During fashion weeks, you can’t always trust your initial impressions. Many times, I’ve wafted out of shows on a high, convinced that what I just saw was monumental only to have forgotten the clothes by dinner.
There was no such ambiguity with Haider Ackermann’s third runway show at Tom Ford. I exited the show on Wednesday night convinced it was probably the best collection I’ve seen this year. I still feel that way as I write this the next morning.
The collection didn’t start off so promising. You can’t send out pinstripe suits and shirts with contrast collars and not make us think of “Wall Street.” And a translucent raincoat? We’re in “American Psycho” territory with that. Both movies have been squeezed too often by fashion designers for inspiration. Ackermann wasn’t finding any new juice here.
Yet, as the collection migrated deeper into sportswear, the clothes turned spectacular. Jeans with sprouting whiskers at the pockets and a sunset fade through the knees were the show’s best. People have been driven to madness trying to find vintage jeans that look that good. Ackermann is giving them straight.
Over the years, retailers have expressed to me, in anxious terms, how important Tom Ford is to their business. It was savvy, mature even, for Ackermann to place something so commercial at the center. Mature is the word. This was sexy in an earned, lived sort of way. I could buy that the gray-haired guy in a camel blazer with aggressive peak lapels and leather fringed pants may actually wear that. Now, that wouldn’t look right on me at 34, but someone more seasoned? He could pull it off with a straight face.
A sweater and skirt set in Kelly green was as sumptuous as anything Auralee has ever offered. And there was something almost “Star Trek”-ian about an olive leather trench with a high funnel neck. At the close, models wore chopped-to-the-waist dinner jackets with their pants titling down to flash skin. Their belts were still in place, as if they’d missed a few loops while dressing after one night stands.
Throughout, the models vamped and crisscrossed on their own individual quests. I could picture these people, weaving through life, going about their days. It made the show feel real. Certainly more real than the cold stomps of the models at Gucci last week.
Indeed, this far into the fashion week shows, it’s hard not to compare all that I’ve seen. I left Ford last night convinced that Ackermann would better serve a brand like Gucci. His collection had ample drama and lust to carry me out of there, convinced I just saw something spectacular.
But, you know what this collection also had? Product. Sellable, believable product. It’s amazing how many shows I’ve seen over this cycle have been light on that last, crucial component.
Other things worth knowing about:
-
First off, if you’re wondering what Tom Ford, the man, is up to since leaving his company three years ago, he’s off in Italy shooting his next movie, which is based on an Anne Rice novel and will star (among others) Adele.
-
Outside the Row show, I tapped in with the stylist Jay Massacret, who is fashion’s biggest backer of croakies. (You know, the little ribbon the keeps sunglasses on your head.) He was wearing a reedy set from Oakleys but said the best were from a “crafty little shop” in Japan, not any particular brand.
-
The Courrèges staff wore shirts commemorating the designer Nicolas Di Felice’s “5 ans” at the label. I suppose when the churn of fashion designers is this fast — here today, fired tomorrow — five years at one label is a milestone.
-
Should I quit fashion to become a horse whisperer? I’ve never seen a man look more blissed out at a fashion show than Jean-François Pignon, the French horse wrangler who commanded his majestic fleet with a yogi’s Zen as the Stella McCartney show unfolded around them.
-
A linkup I did not see coming: The gold medal figure skater Alysa Liu was styled by Miyako Bellizzi, the costume designer of “Marty Supreme,” for her appearance on “The Tonight Show” on Tuesday. She wore a Nike tee over a flannel shirt. Very “Reality Bites.” Very cool.
“It very much takes getting used to hearing my name screamed, like Oh, Hi, Hello.”
— Paul Anthony Kelly, whose turn as John F. Kennedy Jr. on “Love Story,” has made him a sudden front row invitee. He attended the Tom Ford show on Wednesday in some very un-JFK Jr. leather pants.
The Indelible Fit of the Day
None of this should work: An orange blanket plaid over a tannish-greenish-bluish blanket plaid, with some florals creeping into reptile leather? But somehow it all coheres. Julian Klausner has the touch for heaping on patterns without making a mess. He continues to prove that he was the right heir to Dries Van Noten.
Style Outside
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
The post Tom Ford Thrills appeared first on New York Times.
