Fashion
When fashion flattens, social media inflates: the revenge of the package
Alessandro Milzoni
05.08.26
Fashion
Tom Ford: The Cinematography of the Body
words: Luca Cioffi
17.10
Interdisciplinary, multicultural, bordering on omniscience: Tom Ford's work is an organic collection of arts ranging from fashion to cinematography. Each of these is an exact science, studied analytically under a broader social lens that captures the movements of the body and reproduces them in front of a camera, trapping them in strips of fabric who act as actors, scriptwriters and directors of a short film shot during the time of a show. Boiling bodies sewn onto pulled buttons, skirts worn by voracious legs, and large yellowish lenses à la Terry Gilliam, are the parts that form a unique imaginary, set between 70s Texas and late 90s New York, in an imprecise timeline that dances to the tune of I Feel Love by Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder.
Tom Ford's cinema of costume is a complex work that is based on a game of role-play and interpretation, like in one of the films of one of his favorite directors, Wong Kar-Wai, the anomalous author of oriental cinematography, westernized by a capitalist taste for costume and its symbolism, who dedicated all his work to those men in search of sentimental redemption. Skin made explosive by a yellowish photograph, dressed in red lace and tulle veils that they recall Gucci's debut in ready-to-wear, when Tom Ford wrote the new history of the brand with an erotic approach bordering on the explicit, with provocative and bewitching collections translated into velour jackets and open shirts burned under a setting sun.
The shades of the first Tom Ford are those of a neorealist film: they go from black to gold, from white to blue, all floating on the pink of the pale skin. of those models that seem to have come out of one of the Bee Gees and Alicia Bridges music videos. The same colors that she will carry with her until the opening of her brand in 2005, without forgetting the brief experience at Saint Laurent thanks to which he introduced a new word into his creative vocabulary, that is, “nocturne”, for that “intimate” effect that the use of silk and satin reproduced in the collections.
Then Daft Punk sang One More Time and in that sense of repetition, Tom Ford will find himself, building himself a copious identity, made of symbols that will never disappear, but which will perform on new stages such as those of auteur cinema, which he will reach later, precisely in 2009 with the premiere of A single man.
A film that some defined as "raw" and others as "material", for that brutal passion that hovers between Colin Firth's pristine white shirts and Nicholas Hoult's soft t-shirts. This use of white alternating with the black of men's jackets photographed under greenish lenses, brings us back to first show as creative director for Gucci, way back in 1995, when the young Ford shows a new concept of tactile, perceptive, face luxury discovering a genderless body, which is gradually glimpsed between velour suits in saturated hues. It seems like an apparent coincidence: the first show as a creative and the first movie as a director, 14 years apart from each other, deal with the same subject: pleasure, translated into silky fabrics and interior monologues.
To guide not only the eye but also the ear of the spectator, there are the still sounds of Abel Korzionewski that, with Stillness of a Mind, captures that instant passion that Tom Ford's femininity releases, almost as if it were skin slowly burning under the lights of the New York fashion shows and the big screen.
The second work of the creative director's cinematography can only be a continuation of the first. Nocturnal Animals, of the 2016, is the second chapter of this dance between fashion and cinema that picks up where A Single Man ended. From the darkness of the final credits of the last movie, the taste for the body and its pleasure is reborn, this time interpreted by Amy Adams.
The cruelty of the story is accompanied by the looks of the protagonist who, like an animal of the night, devours the memory of a finished love, hugging the green and black of long dresses, cut outs that never seem to be fully shown, but always in the shadow of a scenography that speaks of Tom Ford's native land: Texas. The green of the uncultivated meadows of the American province becomes a vertical expanse of micro applications sewn along the length of evening dresses, those presented by the designer for the show Gucci FW04, which Sarah Mower defined “creatures of the night”. Those same bodies covered in chiffon and jersey, parade to the notes of Gabrielle Lenster e Nick Cooper, showing off the boldness of models with black-lined eyes, like Adams' insomnia in the movie.
“There is no rebirth without a twist” said Mower when, on the pages of Vogue, she addressed the issue of the succession of the Italian brand after Ford left the creative direction in 2004. The turning point was the creative independence of the designer, who opened his own brand thus becoming the costume designer of his own ideas, because, as Ford himself said, "even when I reason, my ideas are never bare". The same cannot be said of the looks, whose fabric always seems to interrupt itself on the shapes of the female body, almost as if there was a refusal to cover the skin, but always leave it a space to breathe. Whether it's the buttons of a shirt, the cuts of a skirt, the dress is an empty frame, the whiteness of the skin the only undisputed subject.
Tom Ford's cinematography was born with his brand because, although the references to his tenure at Gucci are undeniable, the costumes act as temporal acrobats that confuse the audience between the collections of yesterday and those of tomorrow of his mature post-Gucci phase. In A Single Man menswear is rigorous but at the same time conducive, like the sporty tailoring of the collections FW17 e SS20. In Nocturnal Animals The women's wardrobe is formal but intimate, such as SS19 where tailored jackets slip over lace-edged petticoats, in a sensorial contrast reminiscent of Kim Wilde performing a classical symphony.
A complex picture with dark hues, which captures the public's attention for its faithful representation of a materialistic society, which places women in a brighter light than men. Emblematic is the approach he has towards both sexes, both in his collections and in his feature films. If the woman is the protagonist of the limelight, inclined to ignore his fragile nature by dressing himself in public audacity, the man is traditional, balanced, measured like the whiskey Tom Ford appeared to come out with at the end of some shows, to indicate the fragility and vivid emotions that hide behind shiny jackets and dark glasses. The soundtracks of the shows themselves seem to move on different frequencies but at the same time: from dance music to 70s pop.
“With him, clothes move by themselves, I can't say anything else except that they sway to an 80s remix” said Brian Blake, president of the brand, because in every art by Tom Ford, clothes are never silent: they act in front of a camera and scream, they dance on the show venues.
Her aesthetics are never just beauty, but it is the use he makes of it to give it shape, to bring it to life, thanks to a screen and a musical track.
