Haider Ackermann Suits Tom Ford
This week in Paris, there have been several highly anticipated creative director debuts and two of them happened today. The first was Julian Klausner’s excellent collection for Dries Van Noten, and the other was from Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford. Haider Ackermann is a designer’s designer. Karl Lagerfeld once said that he’d ultimately choose Ackermann to replace him at Chanel. His devotees are the kinds of people who stand out for their singular confidence; his sharp-shouldered tailoring and asymmetrical draping has a genderless appeal. Both Tilda Swinton and Timothee Chalamet are avowed fans.
But Ackermann’s a Tom Ford man now, and already, it seems like the perfect fit. The collection he presented today was, for lack of a better term, hot. That’s what the Tom Ford brand is about anyway, isn’t it? Unapologetic sex, confidence, and fierceness wrapped up in the chicest of leather or suede bows. As Ackermann said backstage, “The house of Ford is all about vanity. You look at yourself in the mirror, you take that moment, it’s a very selfish moment, but a beautiful moment.” To emphasize this point, the designer lined the outer walls of the runway with what looked like fogged-up mirrors, which was a clever way to underscore the sensuality of the collection, but not as clever as the clothes themselves.
The opening looks all incorporated leather in some way, shape, or form–a hot little side-zip moto jacket and trouser with a bitty belt, a loosely cut tee, and a blazer the model carried with a death grip at the collar. Ackermann focused on gesture throughout, namely in the way he styled many of the jackets with lapels either fully up or one up and one down as if the wearers were in a state of constant personal introspection and change.
There were Technicolor suits with Ackermann’s signature peaked shoulders and a gorgeous lavender fringed dress worn by supermodel Karen Elson. There were also several other dresses that experimented with ideas of fluidity, doing the opposite of body-con with silhouettes that felt more ethereal, though made devilish by the addition of a slit up the front or the entire sides of the torso cut out. It’s not the sex on a platter of Fordian history. Ackermann’s updated the perspective to be about the suggestion of sex.
Balancing hard and soft materials, the collection was, Ackermann noted, an exploration of “the duality between masculinity and femininity.” Suits have always been Ford’s calling card, just as they have been for Ackermann. For the finale, a group of models led by Kristen McMenamy appeared like a gang in classic, excruciatingly cool, and sharp suits in classic black and grey. It was a clear nod to Ford’s legacy without feeling like another soulless attempt at nostalgia.
Nostalgia, after all, is a feeling, not a single novelty item or a head-to-toe look on a runway. To find synergy between then and now, a great designer knows how to imbue their own singular vision to that of a house with very singular codes. Ackermann nailed it on his first try. Just look at the three looks that closed the show: a tuxedo jacket and two dresses in a shimmery grey fabric that was shirred to look as though it had scales. Ford has always been known for his use of exotic skins and animal prints, and it was a smart way to pay homage without ripping the page directly out of the book. These silhouettes were looser and freer, again a suggestion of sex, not something in your face. These looks, and Ackermann’s whole collection, were kind of a shedding of skin–making room for something new at the house that Tom Ford built.
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