People always ask me how I start a collection, and I tell them that I just look around. What am I tired of? What am I in the mood for? Real fashion change comes from real changes in real life. Everything else is just decoration. Tom Ford More Quotes by Tom Ford More Quotes From Tom Ford A good trick as you get older is to get a thick pair of glasses that have a dark frame. Everything else can droop and slide but that pair of dark glasses stays sharp and crisp. Look at Cary Grant. Look at Vidal Sassoon. Tom Ford glasses dark looks I like putting on a suit. I like putting on a tie. Tom Ford suits ties In fashion as in life, the right thing at the right time is the right thing. The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing. Tom Ford wrong-time right-time fashion If you are a designer, sometimes it is better not to delegate, because someone pays money for something that you designed, so it should be exactly the way you want it, exactly the way you would have chosen it. People call me a control freak, and I say, "Well, my name is on the shoe." It means the heel needs to be the way I want it and not the way somebody else wants it, and the toe needs to be exactly the way I want it, and the fabric and the material have to be exactly the way I want it. It is not a democracy - it is a dictatorship. Tom Ford democracy mean people I think some journalists and bloggers want their articles to be clever, and the way into that is by writing nasty things. I think our culture likes to be mean. I don't just find this in fashion - I find it in the news. More and more, it is about ripping people apart. Tom Ford fashion clever writing Fashion is very quick. It's very disposable. It's immediately - it tells you exactly where we are in our culture, especially women's fashion. Tom Ford fashion culture This is something I realized after stepping away from women's fashion for the last five years. When you are inside, it is such a tiny group of people who think that this is the most important thing in the world. But when you get a little bit of distance, someone will say to you something like, "Don't you think that shoe is blah?" And I will be like, "What shoe? I don't know what you're talking about." It is very, very inside. Tom Ford distance fashion thinking I am great at delegating when someone is doing great work. The problem - and this sounds terrible - is that there are very few people who are strong enough for you to be able to delegate to. Tom Ford strong problem people A beautiful woman in our culture, and I would like to say, you know, this was different in 1962, but it still exists today - I know a lot of these women -treats different in a different way; meaning that if you're a beautiful woman, you're incredibly powerful within our culture. The world operates differently for you. Then, at a moment in time, and it has nothing to do with you, it's like the carpet is just ripped out from under you, and the way that you've operated in the world no longer works. Tom Ford powerful beautiful culture If you are creative, sometimes you give up a lot of things that other people have. Tom Ford giving-up creative people Fashion is ruthless the way every three months you have to think about everything all over again. Tom Ford fashion thinking Part of my family were ranchers. So you were expected to be quite macho. You weren't expected to cry. I was the exact opposite of that. Tom Ford cry my-family opposites I hope people will put aside Tom Ford the fashion designer and think about Tom Ford the filmmaker. Tom Ford fashion people thinking When I was young, I wanted to be a movie star. But I realized that you have no control being an actor. So I went to architecture school in NYC, because I was crazy about buildings. Then I began to realize that I got more excited about Vogue coming out each month than I was about my projects. Tom Ford crazy stars school Maybe it's because I'm a designer, but when I am in a state of excitement, everything is so sharp and colorful and amazing, and I can look at blue and I see the yellow in it and the green in it, and the green-blues, the yellow-blues, so. Tom Ford blue yellow looks I love New York. It's given me so much as a designer. When I moved here, I wanted to tap into the glamour of the city immediately. More than anywhere else, New York offers itself up - you arrive and get a rush in a flash. It's dazzling. Everywhere you look, there is decoration, from a pair of jewel-encrusted shoes in the window in Bergdorf Goodman to the Chrysler Building. And New York is incredibly democratic. Everyone is packed into this tiny space. You are confronted with all manner of people, and I love that. Tom Ford shoes cities new-york Style. People talk about it being stylish and beautiful, that's at the service of the story. Style for me means nothing without substance and there are moments and things about the film that are stylish but hopefully at the service of the story. Tom Ford beautiful mean people I'm a fashion designer. What I do is artistic, but I'm not an artist because everything I do is destined to be sold. That's not to say that you can't be an artist and a fashion designer. I think some designers are artists. Tom Ford fashion artist thinking Fashion is much more collaborative than one might think. You have to have an idea and vision and you have to communicate that vision to a team of people and you have to create an environment that allows those people to give the best that they can give. Tom Ford fashion team thinking I was lucky enough to have had great success early on in life; to have had all the things the material world can offer. And yet, I realized that what I had actually neglected was the more spiritual side of myself, which has always been there. But it's easy for us in our culture to become consumed in a sense by materialism. Now materialism is fine. We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. But, in our culture, we're never happy. Tom Ford lucky spiritual beautiful