You have to look inside yourself and you have to say, well, what am I about? Why does anyone need this? Why does anyone need a ‘Tom Ford’ jacket? What do I believe in?
When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.
I think that the older you get, the more you become your true, essential self. You find the things that make you happy. You whittle away the parts of yourself that mean less to you.
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.
What is important is that we stop and realize, “Okay. This is fine. I can enjoy that. But what is really important, what I’m really going to take away with me from this life, is my connection with other people.
I am a perfectionist. This job is a total ego thing in a way. To be a designer and say, ‘This is the way they should dress; this is the way their homes should look; this is the way the world should be.’ But then, that’s the goal: world domination through style.
A man should never wear shorts in the city. Flip-flops and shorts in the city are never appropriate. Shorts should only be worn on the tennis court or on the beach.
