Tom Ford Covers "Interview" Mag - "Gay Men Make Better Designers"

The PHENOMENAL fashion designer of ALL fashion designers Tom Ford  covers the February 2011 issue of  Interview magazine. Peep the excerpts below:

CURRIN: Well, I’m here to ask you some questions, and I think a good one to start off with is about your childhood. What were some of your first memories of seeing beauty?

FORD: That would have been as a little kid living in Texas. My grandmother was probably the first person who I thought was beautiful. She was incredibly stylish, she had big hair, big cars. I was probably 3 years old, but she was like a cartoon character. She’d swoop into our lives with presents and boxes, and she always smelled great and looked great. She always had the latest things. She was larger than life to me, even as an adult, but when I was a child it was really like she was from another planet. It seemed like she lived in a different world, and wherever that was, I wanted to go.

CURRIN: I wanted to ask if you’ve ever felt any remorse in your work, because that is something I’ve felt before in my work. You don’t seem like someone who feels a great deal of remorse about anything.

FORD: No, I don’t.

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CURRIN: I sometimes get the feeling that I look at women to objectify them, and I start to feel guilty. I wonder if that ever plagues you?

FORD: I think I detach the physical from the spiritual. It’s my business to make a woman or a man beautiful, and I’m working with a model in a fitting, and I’ve objectified them to the point that they become an object. They’re something that I’m modeling or shaping or sculpting, but I’m very aware that even though I make them physically beautiful, their soul and personality and character is somewhat detached from that. It’s great when you have a combination of the two— that’s what makes a true beauty. Some people are physically beautiful but yet they’re completely uninteresting, and thus they’re not beautiful. I detach the two. And I turn the same eye on myself: When I look in the mirror, I say, “Well, this eyebrow is starting to sag,” or “I’m going gray right here, I need to fix that.” Or “I’ve eaten too much. I need to do a few more push-ups, blah blah blah.” But that’s completely separate from me as a human being. It’s purely the body that I move through the world in, and people react to it on the surface. So, no, I don’t have any remorse, because I separate them. Do you?

CURRIN: Yes. I think it’s mixed up in my lust for women, or my sexual desire for women . . .

FORD: That’s why I think gay men make better designers.

CURRIN: Are gay men free? Are you unburdened by lust? Is that an advantage of being a gay man?

FORD: I lust after beautiful women. First of all, I love women. But I lust after beautiful women in the way that I lust after a beautiful piece of sculpture—this will probably get me in trouble—or a beautiful car. I believe everyone’s on a sliding scale of sexuality. There are moments where I am sexually attracted to women. But it doesn’t overpower my first impulse; my lust for them is the same as my lust for beauty in all things. It’s not like I ever think, “Oh, my god, I’ve got to spread her legs and fuck her.”

CURRIN: How do Europeans feel about you? Do they see you as a stereotypical American who’s hardworking and controlling, or do they see you as one of them?

FORD: I think the Italians feel like I’m one of them. I think that’s because I resurrected a brand that was very close to their hearts, and I lived in Italy for a long time and speak Italian. The English, who knows? As for the French, the first thing out of every French reviewer’s mouth was something about being an American. The French are very nationalistic, which I think is very backward, honestly. I think today you have to be international and global. It’s very narrow to think in a nationalistic way. Unfortunately, Americans do the same thing, because most Americans don’t even have a passport. They don’t travel.

Tom Ford is EVERYTHING! To read the full interview, CLICK HERE.