The Great Fashion Designers (46 page)

The early collections received a mixed response (some menswear collections in particular were considered woefully misjudged), but Jacobs found
his mark through a series of hugely successful collaborations with artists, beginning with Stephen Sprouse. ‘I asked Stephen to come and deface the monogram and he obliged,' said Jacobs. The gold insignia became bold graffiti, and Louis Vuitton would never be the same again. A collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, launched for spring 2003, was equally popular, particularly the handbags decorated with cherries. An obsession with designer handbags, at ever-spiralling prices, became a phenomenon of the mid-noughties, driven principally by Louis Vuitton. For spring 2007, Jacobs's own label collection included a $22,500 crocodile patchwork bag.

During the 1990s and the noughties, Marc Jacobs was at the centre of a remarkable creative circle, focused on New York but international in outlook, ranging from designers and models to artists and film directors. Key names included Sofia Coppola, actress, muse and ultimately film director, and Juergen Teller, the photographer, who shot Coppola for his first campaign for Marc Jacobs in 2000. In this world, Jacobs partied as hard as he worked, and allegations of his excessive drug-taking circulated through the fashion industry for years, culminating in the designer spending time in a rehab centre in the spring of 1999. The pressures on Marc Jacobs at this time were immense. He was flying between New York and Paris, designing for Louis Vuitton and his own label (also backed by LVMH, which had a third stake). To this workload, he added Marc by Marc Jacobs, a lower-priced collection, in 2000.

Rehab worked for Jacobs, prompting a new spate of creativity and, simultaneously, a greater appreciation of the attractions of a quieter social scene in Paris. In creative terms, Jacobs was energised by the combination of European sophistication and American verve, a reflection again of the uptown/downtown mix that had served him well in New York. Jacobs's rejection of drugs and drink after his period in rehab may well have saved his relationship with LVMH, which was not always easy. In 2004, after lengthy negotiations, Jacobs signed a new long-term deal with LVMH that ensured him creative and financial stability for a 10-year period. By 2008, Jacobs's ability for reinvention had extended to himself, rejecting an understated look for a flashier image of designer-as-celebrity. He worked out seven days a week, changed his diet to cope with bouts of ulcerative colitis and acquired more than thirty tattoos. Jacobs once commented that he had attention deficit disorder, an insight that might explain his swings in style and design focus. Writer Vanessa Grigoriadis has highlighted his ‘polar tastes for high fashion and low celebrity, which helped popularise the current enthusiasm for perversity and art, overt cuteness combined with classic cool.'

For his autumn/winter show in 2008, Jacobs sparked a row with the fashion editors by starting the show two hours late. For spring/summer 2009, he was on time with a collection that received rave reviews, representing a swing through many of the classics of American sportswear style seen through the prism of Paris. Jacobs, said style.com, saw American fashion with an ex-pat's eye. By autumn/winter 2009 he was paying homage to the wilder excesses of 1980s fashion, referencing Stephen Spouse once again. In a talk at Central Saint Martin's College in 2008, he was reluctant to pontificate on his vast range of influences. ‘Who cares what inspired it? Ideas are just catalysts for becoming something else. If a girl wants to wear it, that's all that matters.' Doubtless Jacobs will continue to excite and wind up the fashion world for many years to come. As a designer, his willingness to take risks and strike out in new directions has endeared him to an industry where the temptation is often to play safe. American
Vogue
editor Anna Wintour sums him up thus: ‘No other American designer has so successfully fused the street style of New York with a reverence for making beautiful fashion.'

Further reading:
Brigid Foley's short monograph,
Marc Jacobs
(2004), provides a useful introduction.
Louis Vuitton: The Birth of Modern Luxury
(2005), by Paul-Gerard Pasols, covers his contribution to Louis Vuitton. An outstanding profile by Vanessa Grigoriadis, ‘The Deep Shallowness of Marc Jacobs' (December 2008), was published by
Rolling Stone
. ‘Jacobs' Ladder' (22 September 1997), written for
The New Yorker
by Zoë Heller, is an in-depth report on the problems Jacobs faced in his early days at Louis Vuitton.

American designer Tom Ford was a dynamic force in fashion in the 1990s, responsible for a spectacular makeover of the historic Italian fashion house of Gucci. More than that, he was, in the words of John Demsey, president of Estée Lauder, ‘the combustion that drove the entire Nineties'. While Karl Lagerfeld had dominated the 1980s, Ford was the star of the 1990s, becoming as much of a celebrity as the many famous names he dressed. A natural inheritor of the mantle of Halston, Ford had an immaculate personal sense of style, combined with an ability to articulate his vision in interviews that made him a hot favourite with fashion editors. He is also preternaturally handsome. As Graydon Carter, editor-in-chief of
Vanity Fair
, put it: ‘Virtually all women who meet him want to have sex with him.' And a good number of men, too.

Ford had an all-embracing vision of fashion, reflecting a decade during which fashion became an ever more influential form of popular culture. ‘For me fashion doesn't stop at clothes,' said Ford. ‘Fashion is everything. Art, music, furniture design, hair, makeup … all those things go together to make a moment in time.' Ford also smashed down any lingering hang-ups about sexuality and sex in the modern world. Anna Wintour, editor of American
Vogue
, noted his work was ‘always charged with some kind of erotic frisson.' He was open about his homosexuality, living with the fashion writer Richard Buckley. He explored sexuality fully in his work for Gucci and expropriated imagery from the world of pornography for some controversial advertising campaigns: he always claimed people looked best naked rather than clothed. ‘Sex,' he said, with all the confidence in the world, ‘is something that I think about all the time.'

Despite his influence and status, there was a view that Ford himself had limited design talents and played more the role of impresario or stylist for his hard-working design studio. It was a charge he deeply resented. ‘It just drives me crazy,' he said in an interview for the book
Tom Ford
, published after he left Gucci. ‘I don't pose around in a white lab coat with bolts of fabric on the floor like Yves did. But I've been working in this business for 20 years. I know how to cut a dress; I can climb on the table and cut it with scissors and pin it down.' He was proud to be a commercial designer, saying he never wanted to be anything else. His job, he said, was to make women beautiful. ‘I feel fashion more than I think it,' he said. ‘My first instinct is gut.'

He also had an obsessive, perfectionist eye. No detail of the Gucci brand renaissance escaped his eye. Nothing was too mundane for his attention.
Vogue
's Anna Wintour dubbed him the ‘Flaubert of fashion', after the detail-obsessed French novelist of the nineteenth century. Ford created the 1990s template for a young designer to be catapulted in to revive an old brand. Karl Lagerfeld had led the way at Chanel in the 1980s, but Ford perfected the concept, setting a trend that led to Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, John Galliano at Dior, and many more. However, in retrospect, it is clear that he overreached himself in his later years at Gucci. As the Gucci empire expanded, he took on the ultimate challenge in 1999 after the Gucci Group's acquisition of Yves Saint Laurent by appointing himself creative director of YSL. He drew a wave of criticism in France for his irreverent approach to the YSL legacy. In 2001, he sent out models in a menswear YSL show wearing YSL horn-rimmed glasses. ‘They were a nod to Saint Laurent, but I did not want to be too literal,' Ford said. Saint Laurent snubbed the show and made his displeasure even clearer by attending the Dior menswear show on the following day. After leaving Gucci Group, Ford acknowledged
that YSL was unfinished business. ‘It just hasn't hit its stride yet … I wanted to conquer Saint Laurent.' Ford's last collection for YSL, for autumn/winter 2004/2005, with its focus on the Opium and Orientalist phase of Saint Laurent's career, hinted at the direction in which he wanted to head.

Tom Ford was born in San Marcos, Texas, in 1962, and grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His grandmother was a flamboyant influence on his early years, teaching Ford the importance of good dress sense. By the age of twelve, he had his first pair of Gucci loafers. Already, his perfectionist temperament had emerged: he developed an exceptional visual eye, rearranging the furniture at home and eager to dress his family and friends to meet his own exacting standards. But fashion was not his initial calling. At eighteen Ford arrived in New York to study art history at New York University. It was the back end of the 1970s, a decade that was a major inspiration for Ford at Gucci. Nightclub Studio 54 was a favourite haunt for the young man, who got to know Andy Warhol and his entourage. With his dazzling good looks, Ford made money as a leading male model and built an impressive circle of contacts in the fashion world. He dropped out of New York University to switch to Parsons School of Art, enrolling on the environmental design course. He transferred to the Paris branch of Parsons at the age of twenty, a move that had a profound impact. ‘I cried the first time I walked around in Paris. Everything was so beautiful I just couldn't believe it … I felt instantly comfortable.'

His first job in fashion design was at Cathy Hard-wick, who hired Ford because he was attractive rather than for any apparent brilliance in his portfolio. His natural flair for fashion rapidly developed, for he was poached in 1988 by Marc Jacobs and then moved to Perry Ellis as design director, a remarkable role for a man who was still only twenty-six. In 1989, Gucci, an historic but ailing label, hired Dawn Mello, an American retail executive who had transformed the fortunes of New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, to run the business. Although Mello stayed at Gucci little more than a year, it was she who made the key appointment of Ford to design womenswear, recommended by his boyfriend, Richard Buckley. When Mello returned to New York and Bergdorf Goodman, Ford's role at Gucci became more prominent. By 1992, he was design director, but he clashed with Maurizio Gucci, who thought Ford was rather too fashion focused for a label with a history of classic style. Domenico De Sole, then director of Gucci's American operation, stepped in to save Ford. In the early 1990s, the company had to design a team approach, and Maurizio Gucci was usually involved to Fords's intense irritation. There were times when Ford was ready to return to America and start up his own label, but he hung on. ‘I had this incredible drive,' he reflected later. ‘I was going to be a successful fashion designer if it killed me.'

In 1994, Gucci was bought by Investcorp, an investment firm, and Ford was finally made creative director. A year later, the fashion world was shocked by the murder of Maurizio Gucci, gunned down in a contract killing organised by his ex-wife. Ironically, the year in which Maurizio Gucci died was also the year the brand exploded back into life. With Ford at the creative helm and Domenico De Sole established as chief executive, a partnership was created that turned Gucci into the most successful fashion label of the decade. No expense was spared in creating the Ford vision. Photographer Mario Testino and stylist Carine Roitfeld, later editor of French
Vogue
, were collaborators with Ford in creating the slick, sexy, modern Gucci style. His autumn/winter 1995 collection, shown in the spring of 1995, was a high-octane tribute to the late 1970s, with blue velvet hipsters and satin shirts. It was judged a tour de force. Ford's moment had come.

By the autumn/winter 1996 collection, Ford's vision for Gucci was complete, with its revival of late 1970s glamour combined with touches of history from the Gucci archive and an overriding dose of Italian modernism. The elements included pinstripe tailoring for women, red velvet tuxedos, white jersey gowns with peepholes and gold fastenings, dark eyes and a look of androgyny that recalled the work of photographer Helmut Newton. Sleek, sexy, modern, as Ford put it, claiming he had brought back ‘a certain sexual glamour which we probably hadn't seen since the late 70s, because of the way that Aids altered fashion.' Separately, Ford was intensely involved in the business development of Gucci, and ailing licenses around the world were bought back or closed. Gucci stores were
designed in collaboration with Bill Sofield, who created an alluring mix of clean lines and rich materials that summed up the new Gucci image. The Asian financial crisis of 1998 was only a blip in the label's forward momentum. Ford took creative risks, including a collection for spring 1999 inspired by the singer and actress Cher, but press and buyers alike lapped it up. Under Ford and De Sole, Gucci became a business worth in excess of $4 billion and boasted a stable of names that included Yves Saint Laurent as well as young British designers Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen.