HOW TOM FORD CHANGED GUCCI
(Gucci by Mario Testino)..
Gucci
Those of you old enough should please cast your minds back to the start of the 90s when nobody was wearing Gucci; it was considered an aging out-of-touch fashion house, which had a very tarnished reputation thanks to the scandalous Gucci family whose members had committed murder and tax evasion.
In 1990, Dawn Mello, the new editor and ready-to-wear designer, (and a star of the retail business who had turned around New York’s Bergdorf Goodman in the 70s), appointed the young and virtually unknown American designer Tom Ford to help her overhaul the brands image and to co-design women’s ready-to-wear. He flourished in the company and was rapidly promoted to also do menswear, then shoes and so on until by 1993 he was in charge of designing eleven product lines, and was working eighteen-hour days.
The tipping point however came in 1994, when Ford was finally given complete control of the brand and was made creative director. His first collection in 1994 made fashionistas jaws hit the floor the world over. It was a critically-acclaimed campaign of shock and awe – all Halston-style velvet hipster pant suits and skinny satin shirts in petrol blue. Bad-girl celebrities like Kate Moss and Madonna snapped up the collections and Mario Testino was employed to take care of the new super slick and very sexy ad campaigns (remember the girl with her pubic hair shaved into a Gucci logo shape?) The message was clear, Gucci was back and it was about one thing (sex) and there was one man masterminding it all (Tom Ford). Every subsequent colletion from Ford saw the brand go from strength to strength and its fanbase spread all around the globe. Before Ford joined in 1990, the house had been almost bankrupt; when he finally left in 2004 to set up his own label, Gucci Group was valued at $10 billion.
Those of you old enough should please cast your minds back to the start of the 90s when nobody was wearing Gucci; it was considered an aging out-of-touch fashion house, which had a very tarnished reputation thanks to the scandalous Gucci family whose members had committed murder and tax evasion.
In 1990, Dawn Mello, the new editor and ready-to-wear designer, (and a star of the retail business who had turned around New York’s Bergdorf Goodman in the 70s), appointed the young and virtually unknown American designer Tom Ford to help her overhaul the brands image and to co-design women’s ready-to-wear. He flourished in the company and was rapidly promoted to also do menswear, then shoes and so on until by 1993 he was in charge of designing eleven product lines, and was working eighteen-hour days.
The tipping point however came in 1994, when Ford was finally given complete control of the brand and was made creative director. His first collection in 1994 made fashionistas jaws hit the floor the world over. It was a critically-acclaimed campaign of shock and awe – all Halston-style velvet hipster pant suits and skinny satin shirts in petrol blue. Bad-girl celebrities like Kate Moss and Madonna snapped up the collections and Mario Testino was employed to take care of the new super slick and very sexy ad campaigns (remember the girl with her pubic hair shaved into a Gucci logo shape?) The message was clear, Gucci was back and it was about one thing (sex) and there was one man masterminding it all (Tom Ford). Every subsequent colletion from Ford saw the brand go from strength to strength and its fanbase spread all around the globe. Before Ford joined in 1990, the house had been almost bankrupt; when he finally left in 2004 to set up his own label, Gucci Group was valued at $10 billion.