I embrace clothes and bags and shoes as art.Those who design the creations that become part of my reality as I wear them, are as much artists to me as the painters and sculptors that mesmerize my imagination in museums and galleries. But… Sometimes, the art becomes an excuse to be an ass, and that’s just ugly. And me no like ugly, I don’t care who you are or how gifted your work might be.
Tom Ford hasn’t worked in women’s fashion in a while. He’s back, to the relief of many. His 2011 collection is amazing. But he’s an ass. Not just smug–that I can deal with.
See his profile in the December issue of Vogue for a flavor of an artist who’s full of himself but talented enough to pull it off (coincidentally, that issue also spotlights the plagued Spider Man musical as “rocking,” meanwhile it’s currently falling apart, literally, as the world watches, so consider the source when you’re turning to Vogue for your current events coverage).
But back to Tom Ford’s world view. Like I said, smug I can handle. Then there’s his January Harper’s Bazaar interview…
Describing what he finds un-sexy, he says, “Women have turned themselves into these bubble-butted, grapefruit-titted, bloated-mouthed cyberbitches. I’m just not into that.” He prefers women who are softer, evidently. More malleable. You know, the kind he can grope, as he typically does the article goes on to say, while he’s fitting them for shows or photo shoots.
So, women he can stomp all over who won’t fight back? Girls who don’t tone their bodies and take care of themselves beyond getting their hair and nails done? And, good Dog, NOT women with real curves and whose skin doesn’t feel like milk and honey when he makes the perverted passes he’s notorious for?
Or maybe I’m reading to much into a single passage in the interview. He continues:
“There’s an anger to everything in our culture right now. And I’m sort of ready for a kind of sweetness and a softness to things.” How sweet. Kittens and bubbles and little girls in pretty dressed dancing through wildflowers.
But wait a minute. When discussing how someone with his provocative/shocking reputation in fashion could soften his world view to such an extreme, he treats us to, “I watch straight porn all the time. If I go on my computer, there’s a button that can connect me to all the sites I look at most often…Porn and antiques!”
Uh. Ok. It was at this point that I knew this interview HAD to become part of my I Hear the Craziest Things thread.
My conclusion? This man may be a master at understanding women’s bodies and designing clothes to fit them. But the kind of master he prefers to be in his own life is the kind of ass that so totally disrespects women, listening to his ramblings without my eyes rolling to the back of their sockets is impossible. My inner-feminist simply can’t take it.
Women have a right to be angry and strong and curvy and real. And I’m fair. Artists/designers have a right to create for women with stick-figure bodies and malleable temperaments that better reflect a little girl’s, complete with the kittens and bubbles and other trappings that likely show up as props in the Internet videos TM lives to watch.
But, still, anyone who sees women that way is an ass.
Just saying…
Tags: creativity & inspiration
Wow. He’d make an excellent villain. I’d say more but he used all the good lines. What a funny post to give us the right perspective this New Year! Wishing mine looked like grapefruits…