Tom Ford — fashion designer-turned-screenwriter-director — garnered much attention for his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man.” “After working at Gucci, I decided that I wanted to make a film, but nothing was really resonating,” Ford says. “Then one day I thought of George (“A Single Man’s” main character), and I realized that after reading the book 25 years earlier, it still spoke to me.”Once Ford bought the rights to the book and David Scearce’s screenplay, he decided to make the story “my own” by creating a plot that George was going to kill himself.“ My first drafts were really terrible. A good friend looked at them and suggested I hire a professional writer, but I kept at it for a year and half. The intention of the book is still there, but there are parts that I was trying to cling to that ultimately didn’t help the elements of the story that I had chosen to accentuate, so I had to lose them.”
In an interview with Apple iTunes, Tom gave the following insights:
Starting at the bottom
“Today, people come out of school and think they should immediately be a star. In this world of course you can make a sex video and you can become a star. But I think everyone should be an intern – you should sweep floors, you should pick up pins, you should run errands because you learn so much.”
Getting married
“I lost so many friends in college – I would say more than half of my closest friends. Richard, my partner of 27 years, had also gone through something also quite tough in his life. We are now married which is nice. I know that was just made legal in the UK which is great; we were married in the States.”
His approach to fashion
“I am a fashion designer but also a businessman. Some designers consider themselves artists, such as Alexander McQueen who was a true artist. I am not an artist. The most artistic thing I have done was to make a film [A Single Man].”
Technology
“I don’t normally carry a cell phone except there is an app where I can watch my son [Alexander John Buckley Ford] sleep at night so, if I’m out to dinner I can watch he’s sleeping fine. That’s the only reason I carry it around.”
Magazines
“I rarely look at print because if I were to look at print I’d be getting on a plane with a big, giant bag of magazines that I need to get through that have been piling up on my desk. So no, actually, I look at most magazines online. And on my iPad.”
Running a multinational designer label
“It’s a dictatorship, not a committee decision. It doesn’t mean you don’t listen to everyone and take everything in, but ultimately you have to weigh it and make the decision. I don’t sleep very much.”
Karl Lagerfeld’s wisdom
“I was at a dinner with Karl Lagerfeld in the Eighties and things had gone quite well rapidly for me at Gucci and everything was on it’s way up and I said ‘Karl I don’t feel anything, I’m not feeling any of this.’ He said, ‘You will. You’ll feel it later when you look back at it.’ It’s true, now I look back and think ‘god I didn’t really feel it, I should have felt it more.’”
*That* Jay-Z track
“It wasn’t what I expected – I had to go online and see what it really meant. What really freaks me out is when he’s at a giant stadium and performs it and there’s 60,000 people screaming your name. I want to crawl under a rock because I’m actually very, very, very shy and no one ever believes this! I really am very shy.”
Why he chose to base his brand in the UK
“Men’s style today is descended from traditional Anglo style – it’s all about a certain shoulder, a certain look. Eccentricity is celebrated here in Britain – you have a history of peacocks.”
Home-based naturism
“I used to spend most of my time at home naked, but now we have a child it means we have a nanny and so I can’t come downstairs naked and have a bowl of cereal in the morning. Before I had a child I literally took off all my clothes the minute I walked in the door.”
His best style advice
“Never, ever, ever wear anything you are uncomfortable in. Because that is what you’ll project: ‘I look like a fool.’ Even if you don’t – you’ll be tentative and not your best. I don’t mean physical comfort, I don’t mind suffering a little bit – my pants are little tight today because I’ve been eating too many Percy Pigs.”