Tom Ford speaks to WWD on why he doesn't want his clothes on the internet

This fashion immediacy thing — yes, if you can order the clothes immediately, if you can see them and press a button and they can be shipped to your house, I get fashion immediacy.…I don’t get the need for this immediacy. In fact, I think it’s bad.

The way the system works now, you see the clothes, within an hour or so they’re online, the world sees them. They don’t get to a store for six months. The next week, young celebrity girls are wearing them on red carpets. They’re in every magazine. The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store. They’re overexposed, you’re tired of them, they’ve lost their freshness, you see somebody wearing it and you say, “Oh, that’s that jacket that was in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Or [a] customer doesn’t want to wear that jacket that was in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In addition, all of the fast-fashion companies that do a great job, by the way, knock everything off. So it’s everywhere all over the streets in three months and by the time you get it to the store, what’s the point?

I’m holding everything back, controlling all the photography. I’m sure there were some leaks last night from people shooting with cell phones. I wish that that hadn’t happened. I don’t know if it did — I’m sure it did. I’m holding the photography back. I’m holding all the clothes back. The clothes are not going out to magazines before January issues. The clothes are not going to celebrities before December. The images are not being released online until December, when they’ll go online on my Web site.


-Tom Ford

I think he should be applauded.

Comments