Tom Ford studied interior architecture at Parsons in New York and Paris before sliding into fashion through Cathy Hardwick’s sportswear studio in the mid-1980s. From there he joined Perry Ellis alongside Marc Jacobs. By 1990, he had taken a design post at Gucci, then a discounted leather-goods business losing relevance in Milan.

Ford’s signature crystallized into a tight vocabulary he would return to across seasons. Velvet jackets cut close to the chest. Silk shirts open three buttons. Hipster trousers cropped at the instep. Python and horsebit hardware threaded through accessories that function as objects first and clothes second.

That vocabulary scaled with him. Ford was named creative director of Gucci in 1994, and after the Gucci Group acquisition of Yves Saint Laurent in 1999, he took the same role at YSL Rive Gauche the following year. The fall-winter 1995 collection set the template, with jewel-toned satin shirts, mohair coats, and low-slung velvet trousers. A year later came the white jersey gowns slashed to the hip and the car-finish patent boots.

The argument cut against the pared minimalism of Jil Sander and Helmut Lang in the same seasons. The CFDA named him International Designer of the Year in 1995, and by the turn of the decade Gucci and YSL together generated revenue near $3 billion. He left both labels in April 2004 after negotiations with PPR over creative control collapsed.

Ford launched his own house in 2005. He began with eyewear and menswear tailoring through a license with Ermenegildo Zegna, then added womenswear with the fall-winter 2010 show, staged for a small room of editors and clients.

Film ran in parallel. He wrote and directed A Single Man in 2009, which earned Colin Firth an Oscar nomination, then Nocturnal Animals in 2016, which took the Grand Jury Prize at Venice.

Tom Ford, the label was sold to Estée Lauder in a deal completed in 2023 for roughly $2.8 billion, and Ford stepped back from the brand bearing his name. The current chapter closes a thirty-year argument that glamour, cut sharp and shown in lacquer, sells.