Tom Ford’s British inventive director makes debut at Milan trend week | Tom Ford

The Tom Ford look – a rakish, shiny 90s-style minimalism for hedonists – has come again into trend this yr, simply for the time being when Ford himself has left. Ford bought his firm to Estée Lauder for $2.8bn final yr and has bowed out of design duties. However at Milan trend week, a debut assortment by his longtime protege, the British designer Peter Hawkings, made a convincingly stylish case for the viability of Tom Ford trend with out Tom Ford the person.

The charismatic frontman was absent, however the best hits have been sung flawlessly. The skinniest of velvet trouser fits weren’t a lot tailor-made as trimmed to the bone. Silk blouses have been unbuttoned to the navel. Night sandals teetered on needle heels. There have been shiny mock-croc coats, safari jackets, sculptural belt buckles slung across the hips of slinky clothes. On a low-lit catwalk at 9.30pm, each mannequin wore sun shades.

The place Hawkings’s model of Tom Ford differed from the unique was in it being a bit of extra modest. Ford was a provocateur, who in his spring/summer time 1997 present despatched a mannequin down the catwalk in an open-knit sweater, loads of smoky eye make-up, however nothing on her backside half besides a G-string with interlocking G-logo above the buttocks. Hawkings doesn’t seem to share this style for catwalk semi-nudity.

Backstage after the present, requested who he pictured because the Tom Ford girl, Hawkings instantly named his spouse, the entrepreneur Whitney Bromberg Hawkings. The couple met whereas they have been each working with Ford, earlier than Bromberg Hawkings left to arrange the net flower firm Flowerbx. “My spouse is the Tom Ford girl. I’m fortunate to have a robust spouse with robust opinions who tells me precisely what works and what doesn’t,” Hawkings stated.

The totally dressed class of those garments mirrored a designer listening to suggestions from an expert girl. An aesthetic that regarded louche and thrilling within the Nineteen Nineties can learn as a bit of sleazy to fashionable tastes, so this felt like a up to date replace. Nonetheless, it dangers leaving the garments missing in frisson, which Ford knew higher than anybody was important to maintain a model within the highlight. Estée Lauder has purchased Tom Ford primarily as a magnificence firm – Tom Ford fragrances and make-up have a faithful fanbase who pay elevated costs – which signifies that the way forward for Tom Ford as a clothes line nonetheless hangs within the steadiness.

Ford had deliberate to help Hawkings from the entrance row, however flight disruption brought on by extreme climate prevented him from travelling to Milan. Torrential rain has additionally disrupted plans for the Gucci debut of latest designer Sabato de Sarno. Gucci was resulting from host an open-air present within the streets surrounding Milan’s Accademia di Brera, envisaging a city-centre occasion that might be watched by residents on their balconies – a symbolic reclamation of Milan’s heritage by a model trying to discover its approach again to strong floor after an period of ultra-eccentricity beneath Alessandro Michele. On the eleventh hour, Friday’s present was relocated to an indoor venue at Gucci’s modernist headquarters. “This determination has been made with the utmost precedence of guaranteeing the protection of all of the manufacturing staff and providing the very best expertise to its friends,” a Gucci spokesperson stated.