TOM FORD AND RACISM

Even a fashion savvy individual might not have any slight idea who is Nicolas Ghesquiere or Stefano Pilati is, but any person with a passing interest with fashion and style, will stop in his track when he heard the name Tom Ford.

Tom Ford is an American trained architect, businessman, marketing master, film director, and above all, a fashion designer. Last July 4, 2011 he graced an interview with Kawai Wong (a reporter from Time Out HongKong). Where they talked about his larger than life presence and charm, his new comedy movie (still everything is a hush hush), his desire to have children and penchant for women, the weight problem of most Americans and how the population of London is catching up (he even compared them to their Slim Asian counterparts).

Here's an excerpt from the interview in which Mr. Ford was mostly making observations.

For this spring summer you cast Liu Wen, Du Juan and Rinko on your catwalk. What made you gravitate towards them?

Well, first of all, two of them are models and they are beautiful, and Rinko is an actress who I adore and I loved her in Babel. I’ve always been quite multicultural and it’s funny that someone asked me in an interview yesterday if I had any Asian friends. I felt that was such a strange question. When you grow up in America, contrary to popular belief, we are racially blind because we’ve had Japanese and Chinese families, five generations, living in America. So we grow up with Asian-Americans, African-Americans, European-Americans. And I don’t think she’s my Asian friend. She’s my beautiful friend, she’s my dumb friend that asks me crazy shiii… she’s my fabulous friend, she’s my chic friend, she’s my… I’m colourblind. When you do a fashion show it’s very important and it’s a responsibility to represent a multicultural cast.

A friend who works at LVMH said of Liu Wen: ‘She looks Caucasian because of her face, her straight nose, her cheekbones…’ Do you think people regard these Chinese women as beautiful because of their perceived Western features?

[Mildly irritated] No. I think, and don’t take this the wrong way, all of your questions have a very odd racist slant, because you have grown up here. And don’t take that the wrong way; it’s not a negative thing at all. Honestly, growing up in America and Europe, I don’t think as racially as the questions you are asking.

Well, for one…

[Interjecting] I had a journalist earlier ask me a question which, I had to say, found really shocking. He asked me if those flowers are fake. And I said ‘No, they’re not fake, they are real.’ He said ‘I don’t believe you’. And he went over and looked. And I said, ‘They are cymbidium orchids wired to long stems because you can’t get cymbidiums in long stems. But they are real.’ So he looked at them, came back and sat down. I said, ‘Why did you ask me if they were fake?” He said, ‘Well, you are American’. [Laughs] I was like: ‘What does that mean?’ He said, ‘Well, you know often Americans are very fake and you have fake things and so I thought they might be fake.’ And I said: ‘That’s such a racist comment!’ [Lowers voice] He was German.

One may say that Mr. Ford really got himself in trouble. Although the designer thought most of the questions about differences between Western bodies and Asian bodies were "regionalistic" and even "borderline racist".