Haider Ackermann, the new designer for Tom Ford, is on the verge of introducing a new collection for men and women. Photo: The New York Times
One evening in late January, Haider Ackermann, the new designer at Tom Ford, was tucked into a velvet banquette at La Reserve, a discreet, tryst-worthy hotel not far from the Elysee Palace in Paris.
He was doing his best impression of Ford, the man himself.
“Hello, Haider,” Ackermann purred, his voice dropping an octave and taking on a sultry tone. He was acting out a phone call he had received.
“It’s Tom,” he paused to take a breath, as if he were tasting the air.
“Call me,” he said, making it sound like “come here”.
Then, his voice back to normal, he added, “Of course I did.”
That was about eight months ago. It turned out that Ford, who had sold the company that bears his name to Estee Lauder in 2022, had a proposition for Ackermann.
After only a year, the new owners – Estee Lauder and Ermenegildo Zegna – had decided that Ford’s immediate successor, Peter Hawkings, was not the right man for the brand.
Read more: Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford: Is he a perfect match for the sexy fashion brand?
To replace him, they had only one name on their list.
“And that name was me,” Ackermann said.
Although he had recently taken a job as creative director of the outdoor company Canada Goose and was in the midst of negotiations to become the designer of a big French fashion house, Ackermann started fantasising about Tom Ford.
Now, after multiple conversations with Ford, Ackermann is on the verge of introducing a new Tom Ford collection for men and women.
The goal is to do what Hawkings could not and redefine Tom Ford for the post-Tom Ford era.
Ackermann, 52, has moved the fashion show to Paris from Milan and is in the process of moving the company headquarters from London.
He has teased his new look on his friend Timothee Chalamet, who wore custom Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann on the red carpet at the Golden Globes in January: a skinny, rhinestone-speckled black suit with a sky-blue polka-dot silk scarf slung around his neck.
But he is still trying to find “the thread between what I call sensuality and what Mr Ford called sexuality,” he said.
“The exercise is more difficult than I thought it would be,” Ackermann said, noting that he had not made a knee-length pencil skirt, a Tom Ford signature, in his entire career.
But, he went on, “The man, the woman, they are not strangers to me. I know we will get together, but it takes time.”
Especially because it turns out this particular relationship is kind of a throuple.
Models wear two looks from Haider Ackermann’s celebrated one-off stint as guest designer of Jean Paul Gaultier couture in 2023. Photo: The New York Times
The ghost in the machine
“The complexity of this story is that the house of Tom Ford is Mr Ford,” Ackermann said. “There’s no other ambassador than Mr Ford.”
Ford is his ghost in the machine.
Plenty of designers have taken over houses that still bear the names of the designers who founded them: Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Gucci, Saint Laurent – these were all real people.
That’s where the idea of brand “DNA” originates.
But at a certain point, a brand can become so divorced from its founder that the name is just an abstraction.
Once enough other designers have inherited the title, it’s hard to remember that clients were once loyal to a specific silhouette or design. That opens up the possibility for new creative directors to make the house their own.
A house like Tom Ford is somewhat different. That’s because it’s only 20 years old and Ford still seems very much around.
Founded by Ford and his business partner, Domenico De Sole, in 2005, Tom Ford the brand was a kind of test case.
Would Ford, who had become a celebrity by remaking Gucci and creating Gucci Group before leaving in 2004 to make movies, have enough name recognition to build a label from scratch on the mere power of his stubbly, unbuttoned-shirt appeal?
The partners started by licensing fragrance (to Estee Lauder), then eyewear and then expanded into menswear (with Ermenegildo Zegna) and womenswear.
But while a beauty line became a smash hit, and the suiting did fine, the women’s line always seemed more of a red-carpet indulgence than an actual business.
Nevertheless, just over two years ago, after Ford’s husband died and he decided to focus on filmmaking (again), Estee Lauder paid US$2.8bil (approximately RM12.5bil) to buy the house, enlisting Ermenegildo Zegna to handle the fashion side.
Hawkings, who had worked with Ford for 25 years, was named designer. He was, Ford said in an Instagram post, “the perfect creative director”.
Read more: 'Very emotional': Calvin Klein (both designer and brand) returns to the runway
It did not take long, however, before rumour had it that Ford was not happy with comments Hawkings had made that seemed critical.
The reception of Hawkings’ first collections was mixed. By July, Hawkings was out. Soon after, Ford was on the phone with Ackermann.
It was two weeks before the Paris show, and Ackermann was sitting in his atelier with a vase of white calla lilies behind him.
“They are a little more pure than Black Orchid,” he said, referring to one of Ford’s signature perfumes. “But I think still poisonous and dangerous.”
He had decided that his connection to the brand was more about his own memories than any specific silhouette.
“Like in 2012, I went to the Met Gala,” he said. “I was really nervous. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to wear?’ I’m too shy. But Anna Wintour said: ‘You’ve got no choice. You have to come.’”
So, Ackermann went to a Tom Ford shop and bought a black suit with black dots. And when he was on the Met red carpet, he bumped into Ford.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you look so smart,’” Ackermann said.
“I was so happy. Then I realised he was not looking at me. He was looking at his suit. So, obviously, you will see black dots in the show.”
There will also be knee-length skirts, although Ackermann was still “trying to find the right line that doesn’t feel too vulgar or too much secretary".
"I’m challenging myself for sure,” he said.
Only 200 people were invited to the show (in Paris), including Ford and De Sole.
“I wanted to have something intimate,” Ackermann said (this interview took place before the Paris Fashion Week show).
Ackermann has scattered the collection with Easter eggs for Ford – “things”, according to him, that Ford "will be the only one to see it”.
“If it goes wrong, it goes wrong,” he continued. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
