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Quick Facts
- NAME: Tom Ford
- OCCUPATION: Fashion Designer, Filmmaker
- BIRTH DATE: August 27, 1961 (Age: 51)
- EDUCATION: St. Michael's High School, Santa Fe, Santa Fe Preparatory School, Bard College, New York University
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Austin, Texas
- Full Name: Thomas Carlyle Ford
- ZODIAC SIGN: Virgo
Best Known For
Tom Ford is a fashion designer and film director who was the Creative Director of Gucci from 1994-2004. He founded his own Tom Ford fashion label in 2004.
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Play NowTom Ford. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 02:17, May 24, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936.
Tom Ford. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936 [Accessed 24 May 2013].
"Tom Ford." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 24 2013, 02:17 http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936.
"Tom Ford," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936 [accessed May 24, 2013].
"Tom Ford," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936 (accessed May 24, 2013).
Tom Ford [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 24] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936.
Tom Ford, http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936 (last visited May 24, 2013).
Tom Ford. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/tom-ford-5936. Accessed May 24, 2013.
Synopsis
Tom Ford was born on August 27, 1961, in Austin, Texas. While studying architecture at the Paris campus of the Parsons School of Design, Ford decided to switch to fashion. He became Womenswear Designer for Gucci in 1990 and Creative Director in 1994. Under Ford's direction, Gucci's annual sales grew to $3 billion. Since resigning from Gucci in 2005, Ford has launched his own fashion brand and he also directed Colin Firth in the film The Single Man.
Early Life
Fashion designer Thomas Carlyle Ford was born on August 27, 1961, in Austin, Texas. His parents, Tom Ford, Sr. and Shirley Bunton, both worked as real estate agents, and Ford spent much of his childhood at his grandparents' ranch in the dusty town of Brownwood, Texas. His favorite childhood pastimes included lying out by his grandparents' pool and visiting Ralph the Swimming Pig—a popular tourist attraction in nearby Aquarena Springs. Ford also took an early interest in art and painting. "I was always very visual, always interested in design," he recalls. "I don't mean that I sat around at age 5 sketching clothes. But if my parents went out to dinner and left me alone, I would rearrange all the living room furniture before they came back home." Ford says that his parents "encouraged me to do anything. If I wanted art lessons, they found paint and a teacher."
Ford had two early role models in fashion: his mother and grandmother. "My mother was very chic, very classic," he recalls. "My paternal grandmother was very stylish in a very Texas way—everything big and flashy, from jewelry to car." Ford would later combine those two styles as he reinvented Gucci's image in the mid-1990s. "The images of beauty you get in your childhood stick with you for life," Ford later explained. "So there's a certain flashiness at Gucci—Texas-inspired—with a certain Western feel."
Design Education
Ford's family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Ford attended high school at the prestigious Santa Fe Preparatory School. He graduated at age 17, and then enrolled at New York University in 1979 as an art history major. While at NYU, Ford became a regular at the infamous Studio 54 nightclub, and his studies suffered. In 1980, after just one year at NYU, Ford dropped out and moved to Los Angeles, where he made a living acting in television commercials. A few years later, he moved back to New York and enrolled in the Parsons School of Design, studying architecture. Ford then transferred to Parsons' Paris campus, and it was while completing his final year of architecture study there that he suddenly decided to switch to fashion. He recalls, "I just woke up one morning and thought, 'What am I doing?' Architecture was just way too ... serious. I mean, every architectural project I ever did, I worked a dress into it somehow. So I realized that fashion was the right balance between art and commerce, and that was it."
In 1985, after graduating from Parsons, Ford sought to land a job with prominent sportswear designer Cathy Hardwick.
profile name: Tom Ford profile occupation:
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