Born in Austin, Texas, in 1961, Tom Ford spent his childhood between Texas and New Mexico. After leaving New York University, Ford moved to Parsons to study architecture.
In 1994, Ford became the new Creative Director of Gucci at a time when the brand was at a financial low point. His designs—marked by bold sensuality and modern glamour inspired by the days of Studio 54—revolutionized the luxury landscape. At the time Ford took the position, Gucci was primarily producing handbags. He transformed the brand into a seductive and bold fashion powerhouse. By 2004, when Tom Ford departed from Gucci, revenue had surged to nearly $3 billion, making it one of the most profitable luxury brands in the world.
The transformation of Gucci was not only due to the provocative collections Ford designed. Driven by the belief that “fashion is about creating desire,” Ford played a crucial role in repositioning Gucci through powerful marketing. His enduring partnerships with former French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld and photographer Mario Testino resulted in some of the fashion world’s most influential—and often provocative—campaigns.
In 1999, when Yves Saint Laurent was acquired by the Gucci Group, Ford, while still Creative Director at Gucci, also took on the role of Creative Director at Yves Saint Laurent. At the start of his tenure, Tom Ford’s attempt to bring his provocative style to the historic brand was poorly received. His early collections faced criticism from the media and within the company, with Yves Saint Laurent himself publicly disapproving of Ford’s direction.
Despite this, Ford’s work at Gucci continued to receive acclaim, including the award for Best International Designer at the 2000 VH1/Vogue Awards. By 2003, tensions with PPR (now Kering) escalated during difficult contract negotiations. In April 2004, unable to reach an agreement, Ford left both Gucci and YSL.
Tom Ford launched his namesake brand in 2005 in New York City. Since then, his brand has evolved into a global symbol of luxury and sophistication, renowned for its high-quality and timeless products. Tom Ford encompasses a range of products, including menswear, womenswear, fragrances, eyewear, and watches.
Ford believed that fashion should strike the perfect balance between art and commerce – a philosophy he deeply embedded into the identity of his brand.
There were several defining moments in the development of Tom Ford as a brand that shaped its identity, visibility, and prestige.
Rather than launching a fashion collection, Ford’s first product under the Tom Ford label was the fragrance “Black Orchid,” released in 2006. This unconventional choice set the tone for the brand’s bold and seductive identity. Through scent, Ford introduced the brand’s aesthetic: sensual, dark, glamorous. Tom Ford would not just be a clothing label, but a lifestyle brand.
In 2007, Tom Ford opened its first flagship store on Madison Avenue in New York City. The store was designed like a private residence with dark woods, velvet furnishing and curated art, embodying the exclusive and alluring world of the brand.
Ford debuted his first womenswear collection in 2010 in a small, invite-only fashion show for just 100 guests in New York. At a time when fashion was becoming increasingly fast and digital, Ford chose exclusivity and intimacy – an impeccable strategy for positioning the brand within the world of luxury.
Ford was one of the first designers to deviate from the traditional fashion calendar. Instead of presenting collections six months in advance, he showcased them at the exact moment they became available for purchase. This bold, consumer-first approach allowed the brand to meet evolving consumer expectations in the digital age – where immediacy, access, and visual storytelling had become essential.
In 2023, Tom Ford was sold to Estée Lauder for $2.8 billion, marking the most lucrative designer exit in history. This deal showed the immense value and cultural impact Ford had created throughout his career. Tom Ford didn’t just build a brand – he built a legacy of style, power, and unapologetic glamour.
Under Peter Hawkings’ creative directorship, Ford the brand leaned into a 90s nostalgia evoking Ford’s Gucci heyday. But Colombian-born designer Haider Ackermann’s appointment as the new creative director of the brand in 2024 gave birth to different predictions: his aesthetic for Ford was expected to “make more radical updates to the brand, with his crisp, minimalist silhouettes”, as explained by Robert Williams, the Business of Fashion’s Luxury Editor in September 2024. Ackermann’s reputation as an exquisite colorist and precise tailoring allowed the new director to join the brand with Ford’s blessing.
His debut for the fall-winter collection 2025 in Paris proved Tom Ford’s intuition right. Models strolled between graffitied mirrors and banquettes suggesting some type of unsaid deviance: Ackermann’s stage for this spectacle was a sort of gamy club privé, surely inspired by his work experience in a night club of Antwerp’s red light district. In fact, Ackermann has offered powerfully erotic visions to the fashion world since the beginning of his career. Next to Ford’s renown for freed, sensual creativity, both men embody a type of dandy libertinism that makes this new alliance a deliciously dangerous liaison.
Minimalism bordering on brutalism: words that can describe both the scenery and the collection. In fact, the collection almost seems to be about this moment when, come dawn, the party goers meet up to review the night’s adventures. So the brutal, spirited atmosphere of the night meets the sweetness and intimacy of the morning after: see the sky blue bathrobe, loosely tied around the model’s waist, spotted at PFW 2025.
The collection toned down into a quiet forcefulness lined in cashmere, silk and precise tailoring. A monochrome opening, with black leather jackets, pants and white silk tee-shirts, stroke in contrast with a subsequent colorfulness: suits in acid yellow silk, a mint green blazer and subtle color combinations, reminding the world of what a great colorist Ackermann is.
The “morning after” mood also lingered through the catwalk, with jackets and pants combinations reminiscent of Ford’s era but with a new, maybe more nude, looseness, signed by Ackermann.
According to Ackermann, the collection was “inspired by Ford, the man rather than Ford, the designer”. Lulu Tenney’s blue caftan as well as Ackermann’s version of the fringed lila dress the model Karen Elson had already worn for Ford during his first post-Gucci sabbatical spring-summer show in 2011 both acted as nods to Ford’s legacy, that Ackermann is well decided to sublimate.
Ackermann’s debut ended on a subdued note: an evening dress, a draped jacket and a simple, elongated tube of beads preceded the designer’s bow on the catwalk, as the guests clapped to an enthusiastic Ackermann greeting a radiant Tom Ford sitting front row.
This marks the beginning of a promising partnership, and of fashion’s yet spiciest liaison for this 2025 season.
