Q & A with Tom Ford: Tom on the Royal Wedding, Growing Up Gay and Facelifts

Tom Ford is a genius. There’s no other way to put it. He single handedly saved Gucci from the brink of extinction and transformed the company into a style giant. He left Gucci to start his own collection and hasn’t looked back since. And with the success of Tom Ford, who would blame him?

He’s one of the most important men in fashion and he sat down with Bergdorf Goodman for a fun Q&A about the royal wedding, growing up gay in Texas, why he takes five baths a day and much more. Here are some highlights from the interview:

On Princess Beatrice’s horrible fascinator during the royal wedding:
“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but at the royal wedding, one of the princesses wore a now-very-famous (or infamous) Philip Treacy hat—that hat wore her. Now, Isabella Blow, a woman those of us in fashion knew well . . . had she worn the same hat, it would have looked great. She would have worn the hat. She knew what she was about, what she wanted to express in fashion.”

On being a young gay in Texas:
“I was not like every other kid, especially in Texas. I wore a little suit and carried a briefcase in the third grade. I was completely different. I was terrible at team sports. I was not popular. So when I hear people saying my name and I can feel them staring at me, it’s a throwback to something I want to run from.”

An explanation of that whole five baths a day thing:
“I do take a lot of baths a day. But there’s not a lot of rituals involved. I basically lie in hot water for an hour, and it’s not about cleanliness. It’s meditation. It’s really how I wake up in the mornings, how I relax from the day so that I can go out to dinner. I have to take a bath before I change my shirt and go out to dinner. And then when I come home, I take a bath to sort of unwind from dinner, or wherever I’ve been, so that I can go to sleep, or try to sleep.”

On being one of the busiest men in fashion:
“It’s really pathetic. I’m looking at my calendar right now. I am not booked up quite a year from now. But I am pretty booked up all the way through February 2012. I can tell you on February 14th, 15th, I’m in London doing work for my women’s show. On the 16th, I’m shooting a campaign. The 17th and 18th, I’m doing fittings on models. The 19th is my women’s presentation. February 2012. And it just keeps going.”

And a quick word about man facelifts:
“I think that they haven’t been able to perfect a good facelift for a man… it actually pulls your beard and your sideburns back, and that’s what’s so strange. And an eyelift on a man usually makes the eyes look extremely feminine. It’s something to avoid if you’re a man. The solution is a really beautifully tailored Tom Ford jacket. No one will be looking at your bad eyelift.”