The best and worst thing about the past fashion month was the Tom Ford show. In our times of social networking craziness it is not unheard of for, say, a 19 year old fashion-obsessive from sydney australia to see a show in relative real-time, thanks to streaming and incessant twitpics and facebook updates. But not all shows. In New York in September Tom Ford forbade any photographs to be taken of his catwalk return, and in awe of verily a god amongst men, the various editors and stylists fell into line. Sure, there were tweets - horrible, teasing tweets - that went along the lines of "no photos allowed but OH MY GOD THIS SHOW IS FABULOUS" or "this show is one to go down in the ages, a historic moment for fashion" or "beyonce is booty-shaking on the tom ford runway - i will never forget this moment". Yeah thanks guys.
Ford said that the reason he banned the taking of any photos except by Terry Richardson, the official photographer, was twofold. Firstly, to protect the exclusivity of fashion and his brand. Tom Ford has never been one to design for the masses. He's flashy and muscle-bound and sexy and elitist. He designs lipsticks that cost around $60 a pop and dresses that go for about 100 times that. He rubs shoulders with models and actresses and the creme de la creme of eurotrash. He's not the kind of designer to relish privacy or gab about how he likes to get brunch in the same old tiny cafe two doors from his modest apartment. The second reason why he didn't want cameras was because he wanted to bring fashion back from the brink of absurdity. He has said that fast-fashion is his number one hate. Ford doesn't like the fact that fashion has become frenzied and frenetic, which is why he personally narrated his spring/summer runway show in a way reminiscent of the couture shows of yore. But of course, being Ford, whatever he says and whatever he does are often quite disparate. Despite saying that he wanted a quieter, more intimate show, the nature of the silence surrounding the show generated an enormous amount of hype and the tweets that emerged from people like Derek Blasberg, Cathy Horyn, Hilary Alexander and the various Vogues and Harpers Bazaars of the world were arguably just as frantic - if not more - than any online hype from simple fangirls. These editors quite simply went bonkers for Ford, which was, of course, his intention all along.
And this is why his show was the best and worst of fashion month. The best because, quite simply, it was the best. Although the photos have still not materialised little teasers like the show list are enough to give an idea for the classic, 70s-sexy mix that he sent out on glamazons as diverse and exotic as the perennially cool Daria Werbowy and Abbey-Lee Kershaw, the super chic Julianne Moore, the wild card Daphne Guinness, the glamazon Beyonce and the irrepressible hipness of Julia Restoin-Roitfeld and Freja Beha Erichsen. Sexy and daring - of cours, It's Tom Ford after all. But this collection was also the worst. Because fashion today, to put it basically, isn't about exclusivity anymore. The design houses that harp on about elitism are the ones that are failing in today's world. To move forward in the current fashion environment is to engage with the customer: no matter who they are. If there's one thing I've learned working in retail it is that you should never judge a book (or customer) by it's cover. Sometimes the tradies will come in and drop $3000 on a bag for their wives, and women dressed to the nines will pick up a $40 bag for themselves. Whether a person is front row in a fashion show or sitting at home in front of their computer doesn't change the way they interact with the brand - not unless you take away the live streaming, the photos, the reviews - it sends the message the only people you value are the ones sitting on the seats at your show, not the ones who will eventually be handing over plastic for your clothes. It bodes thinking that, in the early days of fashion shows it was the customers who sat in the front row, personally walked through collections for their perusal, not the media.
Tom Ford is great, he's the King, after all. But sometimes Kings are just figureheads. They've been left behind for new powers.
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