If You Liked Old Tom Ford, You'll Love New Tom Ford

Dhani Mau

September 21, 2023 at 6:14 PM·5 min read

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When a new designer takes over a fashion house, their debut is usually all about the house codes. With Tom Ford, those codes are particularly fresh in our memories — for one, the house is less than 20 years old, and secondly, the founding designer's swan song in April amounted to a greatest-hits collection. There's also debatably a third reason: Both under Alessandro Michele and since his exit, Gucci — where both Ford and his successor, Peter Hawkings, used to work — has also been dipping into Fordian codes in recent seasons. Except wait: Whose codes are they, Gucci's or Ford's?

Gucci also has a new designer debut scheduled for this week, and if Sabato De Sarno chose to revisit the label's Tom Ford era, as some have predicted... well, maybe Hawkings just called dibs.

As soon as I entered the venue, I knew I was at a Tom Ford show. It was nighttime, the lights were low, the music bumping, the decor minimal-yet-luxurious, the front row filled with hot people in quietly glamorous dresses. The Spring 2024 collection that entered the runway is unmistakably Tom Ford in much the same way, but there's a bit more restraint: It's the brand at its most sleek, sophisticated and quiet (with the exception of a few bold metallics). Words like "ease," "effortlessness" and "uncontrived" appear in the show notes, whereas the brand could often be the opposite. But it could also be the absolute epitome of sexy-chic, and this collection has a lot of that.

The notes describe the debut as "a different gaze on the codes upon which the house was founded, born out of respect rather than deference," adding that,"seduction and glamour are still pivotal, but immediacy, ease, and an evident effortlessness come forward. The Tom Ford woman is in control, not afraid to attract attention, comfortable with being under the spotlight, but she does so in a rather uncontrived way." Per the brand, Hawkings was also inspired by Donyale Luna, a Black supermodel in the '60s and '70s who served as a muse to Andy Warhol and Richard Avedon.

Without question, the collection has a lot of references to Tom Ford-era Gucci, particularly the famous Fall 1996 collection, with its velvet suits, silk (mostly unbuttoned) button-downs and semi-sheer backless jersey dresses. Hawkings swaps some of the trousers for (extremely) short shorts and platform pumps for strappy stillettos. But those velvet suits? Aside from the colors, they look identical to the originals. Plus, Ford, the designer, incorporated the look into his farewell collection, and it was only two years ago that Michele remade one in red (with very subtle tweaks) for Gucci, which Gwyneth Paltrow then wore to his Los Angeles runway show. (Paltrow wore the original to the 1996 VMAs.)

This 2024 collection seems to place Ford's Gucci signatures firmly in the hands of Tom Ford, the brand — at least for now. It's hard to know whether that was strategic: It's not like Ford took on an entirely new design ethos when he started his own brand. Plus, Hawkings worked alongside Ford for a total of nearly 25 years, across both companies. (He started his career in the menswear department at Gucci, under Ford, in 1998.) It's also his history and his design language.

All in all, it's been about as seamless a creative-director transition as one could hope for, at least so far. And you can't go wrong with beautiful tailoring and sexy, red carpet-ready gowns.

See every look from Tom Ford Spring 2024 below.