We have seen the sketches and even the garments on a handful of covers and spreads. Now we can watch the video as released online by Tom Ford yesterday.
To the sound of Karen Elson, (who also walked the show) Tom Ford’s vision of an ageless glamour and unrivaled sophistication hit his spring summer 2011 runway. Joining Elson on the catwalk was Beyoncé, Lauren Hutton, Rachel Feinstein, Julianne Moore(whose daughter sat front row), Karlie Kloss, Liya Kebede etc.
The super exclusive and controlled show was as a result of Ford feeling a need for slowing things down and holding back. In a WWD piece he was quoted as saying:
“This fashion immediacy thing — yes, if you can order the clothes immediately, if you can see them and press a button and they can be shipped to your house, I get fashion immediacy.…I don’t get the need for this immediacy. In fact, I think it’s bad.
The way the system works now, you see the clothes, within an hour or so they’re online, the world sees them. They don’t get to a store for six months. The next week, young celebrity girls are wearing them on red carpets. They’re in every magazine. The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store. They’re overexposed, you’re tired of them, they’ve lost their freshness, you see somebody wearing it and you say, “Oh, that’s that jacket that was in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Or [a] customer doesn’t want to wear that jacket that was in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In addition, all of the fast-fashion companies that do a great job, by the way, knock everything off. So it’s everywhere all over the streets in three months and by the time you get it to the store, what’s the point?
I’m holding everything back, controlling all the photography. I’m sure there were some leaks last night from people shooting with cell phones. I wish that that hadn’t happened. I don’t know if it did — I’m sure it did. I’m holding the photography back. I’m holding all the clothes back. The clothes are not going out to magazines before January issues. The clothes are not going to celebrities before December. The images are not being released online until December, when they’ll go online on my Web site.”
Your views on the collection, the video and Ford’s thoughts on the immediacy of fashion?
Video: Tom Ford spring summer 2011 video via YouTube.
