Born: Austin, Texas, USA, 1962
The Texan with the Midas touch, Tom Ford has done what every financier dreams about: taken an established label and made it relevant for a new generation. The Gucci phenomenon is the success story that has swept both the fashion industry and the stock market off its feet. Through the canny creation of seasonal must-have icons - in addition to sexy, sophisticated advertising - Ford gives us a perfect example of fashion items which foster huge public demand, and then burn out in time for the next `big thing'.
Tom Ford moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he was 13 years old. He initially aspired to be an actor and spent six years in Los Angeles. In the late 1970s he arrived in New York, where he frequented the infamous nightclub Studio 54 and studied interior design at Parson's School of Design. He decided to concentrate on fashion instead and ended up as a senior designer at Cathy Hardwick's studio on Seventh Avenue. Two years later Ford had moved to Perry Ellis as design director of Women's America Division. In 1990 he relocated again - this time to Milan, where he worked for Dawn Mello at Gucci, eventually taking over from her when she moved back to New York in 1994 to head up department store, Bergdorf Goodman.
In 1992 Ford designed his first menswear collection. The tide turned in his favour in March 1995. Celebrity backing and advertising campaigns, photographed by Mario Testino, followed. Famous for photographing the world's most beautiful women, Testino presented Ford's overtly sexy designs in a dramatic, deeply glamorous, light. Ford's fashion inspiration came from his grandmother: `She was an Auntie Mame character,' Ford told American Vogue in 1999, `with six husbands and a closet full of Courrèges pantsuits, coral bangles and I Dream of Jeannie falls.' Still harbouring a secret desire to tread the boards, Ford has a Hollywood agent who vets scripts for him. Ford works on instinct. In 1999, when Gucci was under threat from a takeover, Ford made a multi-million dollar decision for a new investor over lunch. `What can I say?' he told Vanity Fair later, `I'm a Virgo.'
