- The interesting thing too, is it left a double G tan line
when you wore it, so you really were tattooed
with a double G.
[energetic music]
This first picture.
This was taken by Chris Makos,
who was Andy Warhol's kind of chief in-house photographer.
And by the time I was 18, I was dating someone
who worked for Andy at the factory.
I was lucky enough to just catch the tail end of Studio 54.
That period became so much visually
part of what my tastes are.
I was still developing.
I was still young.
So, it was an important period.
It's not my favorite picture of myself.
I look awfully casual, which I did not even look then.
There, I just look like a kid from high school, which I was,
and I look very young.
[energetic music]
This was the first collection
that I had complete creative control over.
I had been at Gucci already
at that time for about four years.
It had been in my contract
that I was not allowed to step out onto the runway.
Maurizio Gucci really felt that he wanted the brand
to be the important thing, and not the fashion designer.
So, I had this moment where I was there,
and I could design whatever I wanted
because no one was looking over my shoulder,
and I was very proud of what I did,
and I stepped out on the runway.
[energetic music]
That was one of the the first collections
that I experimented with androgyny.
Now, I shouldn't say androgyny,
because that's the wrong word,
but I dressed the men in the exact same looks
that I dressed the women in,
and they passed each other on the runway.
I showed a red velvet suit, which became somewhat iconic.
Alessandro Michele, who's at Gucci now,
very politely and kindly revived it
for one of his more recent shows,
and Gwyneth Paltrow wore it,
and it was a bit of a sensation at that time.
There were not that many designers
doing men's clothes for women, and I think she looks great.
[energetic music]
I always think you need to create an image
where people stop and look at it.
In those days, it was all about magazines and ad campaigns.
And when your ad campaign came out
everyone really looked at it and took it apart.
Today, I think really because of social media,
and the fact that everyone has a voice
and everyone can be a critic, we've come to a point
where it's often hard to be creative.
It was so much easier in the '90s
to be provocative in advertising.
[energetic music]
The next photograph is me at my ranch
outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I think a lot of people don't realize
I grew up in Texas and New Mexico.
I ride, and that is my horse in the background,
obviously, just a little bit of it.
And I had about 30 at that time, horses.
[ambient music]
This is a photograph of a Met Gala,
which I chaired with Anna Wintour in, I believe, 2003,
and I made a dress for Nicole Kidman.
That was a Gucci dress custom made for her,
based on something that I had done that season.
And Diana Ross is wearing one of my dresses
from Yves Saint Laurent.
Nicole is so tall that no matter how tall you are,
I'm about six foot tall, but you always look short
compared to Nicole.
I usually in pictures make her get down next to me
so I don't look quite so short.
[slow music]
Ah, "Vanity Fair" cover.
We had three actresses who were supposed to pose nude
for this "Vanity Fair" cover.
You see Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley.
I won't say who the third actress was,
but on the day of the shoot,
she decided she didn't want to be nude.
Now, this picture was not supposed to be the cover.
And in fact, at this moment, our actress
had not yet bolted from the set,
but I was sitting in for her
showing her exactly what I wanted her to do.
So, I was leaning in with my head behind Keira's head.
In the end, after the actress left,
Annie Leibovitz and Graydon Carter decided
to make this the cover.
I was actually quite surprised when it came out.
But how often do you get to be
on the cover of "Vanity Fair"?
So, I was very happy about it.
[slow music]
The next picture is a picture
of Colin Firth and Julianne Moore dancing in my first film.
There's a story about this dress.
The film is set in the early 1960s,
and I needed a dress that was from that period.
So, our costumer Arianne Phillips,
who's a terrific costume designer,
had been shopping for all sorts of things
to either use or to be inspired by that dress.
Julianne's character was loosely based on my grandmother,
who was quite stylish, quite flamboyant,
always very chic, always had the latest things.
And the most bizarre thing happened.
The dress, when I saw it, I said, "That's perfect.
"That dress is perfect."
We looked inside the label,
and it was from a tiny dress shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico
where my grandmother used to get all of her clothes made,
which was so bizarre.
So, at that moment I knew, "Okay, this is the dress."
[ambient music]
The next photograph's a picture of me and Karl Lagerfeld.
I loved Karl.
You know, Karl was really the first designer
to go to a house that had slipped, let's say,
and to revive it.
He was the very first one that I think really set a trend.
You know, I benefited from that concept at Gucci,
Marc Jacobs at Vuitton.
Today, it's quite a popular concept
to take a young designer, a fresh designer,
and put them at an established house.
Karl was the first.
Karl was also so quick-witted,
and I always found Karl to be incredibly warm.
I am a virgo.
A lot of people don't care about their zodiac sign,
but I'm a very typical virgo.
So is Karl.
There are a lot of virgos in fashion.
Carine Roitfeld, Stella McCartney.
Maybe it's our attention to detail
and obsession with perfection
that ultimately often makes us unhappy
because nothing's ever perfect.
And if it is perfect, it's only perfect for a second.
But Karl was a very good friend.
Someone I miss very much.
And it's a picture of the two of us together.
[ambient music]
This is a photograph of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.
I made this dress custom for her
for a state dinner at Buckingham Palace, in London.
I was living in London at the time.
She was an incredible pleasure to dress.
And if you've ever met her,
a very warm person, a very passionate person.
It was an honor and a pleasure to dress her.
[energetic music]
Ah, James Bond.
Daniel Craig, someone I knew
before he assumed the role of Bond.
It was incredible.
I was able to dress Daniel
through all of his Bond performances,
and he's a terrific guy.
I think he made it a great Bond,
and as I said, if you're a menswear designer,
is there anything better than dressing James Bond?
[ambient music]
This was something that Rihanna wore at the last minute.
It was a dress from the collection.
It was from the showroom and her stylist called it in.
I wasn't even expecting her to turn up in it,
and she got out of the car wearing the dress.
This dress was made up of tiny pieces of crocodile.
Each scale had been cut out and then sewn on
to a Lycra dress so that when you pulled it on
you were literally a column of crocodile.
[energetic music]
Beyonce.
Beyonce was in my very first women's show in 2010 or 2011.
We've worked together quite a few times.
We also see each other in the hallway at school.
Our kids go to the same school.
I designed something, a football jersey
that said, "Tom Ford 61," the year of my birth.
Beyonce and Jay-Z loved it.
Jay-Z had written a song called "Tom Ford" in that year.
He called me, I was in New Mexico, and said,
"You know, I'm working on a song call 'Tom Ford.'
"Is that okay?"
I said, "Well, of course."
[ambient music]
Rihanna coming out of water on the cover of "Vogue."
Again, you know, if you're a fashion designer
and your clothes are on the cover of "Vogue,"
it's pretty great.
And again, on one of my favorite women,
and someone who I think has such tremendous style.
The next photograph is Amy Adams
on the set of "Nocturnal Animals," which was my second film.
Her character is incredibly glamorous,
and that's what this picture is about.
She's a awfully intelligent woman.
She also runs an art gallery, and she's being haunted
by something that happened between her character
and her ex-husband.
One of my favorite things as a filmmaker
is writing the screenplay.
The reason I love writing so much
is at that moment in time, it's perfect.
It's in your head.
The actor's doing exactly what you want them to do.
The shot is exactly the one you want it to be.
The camera's moving in exactly the way you want it to be.
The music is just right.
The feeling that you're trying to convey
is clear to the audience,
and that's not at all the way it is when you're working.
[energetic music]
When I bought the current house,
it had a really famous rose garden
that had been there since the 1920s.
We have 500 different roses in this garden.
When we redid the house, I redid the rose garden.
Hired a real rose specialist.
We dug down six feet.
We put in all of these worms, we got the soil just right,
and I chose the roses so that they go in a degrade pattern
from a pale color, all the way to a hot pink, into a red.
[energetic music]
Lil Nas.
What a lot of style.
I mean, again, that guy can wear
almost anything and look great.
This is actually a woman's suit that he's wearing.
I did do a man's version.
It was not covered in bugle beads, as this one is,
but he looked great in this.
He loved it when he walked into the showroom
and he wanted to wear it.
Zendaya, my God, is she talented.
I am addicted to "Euphoria."
I had done a series of breast plates for the show,
all lacquered in car paint, like Jeff Koons sculptures.
They were actually metallic and metallicized,
and they had shown them.
We custom made this one for her,
and we custom made them for quite a few clients.
We would take a mold, and then create a breast plate
that exactly fit each woman.
So, we made this for Zendaya,
and I think she looked great in it.
[ambient music]
I think it's great to be able to dress
the next generation of stars,
and I think Timothee Chalamet, like the rest of the world,
I think that he is an incredibly talented actor.
I think we're gonna see him for a long time.
He has his own sense of style,
and it's never boring and it's never basic, you know?
Whenever you work with him,
he's very willing to try new things.
And this is a silk moire gold suit,
which only he maybe could pull off on the red carpet.
[energetic music]
The last picture's a shot of me taken by Annie Leibovitz
just this year in a room that I was doing for the Met.
The Met had asked film directors to do a room
for the reopening of the American Wing,
and I am doing the Battle of Versailles,
which was not really a real battle.
It was called that.
It was in 1973, and it actually took place in Versailles,
and it was a battle between the French designers
and the American designers of that time.
The general consensus is that the American designers won.
At least that's the consensus in America.
The French designers, the French couture was very stayed,
very classical, and American design, Halston for example,
was minimal, streamlined, and really ushered in
that kind of more relaxed, casual American style,
and proved to the world that America
had its own sense of style.
It wasn't just copying Europe.
So, it was an important moment in fashion.
[ambient music]
I think if you're a perfectionist like I am,
no matter what you achieve, you never really feel satisfied.
You never really feel that it was perfect enough.
I think you always feel that there's something
that you could have done better,
and I think that's really one of the things that drives me.
I always feel that I could do something better
or something more.
So hopefully, I'll have time in life to try to do that.
[energetic music]