How Come The Most Enduring Icons Of Masculine Style Are All Six Feet Under?

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Ford about his film A Single Man. Ford, as we know, is a very stylish man, and an amusing one, and the film reflects his fastidious attention to detail. George Falconer, the college professor and the single man of the title, wears a suit made by Savile Row tailors Anderson & Shepherd, Ford’s favorite tailor (it’s an unusual college professor, one thinks, who could afford that). Following the firm’s tradition, Ford took the pains to have the name of the fictional character and a fictional date on which the suit was delivered — George Falconer: August, 1957 — sewn on a label on the inside pocket of the jacket where, of course, absolutely no one would see it. In the course of our discussion of all this and much more, Ford, unable to constrain his perfectionism a moment longer, suddenly leaned across and undid the fourth button on the cuff of my suit — “a style affectation,” he explained, “that shows everybody that your buttons actually function.” He then pointed out to me that I was committing the major sartorial infraction of wearing socks that were short enough to reveal a millimeter of flesh whenever I crossed my legs. When I told him the socks were from Marks & Spencer his silence was the cold, savage kiss of fashion death. Tom Ford is probably the most calculatedly stylish man in the world. He owns his own fashion label. He lives in a Richard Neutra house. He wears calf-length socks. But is Tom Ford an exemplar of male style and cool? To some people perhaps, but socks and cuffs notwithstanding, not to me. Read more at Esquire.