What’s Tom Ford Without Tom Ford?

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the spring and fall fashion weeks. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Good morning from Milan, where the sun is rising on day 9,742 of the 2023 fashion shows. As I’ve explained to everyone who has asked me why I was making my fourth trip to the Italian clothing capital this year, yes, it’s technically the women’s edition of fashion week. If you recently subscribed to Show Notes (thank you and welcome!), a quick primer: In Europe, men’s lines are shown in January and June, and women’s in February and September. (Which extends into March and October.) But in Milan, several marquee brands—Diesel, Loro Piana, Ferragamo, Jil Sander, Bottega Veneta, to name a few—typically skip the menswear weeks and show co-ed collections during women’s. So here I am.

Why do the brands do this? For one, it’s more modern to subvert the gender binary. But designers also have to be mindful of their bottom line, and as we discovered last week, fashion shows are incredibly expensive. Wednesday night’s Diesel show was held on a Bonnaroo-sized outdoor stage for 7,000 guests, many of them local fashion students. (The massive rainstorm that lashed the runway actually enhanced the spectacle.) As designers compete to go bigger and bolder in order to seize the narrative—and the attention of harried editors, celebs, and fashion fans—in a crowded field, I would expect brands to continue putting their budgets into a smaller number of increasingly epic events. Which is good for my Delta status, and—hopefully!—for Show Notes readers, but certainly bad for my carbon footprint and the bags under my eyes.

I came to Milan with a few major moments circled on my schedule. One is the dawn of Gucci’s new era under Sabato De Sarno. While the Valentino alum will be starting with a women’s collection this afternoon, I’ll be there to parse the jackets and loafers for hints of the direction he’ll be taking Gucci menswear come January. More on that tomorrow.

The lineup backstage at Tom Ford.

Last night, another closely-watched debut went down at Tom Ford, where creative director Peter Hawkings stepped into the spotlight. You might remember that back in April, Tom Ford sold his namesake house to Estée Lauder to the tune of $2.8 billion. Ford promptly retired from fashion to make movies, handing the reins to Hawkings, a bright and wiry Brit who worked alongside the American lifestyle titan for 25 years. “I love Peter,” Ford said in an interview with Airmail earlier this year. “I wanted him to get the job. He has incredible taste; he’s a terrific leader. He is genuinely talented. I can’t wait to see what he does.”

Hawkings, virtually unknown just a few months ago, suddenly had one of the biggest roles in menswear. “I think while it was kind of daunting at the beginning, it just felt like a kind of natural evolution both for me and for the brand,” Hawkings said backstage. “And obviously having worked for Tom for 25 years, him handing over the brand meant everything to me. It’s amazing.”

The setting, a velvety beige box outside the city center, was a tribute to the smoldering, sensual world Ford built. The room smelled like Tobacco Vanille, and was filled with plenty of rakes and ingenues wearing oversized sunglasses. OG Tom Ford girl Madonna played on a loop as Domenico de Sole, Ford’s longtime CEO and brother-in-arms, who also departed the brand post-sale, caught up with Anna Wintour. The only thing missing, really, was Ford himself. “And I looked for him everywhere,” remarked a frustrated fellow editor. The word was the man himself would be in attendance to show support. He didn’t end up making it out of London due to bad weather, according to Vogue.

A shame, because he missed a great show.

The first men’s look: pure, uncut TF.

Many newly-promoted creative directors are really more like renovators. They overhaul logos, gut stores, and remodel clothes and accessories, as De Sarno is expected to do at Gucci. But Hawkings, smartly, isn’t bringing out the wrecking ball anytime soon.

If anything, his Tom Ford is even more Tom Ford-y than Tom Ford under Tom Ford. (Sorry.) “The design ethos,” Hawkings said backstage, “is ingrained in me.” Which was clear in how he distilled the louche Fordian codes of glamor, luxury, and sex into their most potent forms. The first guy on the runway wore a gleaming black croc trucker jacket, followed closely behind by a glittering black suit in a dangerous cut: broad shoulders, trousers tapered like a knife. Gold necklaces bounced on the models’ clavicles, because their silk shirts were, naturally, unbuttoned to their belt buckles. Some traded blazers for supple café racer jackets, while others appeared to be on their way to (currently nonexistent) red carpets. The final men’s look, in fact, was a suit golder than an Oscar statuette. Pure, uncut TF, for a world of sartorial hedonism that he built.

“I’m detail obsessed, and quality means everything to me,” says Peter Hawkings.

This continuity didn’t come as a surprise. Hawkings had been quietly designing the men’s line from London for years, after Ford tapped him to start it “from a blank sheet of white paper,” as Hawkings put it, back in 2009. (Ford originally hired Hawkins as a menswear design assistant at Gucci in 1998.) He’s simply doubling down on what’s been working, and remaining razor-focused on material quality and sartorial details.

The real change Hawking is making is to the women’s side of the store, which Ford had been handling in LA. “What is so important to achieve is the [Tom Ford] woman coming closer to the man,” Hawkings said. “I think there was a disconnect before for sure, and I think that probably had to do with Tom being in LA and the design team being there. Now it’s under one roof.” Meaning there’s a women’s black croc trucker, too, as well as a sequence of velvet tuxedos that called back to those iconic, Gwyneth Paltrow-endorsed suits Ford made during his red-hot tenure at Gucci. Hawkings is basically giving credit where credit is due, he explained. “I was a part of [Gucci] all those years ago, so obviously Tom has helped me and inspired me to create my own codes, and build on those for the future.”

Backstage, I bumped into a few models who were doing reconnaissance for a potential afterparty. Back in the day, the champagne corks would surely have already been flying. They left to find an open bar elsewhere. Hawkings was eager to spend the night with his wife—whom he met at Gucci—and kids. He’s clearly thinking of the long game. “I feel like I’ve been preparing for this for my entire life,” he told me.

Peter Hawkings, in the driver’s seat.

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Originally Appeared on GQ