Key Points
Almost 30 years after he transformed Gucci, seemingly overnight, from a bourgeois leather brand to the hottest thing in fashion, ultimately making it into the cornerstone of the luxury group PPR (now Kering); about 20 years after he shocked the industry by walking away from that job, as well as from his post at the top of Yves Saint Laurent, and announced he was going to make movies (and then made a critical hit); 13 years after he returned to fashion, this time under his own name; and about five months after he and his business partner, Domenico De Sole, sold that brand to Este Lauder for almost $3 billion, Tom Ford may be finally saying farewell to fashion..
They feature a bevy of supermodels (Amber Valletta, Karlie Kloss, Karen Elson, Joan Smalls) wearing archive designs from Fords last 13 years and variously writhing, strutting and otherwise emoting while trapped in a series of glass boxes..
Outside, the designer himself, in signature dark suit, white shirt and dark glasses, walks by alone, barely visible in the dimness, occasionally pausing to lift a hand and direct...
TF-the-brand was powered more by beauty and fragrance than fashion (thats why Lauder bought it, as opposed to, say, Kering) and the strength of Fords ability to sell the vaporous promise contained within...
Thats the message the final videos seem to convey, anyway: a cri de coeur about the changing fashion world and the status of women, with the designer at a remove, looking in at a scene playing out in a cage of its own making, no longer interested in the fight..
