Tom Ford Presents Its New Spring/Summer 2022 Collection

"Los Angeles changes you. Or at least it has changed me. Returning to America, after living in Europe for 30 years I can feel my taste shifting. A great deal actually. Perhaps it has been the pandemic and more time at home, or perhaps it is the more relaxed lifestyle of LA, but this season I am very much into a kind of glamour that is still chic but more straightforward and somehow still casual. There is a glossiness to LA. An almost airbrushed kind of beauty that starts to permeate the mind…

Increasingly people don’t dress in fashion for day but only for night. Or for social media. Instagram may actually be what saves fashion in the end. People now seem to only get dressed up in a major way for a red carpet or to fill their pages with shots of themselves in powerfully stylish clothes. Black doesn’t photograph well and so clothes need to be increasingly cartoon like to have power on the tiny screens of our phones. It is altering our perception of beauty. It has certainly altered mine.

Photogenic clothes today by their very nature mean that they are not at all timid. Our beauty standard is a bit tougher, sharper. My clothes this season are simple in cut but not in impact. I dress quite a few celebrities or those who want to look like them and day clothes as we once knew them have given way to jeans and tee shirts or yoga pants and sweats. My “day clothes” are only really day in an alternate celebrity fashion reality or in the alternate reality of day on social media. As I believe Diana Vreeland once said: “I know it’s a lot but is it enough?” In real life most pieces in this collection are evening clothes. Sleek and clean, but potent. My customers will break these clothes down into key pieces to mix with their jeans or sweats for day or wear head to toe for night.

It has been said that I don’t like color but my first hit Gucci shows were filled with color and my Yves Saint Laurent shows were always a mix of colors that were true to the Saint Laurent legacy and often seemed to clash. That has stayed with me and the influence of those years of my early career are present in my Spring Summer 2022 collection. I do in fact love color but I find that it takes over the silhouette unless carefully put together. This collection is filled with color: nude, lilac, chartreuse, pale aqua, shocking pink, cobalt, spring green and silver, gold and bronze. I either like tones of the same color worn together or hard clashes that shock a bit. A little bad taste is always good taste in my book.

There is a 90’s vibe in the air. At least there is for me. Perhaps it is the simplicity of the clothes of that era. A great shirt in an incredible color with a cool pair of pants and kick ass shoes. In any case the 2022 take of the 90’s take of the 70’s looks good to me and as our beauty standard today is more brash than it was in the nineties so are the clothes. It was 25 years ago that I designed a particular red velvet suit that was much photographed at the time and that has recently reappeared on several runways so I decided to reclaim it, albeit altered for now in more vibrant colors and a new cut. It is a men’s silhouette as seen on a woman. I have always loved men’s clothes on women and non-traditionally masculine clothes on men. I often try to have a man passing a woman on the runway in an identical look.

This collection is heavily influenced by sportswear. After struggling with our son’s desire to wear basketball silks to school I decided to embrace the trend but turn the sports look into evening wear for women. Of course I still won’t let him wear basketball silks to school but I suppose if he really, really begged me to wear a sequined pair from this collection I might make them for him. Even he wants things that have flash and look cool when he is on Zoom.

Mostly, I think that this is a hopeful collection and at a moment when we all need hope. We need that now more than ever. Spring is always that way for me but this one is particularly important. We all need a bit of light in our lives right now. Which leads me to my use of metallics which are very present in this collection. In fact the entire ending of the show is gold. The last look is a beautiful but casual and modern summer bride. Not a bride suited for a church wedding but one suited for a quiet summer wedding by a pool at home. A modern bride. Slick, relaxed, but with some flash. And most importantly full of optimism and hope."

- TOM FORD-