This woman is so freaking fantastic.
Frockstar
Haughty Couture
For the man who has everything, Tom Ford's new store offers umbrellas dipped in gold
by Lynn Yaeger
May 15th, 2007 10:11 AM
A dead alligator's skin, sprayed gold and serving as a table cover, is
the first thing you see as you enter the hushed, nearly pitch-dark
foyer of designer Tom Ford's new menswear emporium on Madison Avenue.
Dare to proceed further, and you find one room decked out as a salon
with velvet divans you don't dare flop on. Another chamber, paneled
with the kind of floor-to-ceiling cabinetry that is every lowly
apartment dweller's dream, offers shirts in no fewer than 340 colors,
35 fabrics, seven collars (Seven! What can they be? Buttons, no
buttons, Eton?and four more?) and three cuffs. Once you've chosen, you
can spend even more money on an umbrella or that archaic item, the
walking stick, both of which have been trimmed in 18-karat gold.
Did Ford, who has been famous since the early '90s for the sexed-up
women's fashions he offered as head designer for Gucci and Yves St.
Laurent, turn to menswear because, as he once put it, "You can only
make the slit so much higher, the stiletto so much taller"?
Who knows. In any case, there are no stilettos in this
black-and-gold crypt, and the only slits on display are the vents in
the back of the ultra-traditional suits, which retail from $3,200
($5,000 if you want yours custom made). Actually, you can only assume
the vents are there, since the merchandise is shut up tight in glass
cases. "Nothing's for sale!" a fellow shopper viewing these austere
vitrines boomed genially to his companion, his voice ricocheting from
the massive fireplaces to the high-gloss floors.
Another area, octagonal (I know because I stood and counted
the walls under the chilly glances of the salespeople), is lined in
marble and functions as a perfume bar, because Ford has a new line of
scents, including one packaged in a black glass bottle and called Noir
de Noir (Well, you didn't expect it be warm and fuzzy, did you?).
Alas, you won't catch Tom himself minding the store. Ever
modest, the designer has explained that, "I can't be in the store
during opening hours anymore because people want me to sign things and
take pictures with them with their cell phones."
But not all of us want his autograph. Truth be told, Tom Ford
has always given me the creeps. With his shirt cut down to there,
revealing an artfully hirsute chest, and his "Aren't-I-good-looking?"
smirk he seems like someone who gazes around the room and thinks that
everyone around him comes up lacking. Especially the women.
Ford's antediluvian ideas about women became apparent when he
headed up Gucci, a brand that he transformed from a moribund company
churning out horsebit-trimmed loafers, double-G satchels, and the kind
of printed silk scarves Helen Mirren wears in The Queen. Ford
infused the label with a caffeinated sexiness, eventually making its
very name synonymous with slashed necklines and high skirts. If you
didn't get the message from the clothes alone, Ford wasn't above
manufacturing a scandal, as when he shaved the pubic hair of his model
with a Gucci G for an advertising campaign. Stunts like this,
and the apparently overwhelming desire of legions of tiny women with
lots of money to zip themselves into his creations, put the brand on
top until 2004, when Ford abruptly left his post.
He claimed that he was going Hollywood and intended to make
movies. It didn't happen. Instead, late last month he opened this
temple of gilded opulence, the existence of which only serves to
confirm that Ford has some very dated ideas about sex. The shop exudes
the kind of smutty glamour that made Helmut Newton's more salacious
photographs so attractive-repellent back in the 1980s.
Actually Tom Ford, the store, reminds you of nothing so much as the character Christopher Walken used to play in that old SNL
sketch "The Continental," where a lecherous seducer with a European
accent went through comically old-fashioned paces of seduction. Ford's
heavy silk robe in a Chinese pattern (well, it looked heavy?it's in one
of those glass cases, so who knows for sure) is just the sort of thing
a sinister older guy with a lot of money would slip into before
offering you a line of cocaine or a glass of champagne while all the
time you're wondering, how the hell am I going to get out of here?
Luckily it's just a store, and you can leave any time you
want. Once outside, I crossed the street and immersed myself in a far
different reverie at Juicy Couture, whose pink awnings are emblazoned
with the brand's crest, a medallion held up by two terriers.
Instead of a fetid eroticism, the Juicy Couture store pushes
the notion of Grown Woman as Princess. If Tom is a sleazy roué, the
Juicy team, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, appear to have as
their ideal customer the preternaturally perky Elle Woods, heroine of Legally Blonde.
Woods loves bubblegum pink and Chanel quilting and tiny dogs, and so do
Pamela and Gela! The pair's first success was a frankly hideous velour
tracksuit, more often than not pastel, that allowed grown women to, in
effect, walk around in their pajamas all day long. From this humble
garment has grown a business that includes everything from panties to
perfume to pet clothes.
Infantile and sticky as their aesthetic may be, it comes as
rather a relief after Ford's mausoleum. Instead of an interior that
relies heavily on ebony and marble, the walls here are?no
surprise?pink, and everything is out in the open, which means you can
immediately finger the price tags. If Tom's store is intended to remind
you of a decadent hotel suite, the Juicy Couture shop is like a game of
Candyland, with crystal-ball finials decorating the curving staircase.
(Tom has a staircase too, with a sign in front that reads "By
appointment only" and makes you wonder, with a shudder, what that
appointment might entail.)
Slogans on the Juicy walls, rendered in kindergarten colors,
include "Smells Like Couture" and "Juicy Kisses." This juicy business,
faintly repulsive to begin with, is repeated ad nauseam on everything
from underpants ("Girls Gone Juicy") to tote bags ("Juicy Girls Club")
and even a bed for dogs ("For Juicy Dogs Who Like Stuff Love G&P").
Still, it's hard to be mad at a place that has cotton summer dresses,
albeit in pink, for $168, which on this stretch of Madison Avenue is
the equivalent of $16.80.
But it makes you wonder: In 2007, are these competing sexual
fantasies our only alternatives? Tom Ford wants us to go back to a time
when depravity wore a smoking jacket and velvet evening slippers; Juicy
Couture thinks we should dress like giant six-year-olds, and sport a
wristwatch that reads "Live for Sugar."
But an overdose of saccharine can make you just as sick as an art-deco evening scarf choking off your windpipe.
the first thing you see as you enter the hushed, nearly pitch-dark
foyer of designer Tom Ford's new menswear emporium on Madison Avenue.
Dare to proceed further, and you find one room decked out as a salon
with velvet divans you don't dare flop on. Another chamber, paneled
with the kind of floor-to-ceiling cabinetry that is every lowly
apartment dweller's dream, offers shirts in no fewer than 340 colors,
35 fabrics, seven collars (Seven! What can they be? Buttons, no
buttons, Eton?and four more?) and three cuffs. Once you've chosen, you
can spend even more money on an umbrella or that archaic item, the
walking stick, both of which have been trimmed in 18-karat gold.
Did Ford, who has been famous since the early '90s for the sexed-up
women's fashions he offered as head designer for Gucci and Yves St.
Laurent, turn to menswear because, as he once put it, "You can only
make the slit so much higher, the stiletto so much taller"?
Who knows. In any case, there are no stilettos in this
black-and-gold crypt, and the only slits on display are the vents in
the back of the ultra-traditional suits, which retail from $3,200
($5,000 if you want yours custom made). Actually, you can only assume
the vents are there, since the merchandise is shut up tight in glass
cases. "Nothing's for sale!" a fellow shopper viewing these austere
vitrines boomed genially to his companion, his voice ricocheting from
the massive fireplaces to the high-gloss floors.
Another area, octagonal (I know because I stood and counted
the walls under the chilly glances of the salespeople), is lined in
marble and functions as a perfume bar, because Ford has a new line of
scents, including one packaged in a black glass bottle and called Noir
de Noir (Well, you didn't expect it be warm and fuzzy, did you?).
Alas, you won't catch Tom himself minding the store. Ever
modest, the designer has explained that, "I can't be in the store
during opening hours anymore because people want me to sign things and
take pictures with them with their cell phones."
But not all of us want his autograph. Truth be told, Tom Ford
has always given me the creeps. With his shirt cut down to there,
revealing an artfully hirsute chest, and his "Aren't-I-good-looking?"
smirk he seems like someone who gazes around the room and thinks that
everyone around him comes up lacking. Especially the women.
Ford's antediluvian ideas about women became apparent when he
headed up Gucci, a brand that he transformed from a moribund company
churning out horsebit-trimmed loafers, double-G satchels, and the kind
of printed silk scarves Helen Mirren wears in The Queen. Ford
infused the label with a caffeinated sexiness, eventually making its
very name synonymous with slashed necklines and high skirts. If you
didn't get the message from the clothes alone, Ford wasn't above
manufacturing a scandal, as when he shaved the pubic hair of his model
with a Gucci G for an advertising campaign. Stunts like this,
and the apparently overwhelming desire of legions of tiny women with
lots of money to zip themselves into his creations, put the brand on
top until 2004, when Ford abruptly left his post.
He claimed that he was going Hollywood and intended to make
movies. It didn't happen. Instead, late last month he opened this
temple of gilded opulence, the existence of which only serves to
confirm that Ford has some very dated ideas about sex. The shop exudes
the kind of smutty glamour that made Helmut Newton's more salacious
photographs so attractive-repellent back in the 1980s.
Actually Tom Ford, the store, reminds you of nothing so much as the character Christopher Walken used to play in that old SNL
sketch "The Continental," where a lecherous seducer with a European
accent went through comically old-fashioned paces of seduction. Ford's
heavy silk robe in a Chinese pattern (well, it looked heavy?it's in one
of those glass cases, so who knows for sure) is just the sort of thing
a sinister older guy with a lot of money would slip into before
offering you a line of cocaine or a glass of champagne while all the
time you're wondering, how the hell am I going to get out of here?
Luckily it's just a store, and you can leave any time you
want. Once outside, I crossed the street and immersed myself in a far
different reverie at Juicy Couture, whose pink awnings are emblazoned
with the brand's crest, a medallion held up by two terriers.
Instead of a fetid eroticism, the Juicy Couture store pushes
the notion of Grown Woman as Princess. If Tom is a sleazy roué, the
Juicy team, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, appear to have as
their ideal customer the preternaturally perky Elle Woods, heroine of Legally Blonde.
Woods loves bubblegum pink and Chanel quilting and tiny dogs, and so do
Pamela and Gela! The pair's first success was a frankly hideous velour
tracksuit, more often than not pastel, that allowed grown women to, in
effect, walk around in their pajamas all day long. From this humble
garment has grown a business that includes everything from panties to
perfume to pet clothes.
Infantile and sticky as their aesthetic may be, it comes as
rather a relief after Ford's mausoleum. Instead of an interior that
relies heavily on ebony and marble, the walls here are?no
surprise?pink, and everything is out in the open, which means you can
immediately finger the price tags. If Tom's store is intended to remind
you of a decadent hotel suite, the Juicy Couture shop is like a game of
Candyland, with crystal-ball finials decorating the curving staircase.
(Tom has a staircase too, with a sign in front that reads "By
appointment only" and makes you wonder, with a shudder, what that
appointment might entail.)
Slogans on the Juicy walls, rendered in kindergarten colors,
include "Smells Like Couture" and "Juicy Kisses." This juicy business,
faintly repulsive to begin with, is repeated ad nauseam on everything
from underpants ("Girls Gone Juicy") to tote bags ("Juicy Girls Club")
and even a bed for dogs ("For Juicy Dogs Who Like Stuff Love G&P").
Still, it's hard to be mad at a place that has cotton summer dresses,
albeit in pink, for $168, which on this stretch of Madison Avenue is
the equivalent of $16.80.
But it makes you wonder: In 2007, are these competing sexual
fantasies our only alternatives? Tom Ford wants us to go back to a time
when depravity wore a smoking jacket and velvet evening slippers; Juicy
Couture thinks we should dress like giant six-year-olds, and sport a
wristwatch that reads "Live for Sugar."
But an overdose of saccharine can make you just as sick as an art-deco evening scarf choking off your windpipe.
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