th birthday, for example, there are a few people sitting right here in the front row, we went white water rafting in the...
A: White water rafting?
T: Absolutely, for a couple of days, with the same toilet, that was not even a toilet, no showers, just a little thing were you heat up the water.
A: Where? In Colorado?
T: We were all there together. Yeah, white water rafting. You know, you couldn’t bathe, you’re in the middle of no where...
A: That was your choice?
T: Absolutely. One of my favorite things to do in the world and it was how I wanted to spend my 50th birthday, in the middle of nowhere.
A: So do you like a sort of element of danger?
T: Well, I like doing things that challenge me. There’s not much danger in what we did, down a river. Oh Alex, you’ve got a helmet and you’ve got a guide, if you fall off and just stuck between a tree and a rock it’s fine.
A: My son’s in the second row, he knows that I would not want to go, I’d be scared of a white water raft.
T: I like the outside. That’s the most restful to me, because maybe it’s the most peaceful because I’m not busy correcting shapes and looking at colours and correcting eyebrows, because nature is... it’s totally imperfect, but yet it’s absolutely perfect. For me it’s restful because I’m not trying to redesign a tree. Or change the shape of a rock. Though I have done that in our house in town.
A: So doing something...
T: Outside. Away from civilization. But I think the older you get the more you can return to where you came from. I was born in Texas, I grew up in New Mexico in the desert where you can literally see 200 miles in every direction, and something about that gives me great peace.
A: How do you feel about the English countryside? Do you ever go there? I can’t kind of picture you...
T: What are you talking about?! Yes, I love the English countryside and I go as often as I’m invited.
A: Do you shoot?
T: Not very well, sadly. And that’s political thing so I’m not going there.
A: I realized that as soon as it came out of my mouth.
T: I grew up in Texas, so if that’s the answer to your question... I’m a democrat.
A: When you made the film, doing something completely different like making a film was exposing yourself to a whole new area of scrutiny and criticism, were you nervous of that element, I know you’ve always wanted to make a film.
T: I wasn’t nervous at all. Maybe that was foolish. In my mind what I wanted to do was very clear. Again, maybe it was very foolish, but I didn’t have any fear because it was something I wanted to say, it was very emotional. I knew what I wanted to put in that film. I had a lot of moments of fear when I was editing. I would go home and say 'oh god this doesn’t work, it’s horrible, how am I going to make the scene work, this is a disaster, what am I gonna do' and then you go back, and you look and you rethink it. It was only after I made the film that people said things to me like, 'did you realise everyone was laughing at you?' I had no idea.
A: It was a huge critically acclaimed film so it all worked out
T: It worked out very well and I pray it works out as well for the next one
A: You’ll make another one?
T: Well, as soon as I can design a few more women’s collections. I have to say between the two businesses, designing women’s clothes is harder, and women’s fashion is harder than the film industry. What you do is perishable in womenswear. Even if you try to make non-perishable clothes, like I do, it is still perishable. Meaning that there’s a lifespan on the shelf, and it needs to change, and then it needs to change, and then it needs to change. And it changes so quickly that, you know, as a filmmaker you can make a film and then have a 3, 5 year break before you make another one. As a fashion designer, on the day I showed my last collection in London, the next day the sketches had to be handed in for cruise, and you don’t have that downtime that people did have back in the 70s when Saint Laurent and Halston, you know, they really did go off to islands for weeks and think. We don’t have time to catch our breath in womens fashion industry.
A: How do you feel about the whole question of speed and pace in the fashion industry at the moment, where not only do you have a situation where shops don’t have anything on sale at the time people want to buy them, you can’t buy a swimming costume in June, you can’t buy a coat in February, but also now you’ve got brands selling their collections for the next season essentially straight off the catwalk. How do you feel about it? To me I think there’s something very out of kilter with our timetable.
T: There is and it’s something which is like a giant snowball rolling down a hill and there’s not much you can do to stop it. One thing I do find very interesting about it however is that, you and I have been in fashion for a long time and always there was one look, one shoe, one skirt length that was right for that season, now everything co-exists. You open any magazine, there are flats, there are chunky heels, there are platforms, there are stilettos, there’s this toe, there’s that toe, there’s colour, there’s lots of pattern, and magazines are starting to cover it on the front. It’s well there’s this look, or you could do this look, or you could do that look. So it will be very interesting to see what happens now that everything is in fashion all the time, because it is, and that really also allows women and men to express their own individual taste. But a lot has been written about this recently, it's that this moment we’re living in now hasn’t really moved. It’s still. You can take pictures from the 90s and now and the graphics and everything, we haven’t moved, we’re kind of everything all at the same time. It’s very interesting. I don’t know where it’s going but it’s interesting. The only thing you can ever do is to be part of your time. I think that’s the greatest thing you can do. As we do have this snowball, move with it, observe it, and then react to it, and that’s what you do.
A: And you’ve now got all this make-up.
T: You’re not wearing my polish.
A: No, it’s Chanel.
T: I was reading you’re book...
A: Ermm... but I do know you’re make-up is very good, even though I’m not wearing the polish, but I have tried the lipsticks in particular are fantastic, they’re very good if you get them on your finger and then dot them on.
T: Believe it or not I’ve had them on and not at a drag party. No, really, I mean unless I test them, how it feels, is it too sticky, does it go on well...
A: That’s what I was going to ask you, do you wear any of the products?
T: I put every single thing on. I don’t wear it out on the street, but how does it feel, how is the colour, what does it do. I haven’t had the eyeshadows on but I’ve sat and worked with girls to make sure it blends well and sure, you try all those things. It’s important. I’m accused often of being what’s called a control freak.
A: That was my next question!
T: I think if I buy something with someone’s name on it you should know that they, themselves, worked on it. And it was just exactly the way they wanted it, not this way, not that way.
A: Are you able to achieve that? You have to work with a big company to produce those products, how much do you have to compromise or are you really able to get every detail exactly right?
T: I think most of the time I’m able to do it. You have to choose great partners, who share your vision, who have the ability to produce what you want to produce. I kind of kick a lot if I don’t get it until I get it, but that’s what you have to do, it’s a battle.
A: When you’re gonna have a battle with somebody, do you get on the phone yourself?
T: Absolutely. Yes.
A: Do you phone or do you email?
T: I’m more of an email person. When it’s something really serious I do phone. But I’m an email person. I don’t even actually really have or carry a cellphone. It’s all day long, things, things, emails, emails, emails. I can’t stand to know that someone could reach me at any moment. I suppose that makes me sound spoilt, because now you’re thinking ‘oh he doesn’t need to carry a cellphone.'
A: You’re like the queen, someone else carries it for you.
T: The gloves are off now.
A: That’s a very good moment then to open the floor to other people for questions.
Audience member: I wanted to ask you about your way of doing fashion shows because you’ve actually gone back to doing a very intimate fashion show, where you actually present your creations. What do you think about the other way of doing fashion shows, because other companies actually show their shows online where everyone can see it and actually buy the stuff that is live. And the other part is, what do you think about bloggers being the new fashion critics?
T: Okay so let me try and think of your first one again. The reason that I present in a very small controlled way, and do it myself, is that so much of what makes my clothes special is the lining, the stitching, the cut, the shoulder pads, the shape, and you can’t see that on a runway. The runway can be great, but you almost have to exaggerate things a bit so that you can see them, and in creating clothes that I hope will last a long time, it’s best if I can actually show these things in a way that the consumer is going to respond to them. Having done big shows for a long time, sometimes you start to do things for the short term. In a publicly traded company you might make decisions that you wouldn’t make if you weren’t worrying. And sometimes, in fashion shows, it’s big and you know it’s going to be reviewed the next day, and you might make decisions that you believe in a little bit less because you’re worried about the review. I didn't’ want to have that pressure. I wanted to really make the clothing respond to the customer. Fashion bloggers, again, this is the world we live in. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it. It’s just part of the world. You have to take it in, you have to respond to it. I chose to respond by pulling back to a more inmate way of showing clothes. I have to say though that as we grow, I’m not sure that I will be able to maintain that.
Audience member: Do you think having set times for fashion week every year, particularly for womenswear because it’s much more intense, do you think it’s a bit restricting? Having set dates that you have to release a collection every year? Or would you prefer to have the freedom to put out collections when you choose?
T: It would be good to just put out a collection when you felt like it. Because it would mean ‘hey, I’m really inspired’. There needs to be a change now. But you have to look at reality. You have stores. A lot of people work in those stores. The customers go into them. They need to see new merchandise. They want to walk in six weeks later and buy something else, and six weeks later and buy something else, otherwise you can’t do business. In order to produce these things there needs to be a cycle. So fortunately or unfortunately the reality is that to keep the business running there has to be a cycle. But yes, theoretically it would be wonderful, because fashion doesn’t need to change as often as it does. It only needs to respond to changes in life, and honestly I often think I still really like what we did last season. But you can’t do it, because the customer liked it, brought it, has it, so it has to be new.
Audience member: I recently watched your documentary from a few months ago. As you said you’re quite private, what was it at this point in your life that allowed you to expose more of your personal life and career?
T: Are you talking about the Opera documentary? Well, I love Opera, I trust Opera, and she asked me to do it, I felt safe and secure doing it.
Audience member: How do you keep the brand special and exciting and cross-cultural?
T: Well we have a terrific partner in India, and actually we’ve made special things for India, special menswear pieces. If it’s something that fits into what I see as the modern world in relation to that market then I make it for that shop.
Audience member: And womenswear?
T: Womenswear... the same thing but less because our menswear is much more developed at this point and we’re much more able to customize and make things individual, and we are set out for a hybrid between tailoring and designer brands, so we make very specific things for men. We can’t yet do that for women, we will be able to do it soon I hope.
Audience member: When you first moved to Paris from the US did you find it intimidating or did you ever have a moment where you just thought I want to go back to New York?
T: Did you just move here from somewhere?
Audience member: A few years ago yeah.
T: I moved to Paris to go to Parsons, so I had a kind of built in place to go and people to know. But I do remember that, and this was... maybe it doesn’t sound silly, I walked around and cried for about a week just because it was so beautiful and I just couldn’t believe I was living in Paris.
Audience member: When setting up a business, what would you say would be the best way to create a brand equity when you don’t have much money.
T: Oh god, these words, equity...
Audience member: I’m a fashion business student so...
T: Equity, equity, I’d love that word to be banished. Although we all need it. I think you have to rely on... you know, there are a lot of wonderful people in the fashion industry who are eager to help people with talent. I think you need a small capusle collection and then you need to get people to see it and respond to it. But that being said, and I’m not trying to discourage you or anyone here who is starting a new business, but even with every advantage that I had, it is a struggle to start a new brand. I have such respect for kids who attempt it straight out of school, who are successful at it. It’s incredible. First you need to have something to show somebody, first you need to have a point of view, and then you need to try to get it seen.
Audience member: So networking is what it’s all about?
T: Yeah I guess. Networking’s another one of those bad words, but getting something beautiful that you’ve made seen.
Audience member: Do you feel that you understand women? You talk about shelf life, and I have some shoes that you designed for Gucci years ago and I still wear them, the way that you put collections together for your brand, even if I can’t afford them I love looking at them, do you have a special gene or?
T: It’s interesting and I wish I had the answer to that. It is true that most male designers are gay. I don’t know. Actually I hate to use the words gay, straight, I think we’re all on some sort of sliding scale. I’m at the Richard Buckley end of the scale, but I hate that gay straight thing. Perhaps, in the past 30 years, growing up if you were gay it was horrid and you had to certainly try to empathize and then be yourself and express yourself and fight to express yourself so maybe... I don’t know, maybe a gay man can project certain feelings about a different life that a straight man can’t imagine or project, I really don’t know. I didn’t answer that well but I don’t have the answer to that question. It is a great question.
Audience member: You have your own fashion label and you have your film, is there any other creative discipline you want to get into?
T: I’d like to make more films, and I’d like to design more collections so I’m pretty satisfied. I’m getting to indulge my love of architecture and building stores, so I’m very engaged in everything I do. I try to imagine myself as an old man, in my 90s, living in Mexico, being a sculptor with my dog. But, I don’t know. I’m very happy. I’m very lucky.
Audience member: I’m lucky enough to be part of your Tom Ford beauty team and obviously as everybody’s seen it’s the most recent thing you’ve done. What is is that inspired the whole brand and why now?
T: One of the first things I did after I decided I wanted to go back to fashion was to work with Estee Lauder on what was then called the Tom Ford Estee Lauder collection. But I did that knowing that after that I would be doing Tom Ford Beauty. I've always loved beauty. It is artifice in a sense, it is like painting. It is being able to have a character, it’s also correcting architectural things on your face, light and shine, and it’s something that I love and I’m very passionate about. It was really one of the very first things that I wanted to do when I knew I wanted to come back with a collection of my own. It just takes a long time to develop cosmetics.
Audience member: I love your range of clothes and aftershaves. Which is your favorite?
T: I tend to wear Tobacco Vanille more than any of the others, but I like all of them. I love strong fragrance. When I put it on, I put it on and put it on and put it on. Walk past one and put that on, walk past the Amber and put that on...
Audience member: What are you wearing today?
T: Today I’m wearing Neroli Portofino.
Audience member: How did you first get inspired to be in the fashion industry?
T: This sounds like a made up story, but it’s really true. I was in Moscow in 1984, and I had eaten something that didn’t agree with me and I’d stayed behind, and I was getting ready to be finished with school. I was tormented about architecture, it’s so serious, and I realized when I was building architectural models I was always more concerned about what they little people looked like standing at the side, what they were wearing. When I was given a project to choose I’d made a dressing room, and it was like ‘bong’, it was one of those moments: I can be a fashion designer.
Audience member: Since you're obsessed with everything being perfect, do you not think it’s viable? Like couture?
T: It isn’t that I don’t think it’s viable. In fact, when I was younger I didn’t think it was viable. I think it’s viable now because it’s like, it’s art. People spend millions of dollars for a piece of art, and couture is art. So you have to think of it that way. It is sculpture that you wear and it moves and it requires such skill and work and I have much more reverence for it now than I did when I was young, because when I was young I was thinking what does it mean, you can’t wear it, no one can afford it. At this moment in time, never say never, I don’t have any intention to do that. The clothes I make are couture-like in that they do require an enormous amount of handwork.
Audience member: Would would be your advise on starting in the fashion industry?
T: Equity and networking!
Audience member: You’re known for being a very intellectual man...
T: Really?
Audience member: You consider every little aspect, what would Tom Ford do on his down time, I know you do your baths... You look at everything, you’re always concentrating.
T: Downtime for me is work. I love working. I love what I do. For example tomorrow, it’s Sunday I don’t have to go to the office, so I’m going to work up some plans for something that we’re building and something that we’re designing and I’m going to go through and choose the colours. I love to work. I’m so lucky to do what I love. Otherwise, it really is staring at white paper and looking at the ceiling, which is a meditative thing, it’s not that I you know... am obsessed with cleanliness.
Audience member: Which director inspired you the most? How often do you take inspiration from a film into your fashion design?
T: A lot, but in a film, certainly for me and I think for many people, things that never really happen because they’re just movies, are so much a part of our history, our childhood, our dreams, worlds that never really existed, in our heads, become things that really exist. I love Los Angeles. One reason isn’t the LA of today, it’s that LA in my head is all these other things and all these other films and, you can say things to each other that weren’t real, they were on a set. In fact, one of the most exciting things for me as a film director was sitting there are my computer typing, no she didn’t say that, changing that, no but she’d say that. And then when we were on set and the room was built and it was exactly the room I had imagined and here was this woman walking across the room saying exactly what I had written and he responded exactly the same thing, and it really was real. Granted they were acting, but it actually happened in the space, those people were there, they did what I created, it was an amazing amazing thing. I know I didn’t answer your question, so... what was your question?
Audience member: Directors?
T: Wong Kar-Wai... Hitchcock, I mean every movie Hitchcock ever made, but then I love old films by George Cukor, which are, you know, much more life. However there was always this real substance to them. That’s a hard question, because there’s so many directors that I admire from periods and different moments in time. It depends on what you’re looking for.
Audience member: I really love your film. I thought it was so powerful but at the same time visually beautiful. I wondered whether your obsession with the image was at all inhibiting in getting across Isherwood’s plot and story.
T: I altered quite a bit the plot of that story. If you’ve read the books, wonderful beautiful beautiful book, but it is an internal piece. Nothing actually happens George doesn’t die of a heart attack, Charlie is not who you see in the Julianne Moore character, it’s all in his head. The most important thing to me in that film is the emotion. That’s what I really wanted to capture, it was the feeling and the emotion. Style without substance is just surface. That having been said, as a story teller, I am a visual person. I remember reading that in film making you make a silent film, and you just put in words when the actions and what you’re watching can’t express it. You do conjure up visual imagery that helps you to tell your story.
Audience member: You have some amazing photography for all your designs and products, do you get involved in all of that?
T: I shoot a lot of them. Most of the last campaigns I’ve shot. I shot all those lookbook pictures. I photograph them a lot. That’s only after having - I couldn’t do it if it weren’t for the marvel of what you can do on a computer, let’s just say my photographic skills would not... I’ve had the great fortune of working with great great great photographers, so I’m extremely involved. I’m certainly on set and working if someone else if shooting the pictures.
Audience member: What advise would you give someone whose trying to break into the industry as a photographer or a designer?
T: Well... equity and networking! You have to have something to show people and then you have to try to find those people. I stood in a lobby of a building in New York, 575 7th Avenue, with quarters because there were no cellphones then, and I called this woman who eventually gave me a job all day long every 10 minutes. And she will tell you that this is true. Every moment at her receptionist, I’m down in the lobby and I would like an appointment, I’m down in the lobby and I would like an appointment. And she saw me. She later told me she didn’t hire me for my work, but that she thought I had really pretty hands.
Instagram image my own.
