Haider Ackermann talks about taking the helm at Tom Ford

It started with a call. “I was in a meeting, and my phone was ringing, and I saw it was Tom Ford,” says Haider Ackermann. “My heart was beating, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the meeting to listen to that tremendously attractive voice of his, because that’s what he has. It’s so strange: The minute you see his name, you have so many flashbacks—the design, the sensuality, the movies—[but] I knew what it was about.”

Ackermann is relating this while sitting in a black chair in a white office at the Tom Ford headquarters in London. If everything here is monochromatic, the world for Ackermann has quite recently exploded into color. What the call was about was Ford asking the 53-year-old Colombian-born French designer to become creative director of the house Ford founded in 2005. “It wasn’t much of a surprise,” Ackermann says. “He wrote me a long, beautiful letter to congratulate me when I was at Berluti, so I knew he liked my work. All the same, I was nervous. You can go through a lot of emotions in one minute.”

In March, Ackermann will debut his vision of Tom Ford with a coed show in—a first for the house—Paris. (Ackermann lives there, and the plan is to have the brand reside there, too—plus, he says, “there’s a kind of cinematography to the city.”) Only then will we finally see the results of that conversation between him and Ford.

“It’s all about seduction, desire, provoking something,” he says. “More than talking about fabrics or colors, that’s what he and I both search for.”

At a first glance, it might not seem like the two have so very much in common, but they do, not least an approach to tailoring—and to eveningwear—that inhabits a world of spectacle and sensuality. Ackermann, like Ford, is one of fashion’s dramatists, deftly wielding strong shoulders, sinuous draping, and an audacious use of rich color in both his women’s and men’s work, an approach that garnered him the adoration of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Timothée Chalamet—and, clearly, Mr. Ford.

To prepare for his new role, Ackermann spent some time in the Tom Ford archive in New York, where he looked at not only Ford’s collections for his own label, but also his Gucci-era work and his Saint Laurent period. “Three important different stories, and I absorbed them all,” says Ackermann, “but I had to push it away too, because I also have to tell a new story. I’ve had so many conversations with Mr. Ford, but there’s no advice to be taken from the one who chooses you: Everything is said in that.”

Buoyed by his time in the Zegna factories in Italy (where Tom Ford clothing is made), seeing how exquisitely they can execute things, while also delving into tuxedo constructions and the like, Ackermann is seeking out “the kind of elegance Mr. Ford was searching for too: one with a kind of madness about it, a kind of eccentricity.”

Ask him what one piece represents the women’s Ford-verse, and he laughs and says a fur coat. But that’s not happening. Instead, he mentions the tuxedo shirt. “I see her in a tux shirt, even though it’s men’s,” he says.

“When you think about Tom Ford, you think about the night, but perhaps I am more the morning after: still wearing the shirt, but with a cashmere coat and loafers.”

Maybe that’s what Ackermann will be wearing the day after his debut. In the meantime, he’s contemplating something else: the mantle of leading a house indelibly created in Ford’s image. Since shuttering his own label in 2020, Ackermann has guest-designed Gaultier couture for a season and taken on a role creatively directing Canada Goose, something he plans to continue. But this newest venture brings him firmly into the glare of the spotlight once more. It’s a place he finds comfortable—especially with where we are now. “The fashion industry is returning to a moment where people are searching for clothes and for beauty, and less Here is my product,” Ackermann says. “I’m happy to be back. It feels like a massive embrace—and I want to honor it.”

Vogue.com