17 years after the publication of Tom Ford, a grand compendium of the designer’s industry-shifting work at Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, the American style icon is back with Tom Ford 002, an appropriately named follow-up book.
The second volume picks up where the first left off — Ford’s departure from Gucci in 2004 — and delves into the founding of his eponymous label.
Moving beyond Ford’s reputation as the founding father of “porno chic,” the book focuses on the less salacious parts of his career, including recovery from addiction, fatherhood, and his foray into film with A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals — impressively slick features that earned him critical acclaim.
It also features a foreword and introduction by two towering arbiters of taste, Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter, respectively.
“Tom’s success is so monumental, his vision of fashion so sure and unerring, that it is impossible to overstate his achievements,” Wintour says in her foreword. Indeed, Ford’s canon of work is regarded as nearly sacred, among the fashion set at least.
Bridget Foley, the former executive editor at WWD, leads a conversation with Ford that includes frank reflection on his struggles with drugs and alcohol, as well as his decision to get sober and go vegan.
And of course, the book includes imagery — of Ford himself, of his work, and of celebrities wearing the Tom Ford label (Rihanna, Julianne Moore, and Jon Kortajarena are among those he often dresses).
Tom Ford 002 establishes the designer as more than the man who singlehandedly saved Gucci, ushering in a bold new vision of glamour of sex appeal.
As Ford told The Cut earlier this month, “more and more the kind of billboard image of who I am, what I am, what I represent, has separated from the reality of my life.”
