We’ve been trained to think of high American style as something inferior to what is proposed in Europe (with Paris as the motherlode of a historic ideal of chic.) I mean what is American chic next to the the legends of that mad bad 70′s YSL clique , haughty and arch in vintage 40′s platforms and fox stoles at dawn on the cobbled streets of the Rue Royale? Which American could hope to compete with the 1000 acre country estate extravaganzas put together by the English gentry? Who can top the mythology of fox hunts and inherited Old Masters and gardens by Dechene?
In fact we’ve been programmed to reason that the essence of American style is the opposite of all that “heritage”. Sportswear is the code Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Micheal Kors have ridden to the scale of retail empires. That American look has triumphed because it is so clean, so casual and democratic. But glamourous on the European scale? Not at all, except for Ralph and his formal aspect is heavy with all that Anglophilic crypto-gentry chic.
But recently I’ve been thinking , maybe there is another more entrenched corollary of American style and it is that thing called ” glamorous” . That is the glamour of Hollywood…of Las Vegas (think Sharon Stone in Scorcese’s “Casino”)…the glamour of the ultimate upward mobility of Wallis Simpson…Madonna in Miami circa The Sex Book…Oprah as the veritable Empress of Chicago. In other words it is the idea of the Rich American Woman, all nouveau and unashamed about it.
The essence of that All American brand is glitter, shimmer, lamé and glam. It is the glam ideal tricking down to upper middle class American ladies done up for the evening. Those 50′s and 60′s wives, trophy and otherwise, of New Jersey orthodentists and Arizona corporate lawyers dreaming fitfully of Babe Paley and the Bouvier sisters, dreaming that they could look and slink and shimmer like that. It is an American style that is about scale and paillettes and sequins and shine like Doris Day at a 60′s Oscar ceremony, an incandescent platinum blonde in a silver lamé pant suit. And who’s to say that after 60 years, that Rich American Woman glamour has not become a heritage of its own?
It is the myth therefore of Tom Ford’s grandmother who in his 2002 monograph he described as the nexus of his very first idea of fashion ” To me as a little kid , she was like a wonderful cartoon. We lived in Texas, a very typical middle class life. When she would come over in her newest Cadillac with some new outfit on, she brought something powerful into our lives…She was bigger than life in every sense, both physically and her presence: everything was big and loud. She wore whatever was the trendiest thing of the moment. When bellbottoms came in , she had them first. She had the biggest, widest. Platforms were in? She had the highest. At one point her closet were a sea of identical Lucite shoes with flowers in the heels. Jewelry-big and flashy. She was not subtle”
Sounds familiar? For all the accusations that Tom Ford’s two collections to date have reeked a suspiciously heavy vintage store odor, maybe its because subconsciously Mr Ford is designing his grandmother’s ultimate wardrobe.
If that’s not an avant-garde tack, maybe its instinctively brilliant. That angle could be the foundation of a new brand empire that is the very vindication of All American glamour in a way no-one has quite figured out until now. As the only emerging luxury label of note in the post-recession market, Tom Ford’s decision to set the taste clock back, far far away from the frenzy of social media and internet instant gratification might have wrecked the last nerves of the blog chattering class (of which TI is a card carrying member) but its also opened up another possibility.
If you think about it, no existing luxury brand is this walk-in closet ready for a seven figure mansion in a gated community. It is a perfect Houston socialite on a private jet vision. The Tom Ford label is so plastic-surgery-recovery-at-the-Beverly-Hills-Hotel, so Judith Krantz’s Scruples, so deeply Hollywood Wives that you want to kick yourself for not thinking this up yourself. I love that despite the mannered diction Tom Ford frequently employs, he is not marketing Anglophilia. He is marketing a kind of lost Americana, the kind only seen anymore in the Robb Report.
Of course Mr Ford probably couldn’t care less about a vindication of his tastes. He’s said as much and you have to admire the guys’ blunt honesty and of course, long term vision. Oddly enough this vision of a new chapter of luxury has always been in Ford’s head, even back in 2002. The final words on his intent has to be his from that Tom Ford book. Back then Ford said, ” I still completely believe in luxury. I think it’ll become even more important- rich people building fake environments so they can pretend the world is still a certain way. That is the future, building yourself into these artificial worlds. On that level , money is no object”
That was prophecy.
