It has, to put things mildly, been a shitshow of grandiose proportions in the fashion industry these last few weeks. In the space of less than a month, designer Raf Simons announced the termination of his namesake label; Balenciaga has been critically reviled for a campaign “promoting child abuse”; and lest attention spans falter, Alessandro Michele declared (less than a week prior) that he would be resigning from his role at Gucci.
Amid speculation that the Italian Creative Director was being asked to fall on his own sword, in part because of plateauing Q3 sales; netizens – many of them on Twitter – have already begun to wonder aloud about a suitable successor at Kering SA’s most lucrative fashion brand.
Come on Gucci, you know what to do! pic.twitter.com/sjDLiZqqUV
— Alyssa Vingan (@alyssavingan) November 23, 2022
Names including those of Jonathan Anderson (Loewe) and Grace Wales Bonner have been bandied about – all meeting with mixed reactions – yet another surprising frontrunner has emerged in the form of Tom Ford: the American mega-designer who rescued Gucci from critical and commercial stagnation in the late 1990s.
Nowadays best known for his own sprawling fashion empire, Ford had previously led Gucci as Creative Director between 1994 – 2004. His tenure there, noted for its “porno chic” aesthetic and scintillating marketing campaigns, garnered Gucci a legion of new fans, though it was ultimately Ford’s own well-documented tensions with the Pinault family – who acquired control of Gucci Group in 1999 – that led him to depart the house.
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Despite all that proven history, many netizens have contended that changes in Ford’s personal life make the move a distinct (if unsubstantiated) possibility. Earlier this month, Estée Lauder finalised its acquisition of the Tom Ford brand for US$2.8 billion – on the condition, among other things, that Ford remain in his current position at the house through 2023.
That timing would make an immediate decampment to Gucci a theoretical possibility, though many commentators have not acknowledged that the award-winning designer could choose to resume his nascent, but a critically acclaimed career in filmmaking.
As of publication, Ford has yet to respond to any calls by the fashion press urging him to return to Gucci. In addition, spokespeople for the brand itself have not issued any statements indicating that the parties are in the process of negotiating a deal to this effect. In all likelihood? We’ll have to wait until Tom Ford, the designer, steps away from his eponymous brand (in 2023) to confirm what his next move is.
