Tom Ford Did Not Wear Tom Ford to the 2024 Met Gala
Courtesy of Getty Images / Jamie McCarthy
Tom Ford hit the 2024 Met Gala the same way Tom Ford has umpteen times before: wearing an impeccable velvet dinner jacket. Only this year, Ford didn’t tailor his own black-tie kit. In a menswear red carpet torch-passing of sorts, the designer and filmmaker was dressed by someone else: Anthony Vaccarello, the creative director of Saint Laurent.
The Met Gala is prime time for designers to plumb their archives, bringing back iconic runway pieces or reinterpreting old work for their celebrity dates. And in a way, Ford’s outfit—a classic tuxedo ensemble and red velvet dinner jacket, worn like he was born in it—is a nod to his immense legacy. Though he made his name by sexing up Gucci in the 1990s, he also spent five years atop a little house called Yves Saint Laurent starting in 1999.
Ford never got on with Monsieur Saint Laurent, and has described his time at YSL as miserable. But he has also said that he did some of his best collections at the French label, and seems to have jumped at the opportunity to slip on a très chic Le Smoking jacket once again now that he’s technically retired from the fashion biz after selling his namesake brand in 2022.
On the red carpet, Ford praised Vaccarello, who has been on a tailoring hot streak that culminated in an electrifying tribute to (perhaps ironically) Yves Saint Laurent on the Paris Fashion Week runway in March. “I think he’s a terrific designer,” Ford told La La Anthony on Vogue’s Met Gala livestream. “I love what he does, and he asked if he could make me something to wear tonight. I’m no longer designing, so I thought, Why not?”
Before dipping from the live stream to head into the cocktail hour, Ford expressed his excitement about the Costume Institute exhibition inside, “Sleeping Beauties,” which resurrects dozens of dressmaking masterworks from the Met’s archives. “It’s wonderful to go back in time and see things that haven’t been seen in a while,” he said. Like Tom Ford wearing Saint Laurent!
Originally Appeared on GQ
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