Some regard Friday the 13th as an inauspicious date, but Tom Ford, creative director of Gucci, is hoping for the opposite, because that evening he makes his debut at Yves Saint Laurent.
Last December 31st Gucci finalised the purchase of Sanofi, which owns Yves Saint Laurent ready-to-wear and its beauty and fragrance business. Saint Laurent continues to design the haute couture, but Ford will be designing the ready-to-wear.
Irish milliner Philip Treacy will have a role in this landmark collection, for he has been tapped to design the hats for the debut, although he is also supposed to be doing the hats for Vuitton's show next Wednesday. It will be quite a coup for Treacy if he gets his hats on the Saint Laurent catwalk, but Ford is renowned for dropping the accessories in the final rehearsals for the show. It looks as if this happened on Tuesday night. Gucci, whose heritage is firmly planted in the accessories business, showed no bags and just two shoe designs for the spring collection, which took observers and Gucci shoe fans by surprise. Clearly it is the clothes that are making Ford tick. this season.
Tom Ford has frequently named Saint Laurent as an important inspiration and often there are telltale references to the couturier in the Gucci collections, be it the cut of the Gucci trouser suit, the Left Bank glamour of a leather jacket or the grace of a frilled cocktail dress. The 1960s and 1970s are also a key influence, but only where the sexier images of the period fit in with the direction he wants to take Gucci.
This season Ford wanted to cut free of all those period and style references and start with a clean page. However, the opening passage for the new collection of semisheer black cocktail dresses with body-contouring corsetry detailing and torpedo bras indicate that sexy erotic looks are still top of the agenda. The main thrust of the collection, though, was volume, with large, baggy cargo pants in bright blue, purple, pink and white satin teamed with simple white cotton vests. Despite a heavy workload, Ford has still found time to flip through the pages of the Tank Girl cartoons or play with his Nintendo.
Combat pants and skinny singlets are a casual take on the military mood which is cropping up around the shows.
Ferragamo is another Florentine-based accessories house which is planning to make its mark in fashion, albeit by a different route. Sixty-five per cent of Ferragamo's sales are in leather and shoes, but mindful of the big changes happening in the French luxury leather houses, such as Louis Vuitton, the Ferragamo family, who still own their business, have brought in French designer Mark Audibet to sharpen up their fashion act.
Yesterday morning unveiled his second collection for the house - the first has already increased fashion sales by nearly 50 per cent.